Ilika plc (IKA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Ilika plc Investor Presentation and Q&A session. [Operator Instructions] The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting itself. However, the company can review all questions submitted today. And will publish any responses where it's appropriate to do so on the Investor Meet Company platform. Before we begin, I would just like to submit the following poll. And if you'd give that your kind attention, I'm sure the company would be most grateful. And I would now like to hand you over to the executive management team from Ilika plc. Graeme, good morning, sir.

Good morning. A very warm welcome to everyone to the follow-up to our Capital Markets Day that we held in London on Tuesday, and we're delighted to be able to go through a brief presentation and then address some of the questions that I'm sure you'll have. So we have a lot of content on our website that gives insight into the discussions that we had on Tuesday that were very lively. It was a very well attended event and there is a 2.5-hour video that we have posted on our website. It's also on the [ IMC ] website. And here's a bit of a chapter in guide. First of all, I gave a few minutes overview of Ilika as an organization. And we had a presentation from John Tinson, VP of Sales and Marketing, you covered the Stereax commercial review, and that was supplemented by our guest appearance by Brad Womble, who is the Senior Director of Strategy and Business Development at Cirtec, and he answered a series of questions in a 15-minute session. He was followed up by Denis Pasero who is a product manager and like -- he gave a demonstration of our Stereax devices that are powered by Stereax batteries. We have an audience Q&A on Stereax. And then we changed gear a little bit and Louise Turner, who is our VP of Product Development in a new view of the Goliath program, again, followed by the demonstration of Goliath from Denis while he was watching before we had the Goliath audience Q&A, followed up by a really interesting EV industry panel that was moderated by James Carmichael at Berenberg. He's the analyst who covers instead. Dr. Thomas Bartlett, he was actually the director or the Deputy Director of the Faraday Battery Challenge at Innovate UK. And Julian Hetherington who is the Automotive Transformation Director at the Advanced Propulsion Center or ABC as well as myself. So some really interesting data that was shared by that panel in answer to questions that James posed to us. Jason then gave an overview of the company finances and the ESG update. And I wrapped up before a final Q&A session. So well worth a review. So for those of you who may be new to the Ilika story, we are a specialist in solid-state batteries. We've got two product lines. On the one hand, we've got Stereax miniature cells, and they've been developed primarily to power miniature medical devices and also industrial IoT. And then our second product line is our Goliath large format cells, which target the automotive industry and also cordless consumer appliances. And we are differentiated because we have developed some state batteries with an oxide electrolyze and a silicon anode, which makes an intrinsically safe reduces raw materials costs and increases cell life with the competitive performance. So the company was actually founded as spin-out here in Southampton as from a local university. We have a [indiscernible] portfolio of 62 international patents. We're addressing huge markets, the total addressable market for [ automated ] batteries in 2030 is expected to be USD 280 billion, and we've got a healthy cash balance that we expect to have GBP 11 million on our balance sheet in a few days' time at the end of our financial year. One of the things that I'd like to emphasize is that Ilika has an asset-light licensing model, and we demonstrate our process on production intense equipment before transferring that technology to manufacturing partners who are responsible for actually manufacturing the products that we have developed. So we are not in the business of building and operating large factories, sort of bigger factories in the example EV batteries. We are in the business of being specialists in developing solid-state battery IP and then licensing that to our manufacturing partners. First of all, Stereax, this is a unique miniature battery. You can see a closer picture of the N300 battery on the top left. That's a stack of 6 individual cells, which you can see are connected down the edge of battery and there for a sense of scale. On the right-hand side, you see a series of the same batteries alongside the head of pair of tweezers and some images along the bottom of the manufacturing process that we have at our pilot line here in Southampton. The addressable market for these factories are extremely interesting. They cover a series of breakthrough sectors and Brad Womble talks at length in his video about these markets, and they are perfectly aligned with the sectors, the Cirtec manufacturing partner for Stereax is currently addressing principally in the U.S. So they cover neuromodulation for applications like pain relief and planted sensors, orthopedics. So hip, knee, shoulder, joints ophthalmic applications. So these are small contact lenses, sometimes with the AR/VR application and then also orthodontics or dental alignments. The big news really from last summer was the partnerships that we have with Cirtec. They are very vertically integrated. They're an outsource partner for medical device OEMs like Abbott, Boston Scientific and Medtronic. And you can see from that guzzle puzzle, [indiscernible] the bottom left that they have all of the capabilities that's requires in order to make thin-fill miniature devices, which is what our Stereax factories are [indiscernible] Massachusetts on the bottom right and that is where the equipment that we have transferred to them from a facility here is Southampton