Impact Coatings AB (publ) (IMPC.ST) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary
November 24, 2025
Earnings Call Speaker Segments
Jonas Nilsson
ExecutivesWelcome, everyone, to this Capital Markets update. My name is Jonas Nilsson, and I am the CEO of Impact Coatings. Today, I will talk about 3 main things. We have proven technology and established operations in Europe and China. We have a strong position in the fuel cell and electrolyzer markets. And now we are taking a step into the power generation market. This presentation is made in connection with our ongoing rights issue. So please make sure to read the important information included in the presentation materials. The investor presentation can be found on the Rights Issue page in the Investors section of our website. First, I would like to invite you to visit our factory in Linköping tomorrow. Doors will be open at 1:30 p.m., and there will be both a presentation of the company and a tour showing our production facilities and operations here in Linköping. Please notify the company today if you intend to participate by e-mail to [email protected]. So this is today's program. I will start by walking you through our investor presentation. Then Yaowen Wang, our Regional President in China, will take you on a tour in the factory in Shanghai and give his view on the market. After that, we will have an external guest from U.K., Caroline Hargrove, who is the CTO of Ceres. Ceres is one of the big players in the SOFC market. Then Rob Mamazza will follow and give an update of the North American market. And finally, Kristian Hillgren will talk about how our technology help us to grow faster with the customers we already have and how we use our existing technology to bring on new customers and applications. After that, we will have an outlook and summary. So again, welcome, everyone. I am Jonas Nilsson. And as I said, I will talk about 3 main things. We have proven technology and established operations in Europe and China. We have a strong position in the fuel cell and electrolyzer markets, and we are now taking a step into the power generation market. And as I said before, this presentation is made in connection with our ongoing rights issue. So please make sure to read the important information included in the presentation materials. I have now been at Impact Coatings for 2 years. And the thing that attracted me when starting was not the green transition or the hydrogen. It was the opportunity to grow a business in an emerging market. In 2024, we saw a substantial increase in sales. '25 has been challenging when it comes to machine sales, but we see growth in coatings services. In order to increase the business, we are broadening the scope into the power generation market, which is very interesting. We are a material science company, and we have the expertise to innovate. But for innovations to be successful, there must be a problem to solve. There must be a need. So to set the scene for today, I I'll start with some reflections from an article in Dagens Industri a couple of days ago. So why do we need advanced coatings? Well, according to Dagens Industri, the planned data center in Strängnäs will consume 4x more power than Uppsala, 750 megawatts. It takes a long time to build new power lines, longer than building the data center itself. In the article, there was no solution presented. It was just a problem. The solution is high-efficiency SOFC solid oxide fuel cells, which convert natural gas to electricity, which can be used to power a data center. And by using containerized SOFC power plants, which are easy and fast to deploy, this can be done in time. However, SOFC stacks, they operate at high temperature and contain a lot of stainless steel plates called interconnects. Stainless steel at high temperature, it evaporates chromium and chromium will kill the SOFC stack. So to avoid chromium evaporation, the stainless-steel interconnect plates need coating. We provide coating solutions, machines and services for coating of stainless-steel interconnect plates. We are not part of this project in Strängnäs. It's just an example to give you a taste what we're going to talk about today. So as you see on the screen now, this is why we need advanced coatings. But the question could be, does it really work? So to give the proportions, 750 megawatts is a lot. It's more than Öresundsverket in Malmö, which is a natural gas-fired power plant of 450 megawatts. A containerized SOFC solution would need the space of 10 soccer fields, but would produce more power than Öresundsverket. So it's a lot of SOFC stacks and a lot of coating, but it's not unrealistic. To produce those coatings, you need 8 machines and 1 year. That is definitely doable. So what about the market? According to calculations from Ceres Power in the U.K., the need in 2030 will be 22 gigawatts of SOFC power plants. Compared to the planned data center in Strängnäs, that is not an enormous amount. And with somewhat 230 machines, you can coat all the needed interconnects. So if you have those machines installed in 4 years from now, you can cover the world market need for coating of stainless-steel interconnects. The emerging market for SOFC systems is commercially driven, and it's expected to grow faster than green hydrogen applications. We do have a footprint in the green hydrogen market, and we are targeting the SOFC market. So with that introduction, we jump into the investor presentation. So here's the agenda of our investor presentation. The slide deck can also be found on our web page. I will not go through every slide in detail, so please visit our web page for the full deck. We will save the investment case and outlook until after our guests have presented, and we will end with a Q&A. But please send in your questions during presentations. Impact Coatings is an advanced material science company specialized in coating using PVD technology. PVD stands for physical vapor deposition. I will come back to that later. We address material challenges found, for example, in the energy sector. We deliver complete solutions. That means both advanced coatings and machines for industrial production. And the delivery model is flexible. We both sell machines and offer coating as a service. This -- the delivery model, this is one of our unique selling points. The market we target that are several growth