is being installed and commissioned at the moment. So the benefits -- we're looking at the benefits, shareholders that it really validates the Stereax products and the process that we use for making the product. They have got a manufacturing capability at scale so they can ramp up to meet customer expectations. They've also got a big business development team. So we have a partnership that gives us access to more resources, and there's a very strong alignment between the sectors that those organizations are addressing. They've also already developed a neurostimulator technology platform which gives a particular application, a bit of a head start when you're adding the Stereax technology. So I would recommend that you take 15 minutes to watch the Brad Womble video. He answers questions, which are very relevant questions actually that our investors have often asked us in the past and are probably of interest to the audience that we have underlined year-to-date. So the questions cover the markets that we expect to sell Stereax into. It effectively emphasizes and reiterates the markets that I've just summarized in the previous slides. Addresses what our first likely market entry plans is going to be, [indiscernible] times, sizes of the market, the uniqueness of the technology, the competition. He addresses some details of the contracts and answers why Cirtec was attracted to enter into this 10-year licensing deals that we have with them. The audience was very engaged, and we had 7 very good questions that the IIika team answered and when I go through all of these now, but you can have a look at the answers to these questions online and they give you further insights into our views on these opportunities. So then when we talked about Goliath, we emphasized that we have a regulatory-driven uptake opportunities with 145 countries now around the world having announced net zero targets covering 90% of global emissions, transport being a real focus because this is the largest emitting sector. And we really have a cutting edge solid-state CV battery technology, which shows a long way towards addressing current consumer anxieties relating to EVs. The fact that these factories are non-flammable and that they have a very competitive performance versus lithium ion batteries and a higher tolerance to operating temperature, translates into a series of benefits for drivers with EVs. So they give you a lighter vehicle. And that's means that actually for given ways of battery pack, you get a longer range. They're safe in manufacture. So that is just a cost. Also use and they can be readily recycled, which will become increasingly important to provide independence from large and long global supply chains. In terms of progress to date, so you have followed the news that actually we are executing our GBP [ 820 ] million history grants together with collaborators. So BMW and [ WAE ] are on the steering committee as well as us working with sort of the premier U.K. universities and research institutes. We've been carrying out a series of trials as equipment vendors. And of course, just before the end of the year, we achieved 2 milestones in quick succession. First of all, our D4 performance milestone, which was a design freeze in advance of our P1 prototype that we will be testing and bringing to market in the course of the next couple of months. We also achieved lithium ion energy density clarity demonstrating that our technology S curve has now overtaken in [ Camden ] technology with some see the benefits of the improved features bringing through. And we entered into a system grants, which involves the design of an assembly line, so a 1.5-megawatt hour [ year ] assembly line that we're doing together with Mpac. Actually, earlier this week, the Faraday Institution announced that they are going to be carrying out independent testing of our prototypes under their [ safe pack ] program. And just this morning, you may have seen the Agratas the Tata Sons subsidiary has joined the system growth program and also aligned themselves with development program. So a fantastic partnership that really validates the technology and gives us an opportunity to work together with what's currently the largest investor in giga factory assets here in the U.K. All of this puts us in a very strong position to push through to the delivery of our [ NPB ] in 2025. Just a reminder of what our Stereax plant looks like. The asset-light business model. So we're currently carrying our work on our pre-pilot line. That will continue to the end of our current development program, our DA milestone as we call it, And we are already putting in place equipment in parts defined by that system growth collaboration program to allow us to operate a full pilot plant, and that will support the production of our minimum viable product or a generic a sample, which will also allow the company to enter into RFQs. Beyond that, the investments in further scale-up and development processes is really done by [ CA-1 ] or the OEMs that we work with. They're the ones that invest in these assets to allow us to get to higher production volumes and they do that under license as they build B and C samples which are samples that support the commercialization and vehicle platform. So it's not only Agratas that we're interacting with. They're the company that's in the public domain. Right now, we've got a pipeline of MTAs and NDAs over 8% of the agreements with automotive and Tier 1 companies. 18% with non-automotive effectively consumer appliance companies. The majority, 70% are here in Europe, but we also have 12% in the U.S. and very pleasingly 18% in the epicenter of the global battery industry, which is currently in Asia. So principally Japan, Korea and China. So a strong pipeline of companies interested in our technology. Jason, do you want to say a few words about the U.K. growth funding that we've received so far in support of the Goliath and how the future looks.

Thank you, Graeme, and good morning, everybody. So just to give education for those people that may not be fully familiar with the story and then to go through the current activity into the future. IIika has a strong track record in being able to access growth funding through a number of U.K. funding bodies very much to support the Goliath of the automotive product line. Unfortunately, it is being very little support on the Stereax side. But in the Goliath products, we have received a number of different grants and funded support, both through the Faraday institution and also through the automotive transformation funds and it was really great to have both Thomas and Julian on the Q&A panel. Thomas representing Faraday. [indiscernible] and Julian representing the [indiscernible] Automotive Transformation Fund to give their perspective. So once again, I would reiterate it would be great to go and how to look and see what they said from an independent perspective on their industry thoughts. But in terms of the grants that we received, you can see on the screen a number of different grants from the past, leading to the 2 that are running currently. So from the Faraday institution, we have the history project. So that is the GBP 8 million overall grant spread among a number of different partners. And of that, GBP 2.8 million of that falls to Ilika as direct funding towards our road map of development, and that's spread over roughly a 2-year period with the start of that being in February last year and continuing on to February next year. Running at the same time as that, once again, Graeme has mentioned this earlier, and we're delighted to welcome [indiscernible] onto that system project is our scale up activity that once again is grant funded, and that's through the ATF funds. So that's really is there to support the scale up into manufacturing. So once again, that's a larger fund, but Ilika will take GBP 400,000 directly from that. But really, that has some unique benefits for Ilika and that it is helping to reduce the cost of capital equipment that are being manufactured by Mpac, our partner who will have that assembly equipment ready for us to bring into our facilities here on the South Coast to help start that scale-up activity as we move to that 1.5 megawatt facility as are routed into the A sample. So that's all activity that's underway at the moment. But looking forward into the future, as we have moved up the [ TRL levels ], the technological levels with the Goliath batteries, that has moved us from the Faraday institution into the ATF sector. And we're looking to pursue that further in the future with an APC funded project to take the Goliath batteries and get them along with other partners and OEMs to put them into a new and to start to see some of those batteries being tested in a pack and module rather than just on a sale basis. So we have to go through the application process for that particular activity, which we'll be doing over the following months, but please do watch the space for our progress on that. And as and when we have any news, we'll be able to update everybody in the market as to what we've been able to achieve. But we think that's a great opportunity to be able to move us forward into that next level.

Thanks, Jason. Really great to see continued support on a non-delusive basis, really allowing us to leverage the shareholder equity that we're investing in our Goliath's development program. Then there's an interesting Goliath audience Q&A that you can dip into addressing these questions here. And then the industry panel focused on EVs that I mentioned at the beginning of this presentation today. And then we moved into a quick summary of ESG. Jason, do you want you to comment on that please.