markets, Energy, Automotive, Electronics and Luxury Goods. Focus is on energy. And the energy segment contains both green hydrogen and also the new area of power to data centers. We have operations here in Linköping and Shanghai and sales offices in Korea, Germany and the United States. In Linköping, we manufacture machines and provide coating as a service. In Shanghai, we have volume production with coating as a service. In the recent years, China has been a large market for us. If we include the deliveries from Sweden, it represents about 70% to 80% of our total revenue in the past few years. If we look at the revenue split on this slide, machine sales has been challenging in 2025. However, we are expanding in Coating Services. And based on forecast from customers, we do expect to expand more in Coating Services during next year. Going back to machine sales, we assess that in 2026, we will have machine sales across all 4 areas: Energy, Automotive, Electronics and Luxury Goods. And this assessment is based upon our current sales pipeline. So we talked about this in the introduction, mainly it's about applying thin layers of advanced materials on top of cheaper materials to achieve higher performance at a lower cost. For example, applying a thin ceramic coating on stainless steel to get excellent electrical performance, corrosion resistance and heat tolerance using a low-cost base material. So PVD, it's a horizontal technology that can be applied across many market verticals. Our machines, which you see in the center, they are optimized for advanced multilayer coatings on flat objects. We have selected market verticals with a good product market fit. So we are active in Energy, Automotive, Electronics and Luxury Goods. The key area for us is energy. And then we are talking about solid oxide fuel cells, PEM fuel cells and PEM electrolyzers. So energy isn't about hydrogen. It's about energy security and reliable power supply, sometimes with the additional benefit of a low CO2 footprint. And to repeat for new listeners, an electrolyzer converts electricity into hydrogen and a fuel cell converts hydrogen into electricity. All contain flat components like the ones that you see to the left on the slide, and our machines are perfect for coating flat objects. So our solutions are used for stationary power generation, for example, natural gas-powered SOFC fuel cells. This is a new and very exciting area driven by the development of data centers. I believe that this will be our biggest revenue area in just a few years. Heavy vehicles powered by fuel cells. We have customers and volume production in China. There are several thousand of heavy trucks delivered with our coatings in the fuel cells. And with the Chinese Roadmap 3.0 of new energy vehicles, we expect this number to grow. We also work with customers in aviation, where hydrogen and fuel cells are attractive because they are lightweight compared to batteries. Looking at hydrogen production, electrolyzers produce hydrogen for storage and transport to be used when and where energy is needed. We are a leading supplier of coating solutions in this area and have ongoing volume production. We also work with a new and very advanced coating area called iridium oxide. This has the potential to increase revenue on existing customers. For all those segments, our coatings are used for critical components in these systems. And to a large extent, it is the coating that defines the performance of the complete system. So talking about hydrogen, we do have to admit that hydrogen for passenger vehicles has not turned out as many had hoped for, including what we had hoped for. So we have adapted. We have tuned our coatings more towards commercial vehicles, trucks and buses. And there, we have customers and ongoing production. We also adapt and find new applications or maybe I should say adjacent applications with big commercial drive and SOFC is one such. We have been working with SOFC at a low intensity for several years, but now it's time to scale up. SOFC that stands for solid oxide fuel cell, which is high-efficiency stationary fuel cells that can be powered by natural gas, converting natural gas into electricity. And the rapid growth of AI data centers, as we talked about in the beginning, requires a lot of energy, and this has accelerated the development in the field of SOFC. On the right, you see Doosan's factory in Korea, but other major players like Bloom Energy in the United States and Delta Electronics in Taiwan are also investing heavily. They do not talk about the green transition in traditional terms. They talk about commercial projects and real business opportunities. Impact Coatings is currently working with Ceres, one of the leading technology players in the SOFC industry. Ceres, they licenses their technology to Doosan in Korea, Delta Electronics in Taiwan and Weichai in China. They are all major global companies. We cannot say exactly how large this market opportunity will be, but the top-down analysis indicates several hundred machines in just a few years. And if we look also at the bottom-up analysis from customer contacts we have, that is quite interesting. So looking at the investment case, we have proven technology and established Coating Service Centers in Europe and China. We have strong presence in the fuel cell and electrolyzer markets and great interest in SOFC, which we strongly believe in. We have a flexible business model that makes it easy for customers to buy, and this is a unique selling point. During the year, we have done significant cost savings and efficiency improvements. This has lowered the breakeven point. And with today's cost level and the sales mix of 2024, we would reach positive EBITDA. We also have strong strategic partners and reference customers. So now we are conducting a Rights Issue of SEK 87.5 million. It will be used to expand what we are already doing and scale up, and this means especially within the SOFC sector. So SOFC is expected to be our future growth engine. We're also going to find new applications for existing technology, reduce production costs for our machines and strengthen working capital. So we have now gone through an introduction to Impact Coatings. Let us take a deeper look at a few areas. The first area we will take a deeper look in is SOFC. This is so interesting, so it has got its own section.
Jonas Nilsson
ExecutivesBut before that, some questions we have got. So one question I can see here is, you talk a lot about SOFC, but what about PEM? And -- it's not that we are going to stop doing PEM. Some years ago, we were like a PEM-only company. We're not a PEM-only company anymore. PEM is important for us, but we believe that SOFC will be the growth engine for the coming years in the sort of near to mid-future. Long term, we still believe in PEM, and we're going to continue to work with PEM.
Jonas Nilsson
ExecutivesSo let's go to next section, SOFC. So the commercial weakness for green hydrogen in mobility applications, especially passenger cars has affected both Impact Coatings and our global peers negatively. You can clearly see this in stock prices, including our own, but we adapt to the market, and we are now shifting our focus to where the opportunities are strongest, where there is growth, there is capital and there is real business for our customers. Fortunately, our work with hydrogen is also highly relevant in SOFC. So looking at different regions, the green hydrogen market and fuel cell markets has been dependent on subsidies. In U.S., production of green hydrogen has been subsidized. And in China, consumption of hydrogen regardless of color has been subsidized. That is 2 different strategies, but both driven by governmental support. In the U.S., we saw a slowdown already in the end of '23 of the green hydrogen market. With green hydrogen, we mean PEM water electrolysis. This market slowdown has been much longer than we expected. And even though it's now picking up, it is still slower than what we believed. But long-term development of the green hydrogen market, we still believe in. But for us as a company, we need additional legs to support us. The Chinese fuel cell market gave us revenues in '24 and continue to give us revenues. We have actually established ourselves as one of the market leaders in this market. This is, of course, good, but it's not enough. And with the upcoming 5-year plan with the Roadmap 3.0, we believe in long-term development, but we still need additional legs to support us. So therefore, there is now a big strategic shift in our company, and there's a big strategic shift in the power market. With the increasing number of data centers, the need for power is becoming huge. And the need for power is much bigger than our current energy systems can sustain. And the time to get grid connection is long. Fortunately, we have a solution for this, which has now been reaching commercial scale. And at Impact Coatings, we are right in the sweet spot for this. So with SOFC, the time to power will be much quicker than with any other solution. And also the efficiency is much better. So we will, of course, continue with our current hydrogen customers, and we will be there when the market picks up. We do have a great offering for the hydrogen market, but we don't want to be financially dependent on the hydrogen market. Therefore, we will drive revenue from the power to data centers market. So we started talking more actively about SOFC solid oxide fuel cells about 6 months ago, but we have been researching and developing in this area on a smaller scale for -- actually for several years. In early '25, we began to see growing customer interest, clear product market fit and a need to broaden our offering beyond PEM technology. Today, we see major players moving forward. We are talking about companies like Bloom Energy, Ceres Power, Doosan and Delta Electronics. Those companies are not talking about the green transition in traditional terms. They are talking about commercial projects and real business opportunities. And their share prices look strong, at least over the past 6 months. These companies describe a rapidly growing market driven by a couple of strong trends. First, the growth of AI data center. Secondly, the push for energy independence that in a world where energy import is both risky and expensive. And we also see some niche applications like powering cruise ships. Most commercial SOFC system today run on natural gas, but they are hydrogen-ready. For our coatings, the fuel source matters little. Hydrogen is the active ingredient in power generation process regardless of whether it's supplied directly or extracted from natural gas. Going back to the market, one example to illustrate the market. Bloom Energy recently entered a partnership with Oracle to install SOFC systems at selected Oracle Cloud Infrastructure data centers in U.S. The problem with data centers is that it takes 3 to 4 years to connect them to an electrical grid with enough capacity. So SOFC technology enables local power generation using natural gas or pure hydrogen. We are not involved in this specific Bloom, Oracle project, but it clearly shows the direction the market is moving. So what problem are we actually solving for our customers? A typical SOFC power unit is about the size of a 40-foot container. And at the center are the SOFC stacks surrounded by reformers, heat exchanges, after burners, compressors, cooling systems, power electronics and more. And the lifetime of the stack depends largely on the quality of the coatings. The stack wears out faster than the rest of the system, making it a replaceable component similar to brake pads in a car. So by delivering high-quality advanced coatings, we help extend lifetime and improve performance of the entire stack. So coating quality is not just a technical detail. It's critical to the entire SOFC business case. And