Yes, absolutely. So by all means, please look at the video. But in summary, ESG remains a very important activity for Ilika. We're obviously very passionate company about the environmental impact, and it's one of the reasons why we see EVs and Stereax batteries as a great room forward to help that decarbonization groups, but actually within the company and within our investor base as well. From a social perspective, we are very keen to make sure that we are having the right impact on society, whether that's within our employee base or within the wider stakeholder grouping. And from a governance point of view, we need to make sure that we are fully compliant with all the rules and regulations. And actually, we passionately even trying to stay ahead of that. And where that really comes to the fore and provides your benefit is around our supply chain piece obviously, ensuring not only for ourselves that we are compliant with the regulations from an environmental point of view, [indiscernible], et cetera. That's also actually really important to our future customers in the Tier 1s and OEMs. They are all larger entities and already have to comply with much more stringent regulations, especially brand things like the battery postal and so origin. And to ease the adoption of our technology, we've taken the approach that we need to ensure that the materials, the processes that we are able to hand over to those potential customers are as easy as possible for them to implement so that we have not created a product that might look great on paper or as we develop that cell, but it's very difficult to manufacture. And that is a thing that we've taken to heart in ensuring that through our ESG aspects we take into consideration all the requirements of our potential customers. Moving on then into the financial update. For those that have followed us for a little while, you will be aware of our half year results from back in October that we presented during January [ R&T ] presentation. But to provide an overview very briefly for those that may not be familiar, at the October position, our income was GBP 1.3 million, very much driven by the grant funding that we just talked through to system in history. And that was a great improvement on the preceding years. So at the half year point, that was [indiscernible] up from GBP 200,000 in the previous year. And the update that we provided on Tuesday morning is that we expect total turnover to be approximately GBP 2 million of the year. So that's continuing recovery of those grant funding, although it has slowed down a little bit in the second half of the year, as we talked to both the system and history grants are fixed amounts of money. So as we did a great job pulling into the first half of the year. So it has therefore slowed in the second half of the year as we get towards the end of those and will continue into next year. The EBITDA loss was GBP 1.9 million at the half year versus GBP 4.1 million in the preceding year. And that very much is a reflection of that Cirtec agreement and our technology transfer process that we've gone through. So that's taking cost out of the Stereax side of the business. As that has moved over to the U.S. so then to go through the certification of the equipment and scale up the operations over in level to move that forward. So that's allowed us to reduce the cost base within the business and allow us then to refocus capital that we have towards the Goliath scale-up story. And that really then feeds into the cash balance. So at the half year, that was 13.2, versus 18.6 in the preceding year. And as we guided on Tuesday morning, we expect the cash balance at the end of April, I mean, just a few days' time to be of approximately GBP 11 million, reflecting the good income and reduction in costs as well as good management of capital around capital spend items. And then what we have done previously for the Stereax side and to reiterate here is, while we can't give specific guidance, what we wanted to do is help with the education around how we would expect the revenue to build as we start to commercialize out the product line. So I've gone through a full explanation within the video. So please do go ahead and take a longer look at that. But in brief, there are a number of different layers that we would expect to come through in time. The possible line, you can see there is processing income where we are continuing to make the LCO deposition process here in the U.K. for the near future. The orange section you see is nonrecurring engineering. So working with potential customers and OEMs, off-take to specialize and certify our Stereax batteries for their specific applications. The gray section you can see is the revenue from royalties starting to come in from those batteries as they go through that certification process. So we will derive income all the way through the FDA approval process. But really, you see the ramp-up towards the end there as those products are approved and certified and then the volumes drastically increase. And then with the contract, we have preserved the right for issuing additional licenses outside Medtech, all for extremely high-volume applications that Cirtec not looking to support and those of [ ATIs ] you could see on top as well. License fees that come as things progress forward. And then really new information that we're releasing at this time, it's very much a similar graph, a similar buildup for the Goliath side. So once again, helping people to understand how we expect the Goliath revenue to build over time. So as we've talked about, we already get and expect to continue to receive strong grants income, both for the foreseeable future with hopefully the success of that APC application that we'll be embarking on. But then as we continue to undertake research and development going forward with future iterations of the Goliath product. So on top of that, we would expect to then enter into some nonrecurring engineering or commercial collaboration to adapt our generic Goliath cell to the specific requirements of OEM or Tier 1 partners as we start to interact them to those 17 that we discussed about, as Graeme presented earlier. And then as we look to get to A sample towards entering into that A sample to B sample period, we expect them to be licensing those out to those partners so that they can enter into production. And then ultimately, once again, for that to switch into the factory royalty revenue as they get those approved on to car platforms and then ultimately onto the forecourts.