commercially, there are 3 big global ecosystems for SOFC, Bloom Energy in the United States, Ceres in U.K. with its licensees in Asia and HD Hydrogen in Korea with subsidiaries and investments in Finland. We are working with Ceres in the U.K., one of the leading players in the market, which also give us access to their licensees. We're also working with HD Hydrogen. HD Hydrogen is a spin-off from HD KSOE, that is HD Korea Shipbuilding and Offshore Engineering. And HD Hydrogen is now operating under the Energy Business Division of HD Hyundai. HD Hydrogen plan to establish manufacturing capabilities in the second half of 2026 with high production capacity of SOFC systems. As I said earlier, it's too early to forecast service or machine revenues, but this is our top product development priority today. So why expand into new areas and why do new things? Well, in fact, this is not really new. SOFC is a natural step. In terms of product market fit, it's a perfect match. SOFC components are flat plates, and we are specialists in 2D objects. They require advanced multilayer coatings on both sides with different coatings per site. And the more advanced requirements, the stronger the need for impact coatings. The plates have exactly the right dimensions for our IC500 and IC2000 machines, meaning we do not need to invest in machine development. And the market is dynamic and growing, which fits our business model perfectly. We support customers from prototype stage through coating services and all the way to owning their own machines as volume grows. Another important aspect of the SOFC market is that each system requires more coated plates than a PEM fuel cell system. Higher volumes means higher revenue, whether it's through coating services or through machine sales. So the SOFC part is one of the most interesting parts of today's presentation, and I urge you to stay and listen to Caroline Hargrove from Ceres, who will present later. But now we will see if there are any questions or if we should continue with the company overview. I think we do not have any questions. So we continue with the company overview. So we are primarily a machine manufacturer, and we produce our machines in Sweden. We have Coating Service Centers in Linköping in Sweden and in Shanghai, China. We also have sales offices in the U.S.A., in Germany and in Korea. Our application areas are global, but the market demand and market penetration is different for the different areas, as you can see on the left of this slide. Something about the technology. PVD stands for physical vapor deposition. You place a metal disk called the target inside a vacuum chamber together with the object you want to coat. A plasma is ignited. Metal from the target is vaporized and condenses onto the surface of the object. And by adding different gases, you can create new advanced materials, for example, ceramic coatings. Our machines have 3 separate vacuum chambers arranged in a circle around a single turbo vacuum pump. This enables advanced multilayer coatings needed in the application areas we serve. The circular design also leads to low cycle time, so it's suitable for high-volume production. It leads to easy integration with automation solutions and robots. And the machines, they have a few moving parts, which increases reliability. This is very important for us when serving customers all over the world. So the machines, they are designed for flat components and have great benefits for flat components. This allows us to select market verticals where our technology is a very good fit. Looking at our competitors, they tend to be either larger and more expensive or smaller and slower. So our headquarters is located in Linköping. In our new factory in Linköping, we have capacity of manufacturing 1 machine per month, and we can upgrade that to 2 machines per month. In both Linköping and Shanghai, we operate Coating Service Centers. There, we use our own machines to coat components for our customers. In Linköping, we mainly handle customer samples and volume production of electrolyzer components for -- both for the European and American markets. The orders that we announced from the customer -- North American customer, the orders that exceeded USD 1 million will be coated by the machine you see on the picture there. And tomorrow, you are all invited to our factory tour. In Shanghai, we do fuel cell coatings in high volume. Already in September, we exceeded the total annual volume for 2024. Today, we run shifts in the factory. But if needed, we can, of course, increase capacity by adding more machines. We are a machine manufacturer. As you can see on the slide here to the left, the factory uses robots to increase both capacity and increase quality. So we have talked about the fact that we manufacture and sell machines and that we also sell coating services. So our delivery model makes it easy for customers to buy from us. This model is not very common in the industry. So it can be seen as a unique selling point. We are primarily a machine supplier, but we offer coating as a service to lower the threshold for starting. And we also offer managed services, meaning we operate the machine on behalf of the customer. Customers can move from samples and R&D through coating services and managed services all the way to full production in their own facility using the same type of machine. And the whole idea behind our delivery model is to make it easy for the customer to buy. So let's have a look at the sales figures, starting with Coating