So in summary, as an outlook for the business, we are currently scaling Stereax through the joint manufacturing agreement and co-marketing that we're doing with Cirtec. We're maturing the Goliath technology through the road map that we've talked about with partners, including Agratas that we announced today through a series of defined technical milestones, and we're going to continue to pursue that ground support, which really gives us a 2-for-1 leverage of the investment that we make in our Goliath program and also commercial revenues through partnering. So the commercial opportunity continues to build, and we've got some really large addressable markets providing a strong platform for future growth. And we have some final questions in the wrap-up Q&A, which are certainly worth listening to and the answers that we provided. And actually, that wraps up the presentation that we've got today, and we're happy now to move into the next section which will be to address some of the questions that you guys have asked.

Graeme and Jason. Thank you very much indeed for your presentation this morning, if I may just jump back in there before we move to questions. [Operator Instructions]. I would like to remind you that a recording of this presentation along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A can be accessed via your invested dashboard. Jason and Graeme, we obviously received a number of presubmitted questions ahead of today's event. And as you can see there in the Q&A tab, we've also received a number of questions throughout your presentation this morning as well. So firstly, thank you to all of those on the call for taking the time to submit their questions. And Graeme, Jason, at this point, if I may just hand back to you to address those questions where it's appropriate to do so, and then I'll pick up from you at the end. Thank you.

Yes, we've got a really great set of questions actually to cross through in the remaining half an hour or so that we have. So I just want to thank everybody for taking the time to have submitted those questions. If we don't manage to cover them in the time that remains, we will review them afterwards and follow up with the remaining questions. So you'll be able to see our responses by logging into the platform. So let's start with one actually that we do get asked by investors given the success of the U.S. stock exchanges. So the first question is, in the near future, will Ilika Plc be listed on the NASDAQ or NYSE? So Jason, I think maybe you should answer that.

Yes, absolutely. So the U.S. retail market is an important market to us, and we have around 20% of our shareholder base is made up of U.S. holders and that's really through our registration with OTCQX [ express ] market. So in fact, it's a system that allows U.S.-based investors to trade in U.S. dollars during the U.S. Market Day, but really accesses the A listings. So that provides -- we feel the best opportunity for maintaining just a single listing within the U.K., but allowing access to U.S. investors to be able to invest within Ilika and join us on our journey. We will continue, obviously, to monitor the U.S. trading volumes and where we see the demand for the Ilika shares coming from. And if things change, the Board, we'll obviously keep that under advisement as we look to the future.

Thanks, Jason. So the next question is, has IIika's agreement with Cirtec in the U.S. produced the results that Ilika was looking for in the marketing and sale of its Stereax batteries? So I can confirm that Cirtec is working hard to deliver the plan that we outlined in the agreement that both parties entered into last summer. Since then, we've participated in 2 joint trade shows with Cirtec this year in the U.S. and we're actively engaging with that pipeline of customers that we touched on during the presentation. So the next question is, does the company plan to explore other small battery options in the mass retail markets such as cell phones or small power tools? So for the moment, the Goliath program is focused on batteries for EVs that is the largest global market for lithium ion batteries. And we feel that, that is worthy of our focus. However, we are engaging in discussions with consumer appliance companies, and we hope to address those other commercial opportunities in due course once we've gone past the technology platform development stage of our program. The next question relates to battery format. So the question is pretty much every EV battery maker is moving towards cylindrical cells. Why are you persisting with [indiscernible] cells and is your technology viable for different formats? So actually, that statement isn't quite right. The current split of formats is about 45% for pouch, 35% prismatic and the remaining 20% cylindrical. In fact, cylindrical cells make up the minority of cells that are used for EV applications. So our technology is principally designed for flat formats. So that means pouch and prismatic but that is 80% of the current EV market and that's the flat formats are expected to dominate going forward. The next question relates to another battery company actually that's also listed our name. So [indiscernible], some of you guys may know them. So they've announced that they've achieved a high energy density milestone by fabricating a 395-watt per kilo lithium-sulfur 9.5 pouch cell. And this result represents a 60% increase in the energy density compared with current lithium-ion batteries. So the question is, is Goliath going to be left behind without a big third-party investment. So first of all, let me just comment on lithium software technology. It's important to understand that lithium-sulfur technology like the one that Goliath announced. It's actually not so competitive for EV applications. It's a lightweight energy storage technology but it has a number of limitations because of its bulk, it's got a very low volumetric energy density relative to lithium-ion and also a relatively short lifetime. So the application that often gets assessed for is in defense. So where waste is the primary consideration. So for infantry applications and drone applications, but not really for EVs. And relating to third-party investment, well, look, we anticipate closer relationships with OEMs and Tier 1s going forward, building on the types of relationship that we announced this morning with Agratas. Next question is, is Stereax being trialed by any of the neurological chip companies? And if not, why not? So the answer is yes. Stereax is being considered for a number of neurostimulation applications and as Cirtec's Brad Womble explains in the CMD video. This is actually one of Cirtec's focus areas. So we're really building on that initial momentum that Cirtec has in that field. Next question is what's the Goliath relative performance versus incumbent lithium and other competing technologies. So in December of last year, 2023, Ilika confirmed that it had reached lithium-ion energy density parity. So based on the availability of information in the public domain, we believe that Goliath offers a competitive performance relative to other emerging technologies, and we're really pleased with the progress that our technical team is making a longer road map. And I think the interest that you've seen this morning from Agratas and of course, our pipeline of other Tier 1 and OEM interactions is validation that the industry is interested in hearing about our work in this field and that we've got a competitive offering. Let me just have a look perhaps another question here, something that's new. So a question here is what royalty fee are the OEMs paying. And can you share the structure? So Jason, do you want to comment on that?

So unfortunately, we're not in a position where we can share the actual details due to confidentiality and remaining competitive as we look forward. But what we can say is that we have benchmarked what we have achieved compared to industry [indiscernible] and that they are in the mid-single-digit royalty on revenue rate, which having looked at the information that's available to us, we feel it's a good results for Ilika and its shareholders.

So the next question is, do OEMs also pay you non-equity for your development phase? So if so, how did we determine the number and what are the conditions for it? So I guess if I relate back to the revenue development graphs that I talked through. And as I said, you can see in more detail, if you look at the Capital Markets Day video. There is certainly an element of nonrecurring engineering fees that would come through as part of the development to look at any specific requirements that the OEMs might have, whether that's on the Stereax side of the business to certify our Stereax batteries for their applications or to change their form and function to suit a specific OEMs application or on the Goliath side as we move towards the cell and pack integration into a car platform, we are starting those conversations with the automotive and Tier 1s and understanding exactly what their requirements are that would potentially come with some revenue as we look to make our generic Goliath cell specific to their particular car platform or particular back needs.

Next question is how many layers do you have now? And what is the maximum capacity per cell you have? I think that probably relates to Goliath. So we haven't actually disclosed how many layers that we have in our host cells. That's still a proprietary piece of information. But P1 prototype that we used to power the demonstration vehicle of our CMD is a 2 on-power [indiscernible]. So what's the operational temperature that we have? So our P1 prototype operates from minus 20 up to 85 degrees C. So that's actually a wider operating window than most normal lithium-ion batteries, which are limited to 60 degree C. Another question here. Probably again relating to Goliath says, what's your pressure stack? So actually, our P1 prototype currently operates without any externally applied pressure. So that's a pretty interesting performance outcome in its own right. But we are currently evaluating further performance advantages by applying moderate pressure because lithium-ion batteries, including solid-state, once do breezes the lithium is transferred from 1 electrode to another and then back again. And typically, you do see an improvement in cycle life, in particular by applying moderate pressure but the lower the pressure that you can get away with applying, while still retaining the performance benefits, the less expensive it is to build the battery pack and the light of the battery packs that you end up with. So we are just understanding the trade-off in performance relative to weight at the moment. Next question here is, can you provide more information on the cash runway and future funding expectations prior to receiving licensing royalties is [ coming ] in the financial Q&A section within the presentation. But the business is funded for operational activity for at least the next 12 months. And we continue to pursue activities to mitigate that with such as the Cirtec contract that allowed us to reduce the cash consumption on the Cirtec side of the business as we complete that technology transfer and also through the grant funding activities that we discussed earlier trying to obtain that nondiluted funding to make sure that we can extend the operational run rate of the business as long as we possibly can. However, we are very mindful of the route to market of both the Stereax batteries with the FDA approval and with the [indiscernible] time to get paid. The [indiscernible] you can see a simple process to the point that you would see those full course and [indiscernible] of maybe the high-profile failures within it over the last 12 months or so. The Board remains really keen to watching the market and ensuring that we have the funds available to ensure that we can continue that journey and complete all our regulatory and financial requirements in operating the business to protect shareholder value. Next question here, which is a little bit of a repeat of the first one we had. So what's the relationship between the stock list on the NYSE and the OTC market. There's a huge discrepancy between the 2 and investors in the U.S. are interested to better understand why. As I said earlier, we are only listed on the market, but the OTCQX route allows U.S. investors to trade on that U.K. market during U.S. office hours and with U.S. dollar denomination of our stock but the 2 are linked together, so there should be no discrepancy between the 2. Only the lap between that operation over the various trading days that is allowed and