Services. In '22 and '23, coating services were driven mainly by North America. In '24, revenues were driven mainly by China. This year, we signed a volume agreement with a European electrolyzer supplier, but most of the volume has come from FTXT in China, a subsidiary of Great Wall Motors, one of the major car manufacturers. In Q3 this year, our big North American customer, which was an important electrolyzer customer for us earlier, has returned and continued to place orders. Looking at machine sales, machine sales vary a lot from quarter-to-quarter. In '24, machine sales was driven by Chinese fuel cell market with orders from 3 customers, 2 of whom were recurring machine customers. This year has been challenging when it comes to machine sales, but we expect to sell machines next year in all areas that we are active, that is Energy, Automotive, Electronics and Luxury Goods. A good example of a machine customer from last year is Feintool, a Swiss company skilled in metal forming with a factory in China. They have decided to enter the fuel cell market and supply formed and coated plates for fuel cells. And this is what it looks like inside the Feintool factory. Note our machine, you can see it on the right side and again, behind the inspection equipment. On the left, you see a picture of the fuel cell value chain in China. At the top are the stack manufacturers, in the middle are the plate manufacturers and at the bottom are companies like us supplying machines and coating services. So I will explain the push-pull on the next slide. The push-pull strategy has been very successful for us. So let's start at the beginning of the customer journey. It starts with discussions with the end customer. The end customer verifies and validates the technology. Then the end customer makes a decision, sometimes called make or buy. They may choose to do coating in-house, bottom right, and then they buy a machine from us. They may choose to purchase coating services from us, of course, or they go to their supplier and say they want to buy coated plates. In this way, they create a pool, and we can either sell a machine or sell coating services to their supplier. So this is one of the advantages of a flexible business model. We are included regardless of how the end customer wants to buy. And also many customers, they require a second source. We can be present in both supply chains, both the primary and the secondary. So here are some examples of customers and partners. They are all large companies and leaders in their respective segments. So now let's go through the financial. More information about the financials can also be found in our quarterly reports.
Jonas Nilsson
ExecutivesAnd let's see if we have some questions first. How important is the coating for SOFCs? Well, if you don't have coatings -- it's Andreas who asked this question. If you don't have coating on the interconnects, the interconnects will start to evaporate metal and that metal will kill the stack. So the coating is essential for the longevity, for the long-term durability of the stack. So the coating is essential for the economics of a complete SOFC system because the stack is a replaceable component. And if you increase the lifetime of the stack, you decrease the cost of the system.
Jonas Nilsson
ExecutivesSo with that, we go to the financial update. So in both '23 and '24, we increased our revenue. We focus strongly on sales and deliveries, and we saw rolling 12 months net sales increase. You can see this in the upper graph. This year, we have seen a negative overall growth due to system sales being challenging. At the same time, services have increased, which you see in the bottom graph. Looking at Coating Services, we see strong sales in Coating Services this year. We run full production in China with double production volumes compared to '24, especially during the second half of '25, we have a strong order intake also from North America and Europe. Net sales for the first 3 quarters was SEK 20.6 million, and we ended Q3 with a SEK 10.5 million order backlog. And Coating Services order intake continues to be strong in Q4, including from our large North American electrolysis customer. Meanwhile, system sales has been challenging this year. Customers have postponed capital investments, mainly due to external factors like global uncertainties. But there is continued interest in our products. We do not see that we lose orders to competitors. There is also global momentum now. We see policy signals from U.S. and China that reignite industrial activity. You will hear more about this in our presentations later from China and North America. So our outlook for '26. We have overall strong Coating Services and many ongoing sampling activities with customers. So the company expects coating services net sales in '26 to exceed that of '25. And looking at the machine sales pipeline and global momentum, the company expects to achieve system sales in each of its 4 major markets during 2026. So in each of Energy, Automotive, Electronics and Luxury Goods. And on top of that, we have our SOFC activities. So during '25, we have performed significant cost savings and efficiency measures. So first, we don't have any near-term investment needs. We have a strong factory in Linköping and a strong factory in Shanghai. We have reduced staff, mainly in Sweden and implemented additional savings during Q4, which will take effect in Q1. We are redesigning our purchasing function with the goal of reducing COGS, and we are talking about measures that together represent much more than 15%. We have taken actions to reduce inventory, and we continue to do so. And the purpose of all these measures is to reach breakeven with fewer machines. So with the savings that we have already completed, we will reach positive EBITDA with the same sales level as in '24. And in '24, we achieved that level starting with an almost empty order book. So that was the financial update. Now let's look at case studies or if we have any questions. No questions for now. We have 6 different cases to show how we work with our customers. I will not go through them all. I will just show one to you. So one of our biggest machine customers in number of installed systems, both historically and in recent years is the Danish luxury eyewear manufacturer, Lindberg. It's today part of the Kering Group. And this is an endorsement from Lindberg and their Head of Coating, Niels Mikkelsen. So let's have a look at the market. PVD is a broad technology that can be used in many industry segments. We have chosen market verticals where our machines fit well and where advanced functional multilayer coatings are needed. We are active in all 4 business segments, Energy, Automotive, Electronics and Luxury Goods. And as I said before, we expect machine orders in all segments during next year. If we look at the segments, a few examples. In energy, we work with components for electrolyzers and fuel cells, that's flat parts that need advanced coatings with ceramics and precious metals. And within Energy, we also have our new area, SOFC, that we have talked a lot about today. Automotive, many of you drive cars with emblems or decorative parts that have been made by machines we have delivered. In Electronics, for example, radar antennas, they are often made of plastic coated with metal. Our technology enables adhesion, solubility and antenna performance. And we are also active in Luxury Goods like eyewear, as you saw on the previous slide. So in all these market segments, we have a strong product market fit. And the lower part of the slide shows examples of specific industrial projects. We continue to develop our existing verticals, Energy, Automotive, Electronics and Luxury Goods. And this includes solid oxide fuel cells. It also includes catalytic coatings such as iridium oxide. We are also actively exploring new markets and applications, for example, semiconductors, heat exchangers and defense. If you look at heat exchangers, they are flat components. So it's a good match for our technology. In the defense sector, we are, for example, looking at methanol-powered fuel cells for soldiers and electromagnetic shieldings for military drones. But as I said before, SOFC is our main focus new area.
Jonas Nilsson
ExecutivesSo let's see if we have any more questions. A question from [ Jorn ]. How do you see your patent portfolio and the risk of competition when they expire? Well, we deliver solutions to our customers. We deliver coatings, we deliver expertise and we deliver machines. So our offering is not heavily dependent on patents. Our offering is much more dependent on our expertise, experience and know-how. So regardless of other patents, if they are active or if they expire, we will be a relevant supplier to the customers. Let's see if we have any more questions. No, no more questions right now.
Jonas Nilsson
ExecutivesSo with this, I would like to introduce our next speakers. The first one is Yaowen Wang, our Regional President in China. The second one is an external guest from U.K., Caroline Hargrove. She's the CTO of Ceres, one of the big players in the SOFC market. Then Rob Mamazza, our Regional President in North America, will follow and give an update of the North American market. And finally, Kristian Hillgren, our CTO, will talk about how our technology help us grow faster with the customers we already have and how we use our existing technology to bring on new customers and applications. And after that, we will be back and summarize. So with that, I would like to introduce Yaowen Wang, our Regional President in China. The floor is yours.
Yaowen Wang
ExecutivesThank you, Jonas. Good morning. I'm Yaowen, Regional President at Impact Coatings China. As Jonas said, we have achieved a significant growth over the past couple of years in China. Our turnover for the rolling 12 months by end of the third quarter in China has reached SEK 50 million. And today, I'm happy to share more about what great things we have been doing and the great potential in front of us. Before my presentation, firstly, I want to take you to a facility tour through a video to our Coating Service Center in Shanghai. What you are going to see in us is one of its kind PVD coating production line for fuel cell plate that can be operated with full automation and traceability of every single plate. I think it will work as a good starter. Please, there we go. [Presentation]
Yaowen Wang