those will settle out as they link up every single day. Another question we have here is, is the company actively discussing Giga Factory build-out with an interested partner? And if so, who will fund the Giga Factory buildup. And is it the U.K. government, the commercial partner or something else altogether? So I think our engagement with Tier 1 and OEM partners, is a demonstration that we're actually discussing the future trajectory in terms of commercializing our technology through partnerships. Just to emphasize again, we do have an asset light business model. So our plan is to transfer our technology and the license from our pilot line and any Goliath Giga Factory would be funded principally by our licensee, probably with government support, most of the Giga factories around the world are attracting government support. The U.K. government has already said it is providing GBP 400 million support to the Agratas GBP 4 billion investment that is planning in the Bridgewater Giga Factory. So yes, that's the trajectory in this. This is an interesting one. It seems Ilika is an unknown player by many potential institutional and retail investors currently investing in other much better than SSB development companies, such as QuantumScape, Solid Power or FREYR. That being said, how is the company planning to better promote themselves going forward? So Ilika is actually usually featured in unlisted reviews of solid-state battery developers. If you buy one of the industry reports on solid-state technology, we are usually profiled in those. And we appear regularly at the industry conferences, actually, some of our team just yesterday. We're in Stuttgart at a conference. So we have a profile. And also actually, our NPI Director, Robin Bell will be on the solid-state battery panel at MOVE '24, which is a conference that's coming up in June in London. So I'd encourage you to go along and hear what we've got to say at that event if you are local to that trade show. So we work very hard to promote ourselves. And I think there is a wealth of information on social media channels and on our website on the back of this week's CMD and today's announcement. So here's another question on Stereax systems. So Stereax revenue is forever being pushed back. Why not just sell on the IP and patents to Cirtec now for upfront cash. So we believe that actually will generate a better return for our shareholders by working with Cirtec to commercialize the Stereax's technology rather than by selling the IP at this stage. A lot of the value of the IP is going to come through that demonstration of commercialization and both Stereax and Ilika are working very hard towards that goal at the moment. Next question is that directors have meaningless stakes in the company. Why haven't they been buying shares at these multiyear low prices? Well, actually, the [indiscernible] directors have significant stakes in the company, and that's through a combination of equity. I am personally a significant shareholder and options, which are to be exercised in due course. We invite you to go and review the annual report, which has the directors [indiscernible] in detail so that you can see both shares and options held if you'd like to look at that further. Right. So we've still got some questions coming in. So let's have a look at some of these that are in the Q&A panel that we've got in front of us. So the first one is, what role does AI play in product development and manufacturing process development? Yes. So actually, AI is proving to be a pretty useful tool in keeping us abreast of the wealth of information that's out there in the sector literature, both from a published paper perspective as well as patents that are being filed and that allows us to be able to do keyword searches and predictive modeling for areas that we may have to pay attention to in order to maintain freedom to operate. So making sure that we don't get restricted by other people's patent filings or perhaps highlighting areas of opportunity. It's probably worth also noting that we are taking a very cautious approach with AI as a licensing company with patents registered. A number of these generative AI models suck data in to learn for them, to improve themselves going forward and our biggest concern is that we are protecting the IP of the company, and therefore, shareholder value by making sure that there is no possibility for a leakage of any of our IP outside the business. So we take a very cautious and careful approach from its AI to make sure that ultimately we protect the business and shareholder value. Next question is, can you elaborate on the Agratas 12-month agreement? Look, it's fresh news just out this morning, I think it's a really great piece of validation of our technology. Agratas has joined the existing system agreement along with U.K. [ BIC ]. So the U.K. battery industrialization center and Mpac. And we really think that they will have a lot of value to the development