ExecutivesOkay. Welcome back. As you have seen, our production is carried out in a clean room, handled with robot, equipped with end-to-end quality inspection and integrated into our mass system. We are demonstrating to our customers that our lean production concept can ensure the product quality and scale up to big volume. It's a unique feature and a core advantage for which reason our solution is selected by the customer, such as Epson. Epson Group is a Singaporean public company. If you follow -- have been following us, you probably have heard their name in several cases. They are specialized in precious metal components for electronics and automotive. We have -- they have 2 of our IC2000 PVD system. And what they have built is similar to what you have seen, but extends to the whole process from coil steel to complete plate fully automated. Now since the establishment of our Chinese entity in 2022, we have successfully established ourselves in the market as a reliable full solution supplier of PVD fuel cell coatings. We have built a professional team that offers localized services covering the entire sales cycle. Next slide. The investment into our China Coating Service Center has generated significant results. We anticipate delivering over 500,000 plates this year, a volume that will double that of 2024. As I mentioned in the beginning, during the rolling 12 months until Q3, our Chinese entity has generated about SEK 50 million revenue. As you know, we are not only providing services, but also PVD system. If combining with the volume that our PVD system customers have also delivered, our impact coating ecosystem will make up for approximately 50% market share. And furthermore, our Coating Services business has also brought us closer to the end customers, the fuel cell engine producers. And these customers are the ones who determine what coating technologies will be used in the final product. Such strategic positioning forms a key part of our push and pull market strategy, enabling us to better meet market demands and proactively driving more sales. Next, I want to show some remarks from our distinguished customer, Will Zhang, the Chairman of FTXT, as an excellent case that demonstrates our solid position in the supply chain and the close relationship with end customers. FTXT is a leading hydrogen power system supplier in China. And this year alone, FTXT has delivered over 1,000 fuel cell electric vehicles in China with our coating. I will pause here for a minute so you can read his quote. Okay. Last year, our 2 companies signed a 3-year joint development agreement focused on developing new cost and durable fuel cell coatings and ultimately demonstrating the coating durability in the real life. I strongly believe that we are growing into a true industry leader by working with those remarkable customers like FTXT, not only shaping the market, but also part of the policymaking process. As you may know that the government policies play a vital role in China economy. And next slide, I would like to share some news about the policies around hydrogen. Well, in the rest of the world, the hydrogen economy seems still in a high headwind, but China is already gaining a first-mover advantage. By the end of 2024, the cumulative commissioned capacity of renewable hydrogen production projects worldwide had existed 250,000 metric tonnes per year with China accounting for over 50% of this total. And recently, a few top-level policy announcement underline the position of hydrogen in the Chinese economy for the future. The recommendation for the 5th Five-Year Plan (sic) [ 15th Five-Year Plan ] covering the 5 years from 2026 released by the Central Committee elevates hydrogen energy to 1 of the 6 strategic future industries. In alignment with the top-level plan, the technology road map of Energy-Saving and the New Energy Vehicle 3.0 released by the China Society of Automotive Engineers set a specific target, 4 million to 8 million units of fuel cell electric vehicles by 2040. As I proudly said previously, we are in a strong position in China market and grasp the growth potential. Finally, I would like to circle back to the topic Jonas has previously discussed, solid oxide, and talk about why China matters and the great potential out there. Solid oxide has got significant attention as a fast way of power deployment with flexible fuel selection and possibly zero emission that are crucial for addressing the power deficit driven by the rapidly surge in AI computing demand. China, with no doubt, is a major player in AI. According to the data published by the authority, China counts 32% of global computing power and capping the 30% annual growth rate in the past 5 years. Industry leaders like Jensen Huang from NVIDIA even anticipate that China computing power will surpass other nations fueled by low energy costs and favorable regulatory environment. This trend unlocks tremendous potential for solid oxide among other fuel cell technologies, especially when integrated with renewable power and electricity storage. The ambition of China is not only to develop AI, but in a green and sustainable manner. For instance, it sets the regulation on the percentage of green electricity and energy efficiency for data centers. Solid oxide is an excellent fit to fuel AI growth in green manners. Furthermore, China has distinguished advantage for solid oxide development and has a robust industrial foundation and holds abundant reserves of rare earth metal, which are the key material for solid oxide cell manufacturing. Here, I just provide 2 examples from the supply chain. One is Weichai, who recently signed a manufacturing license with Ceres Power to produce solid oxide fuel cells. The other is Three-Circle Group, who is the supplier of key ceramic components to the top SOFC manufacturer in the United States of America. We at Impact Coatings are ready to embrace this tremendous business potential with years' experience and expertise in solid oxide PVD coating. We can already provide coating service locally for fuel cell -- for solid oxide fuel cell in a small scale, and we are ready to ramp up as the market comes. Thank you.