of that platform, and they'll also clearly learn a lot in terms of solid-state assembly processes. And also in parallel to that, there's a close collaboration in order to make sure that we can share some of the data that we're generating on our prototypes between now and D8 and also on the processes that we're optimizing for pilot line and then transfer to larger scale implementation beyond that. Next question is how dependent are you on China for raw materials? Well, what I would say is that the entire battery industry is fairly dependent on Chinese material refining. So when they take the ore and turn us into refined materials that can be used as the precursors for building batteries. And most of the U.S. and European chemical companies are evaluating how they can increase independence. So of course, in Europe, we're fortunate to have 2 very active and advanced suppliers of battery materials. So I would mention Umicore and BASF, particularly. And working together with them and also suppliers from around the world, we are able to diversify our supply chain. Next question is what position, I guess the indication is what position is Ilika got relative to Toyota or Chinese developers in terms of solid-state batteries. So we do actually publish a competitive grid in our presentation. So if you have a look at the presentation game at CMD, for instance, you will see that we have a look at the different players that are involved in the field. We're not unique, it is a competitive landscape, but we have chosen materials that we believe differentiates our batteries from the competition, and in particular, in Toyota it is meant to be working with sulfide-based electrolytes, which is a different choice relative to our oxide-based electrolytes. The advantage of Toyota's choice is that sulfide-based electrolytes have got a high ionic conductivity and that's fairly mineable, so you can get good interspace formation in the batteries that they make. But the downside is that sulfides are sensitive to oxygen and moisture. In fact, they react with those materials to give toxic gases and other side reactions that you don't want and therefore, we believe that actually the oxide choice that we've made will continue to differentiate us going forward. I'm mindful of time and if we just take a last question. So one here, any interaction yet with [indiscernible] takeoff and landing aerospace companies. At the moment, we are not pursuing other routes with Goliath being the primary route that we're pursuing. One of the challenges around the aerospace activity is that the batteries weight is the same at the start of a journey versus the end of the journey, and therefore, it doesn't have some of the benefits that you would see within the traditional fuel, which obviously is burned up and therefore, diminishes the weight of the aeroplane or vehicles through its transit and journey, being able to extend that range. So there are a number of changes around that. So it's certainly one that we're not pursuing at the moment, but we are open to all of those discussions as we mature the technology on the Goliath side of the business, and we'll look to access any of those as they become applicable to us.

Very good, Jason. So I think we are pretty much at the end of the hour session that IMC have kindly allocated this. So I will hand over to Jake to wrap up.

Perfect. Graeme, Jason. Graeme thank you very much indeed for addressing all of those questions that came in for investors. And of course, we will be able to give you back all of the questions that were submitted today. We'll give you those back immediately after the presentation has ended, just for you to review to add any additional responses and of course, where it's appropriate to do so, and we'll publish all those responses out on the platform -- but Graeme, perhaps before really just looking to redirect those on the call to provide you their feedback, which I know is particularly important to yourself and the company. If I could please just ask you for a few closing comments to wrap up with, that would be great.

Thanks, Jake. We really appreciate everybody's time this morning. It's been a fantastic turnout and some very interesting and stimulating questions. We've done our best to answer as many as we could, and we will review the remaining ones in due course. So once again, many thanks for your time today.

Perfect. Graeme. That's great. Thank you once again for updating investors this morning. Could I please ask investors not to close this session as she will now be automatically redirected for the opportunity to provide your feedback in order of the management team can really better understand your views and expectations. It only take a few moments to complete, but I'm sure it will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of Ilika plc, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation. That now concludes today's session. So good afternoon to you all.