Jonas Nilsson
ExecutivesThank you, Yaowen. Very interesting to hear. And now I want to direct a special welcome to our external guests, Caroline Hargrove, who is the CTO of Ceres in U.K. And before Caroline starts her presentation, we will just have a short little break. So stay tuned. [Break]
Caroline Hargrove
AttendeesHello, everyone. My name is Caroline Hargrove. As Jonas introduced me, I'm the CTO at Ceres. We are a solid oxide fuel cell provider, as you just heard. And my short presentation today will tell you a little bit about our technology and the market we see in data center power globally. Just a quick intro on Ceres as a company, we have -- we're only doing solid oxide technology. We spun out of Imperial College more than 20 years ago, and our technology works both in power and in green hydrogen. We have unique IP. We're metal supported solid oxide. But what is more unique is that we have a licensing model. And that means that we -- although we have a small manufacturing capability here in the U.K., this is not our business. Our business is to license the technology at cell and stack level for other big corporates to scale -- build the factories and scale and sell the products. So as I was mentioning, the -- our technology works both as a fuel cell and as an electrolyzer, the exact same technology works in both directions. And it therefore applies to many different applications depending on the system that you build around it. But today, I wanted to mainly concentrate on the AI and data center side. But of course, the same systems will apply to commercial and industrial power. Shipping is slightly different in that, it does need to be robust, but this technology also is robust, but that's a longer term. The very short term is definitely the AI and data centers. As I was explaining, our technology is -- involves cells and stacks, and that's what we license, the technology of how you make and industrialize the cells and stacks. The systems, we make some that are mainly demonstrators and then our partners build systems like you can see there, both in power and in hydrogen. But if you look at the map of where our partners are, the manufacturing partners, they're mainly all in Asia. And you can see that Doosan, which is in Korea, they are our first partners with a manufacturing plant that is now commissioned. Delta is in Taiwan. They are still building their plant. They have a dual license in FC and EC. DENSO have gone into EC and that's electrolysis and they're in Japan. Weichai, which you just briefly saw is our partner in China. And we also have a partner in India, Thermax, and they are system license. So they will buy stacks from one of the above to build into systems at the moment for electrolysis and green hydrogen. And we also have a partner in Shell. Shell, we have a demonstrator, I'll show you in a minute that is currently running at Shell. But what is unique about our technology and how -- what the link with Impact coating is that our technology is metal supported on a stainless-steel substrate. And that means that we apply our anode, our electrolyte and cathode on top of a stainless-steel substrate that sees the fuel going in and the air on the other side and then the current collectors coming on for the electricity produce. And in between each, there is an interconnect and that means we can stack all those cells into one big stack. Those need to last for years. And for us to do that, those -- both the interconnect and all our cell has to be good against poisons, but especially the interconnect because it is exposed to steam and oxygen and so on. And therefore, it's prone to corroding. And as you can see because it's also a stamp interconnect, we -- for us, the quality of the coating is very important because it decides on the lifetime of that part, which is one of our critical parts because we've got a lot of them in our spec. And this is where we have worked with impact coating and seeing how we can do effective and very good at preventing corrosion and keeping also what is a fuel cell poison like chrome inside and on the steel and not diffusing into the cell. So those things are very important. But as I was mentioning, we work into an environment where we are only licensing the technology. So what is important is that we test what works and develop techniques that work. And then it's between our supply chain and our partners who make the deals for commercialization. So for example, this is the factory at Doosan. So it's a 50-megawatt factory that have opened, and they are now -- have started production. And it just shows you the scale of automation. We don't have that here in the U.K. Our small factory is very manual handling and so on. This is a fully automated process. And they also build systems that are then going to be the ones that are put for data centers and for other applications that are stationary power. Weichai have started building systems already, and we've signed a manufacturing license as well, and they will be, I'm sure, going very quickly at building their factory for that as well. This is a quick view of where Delta have purchased their land for their factory in Taiwan. So they are investing heavily in SOFC, again, for -- mainly for producing stationary power in data centers. And this is just a quick view of what a system looks like. This one is in electrolysis mode, but this is the one that is running at in Bangalore at Shell. But in terms of SOFC market, this is -- just wanted to give you an overview that this is based on Bloomberg New Energy numbers. But this is only SOFC, so it's only the solid oxide fuel cell power numbers and just gives you a view that there is a -- to 2030, which is around the corner, do you see 22 gigawatts of market opportunity in SOFC and of which half is in data centers. This is their numbers. We don't sell directly to customers, but we know that from our partners, it would be at least 50%, if not more, of the market that they want to go after is data center. And part of that and where the market is favorable to this is, of course, Far East, as you could expect, but also a lot in America because the grid is actually overwhelmed with the demand. And a lot of the time, those fuel cells, we're talking about time to power. It costs a lot of money to build an infrastructure. If you can arrive and put something behind or on the current grid or behind the grid so that you power the data centers immediately, that gets you there much quicker. And these days, it's at least 5 years we hear often even more so to have a gas turbine. The lead time is really high because the demand is so high. So hence, we feel that there is a sweet spot now of data centers. And as I was saying, the combined cycle gas turbine is up to 7 years, possibly. We hear about small nuclear reactors, but this is -- I believe it's at least 10 years away for them to provide this power. But we also need those high-voltage connection if you're going to make centralized -- more centralized power. So it is -- this is a long-term play. And why is SOFC good at this is the efficiency is really good. A gas turbine is 35% to maybe 45%, that sort of thing, maybe a little bit higher than this. And SOFC will go up to 60%. And if you're using industrial power and can use the heat and do a combined heat and power, that efficiency goes up, too. So it is quite compelling, and that's why our partners really like this kind of technology and have taken licenses. I was saying time to power, really important. The resiliency often people don't realize, but in a -- this is an electrochemical system. There's no moving parts. And it's good at running baseload. So for data center, you can do that. But it also has -- it's -- although it's a high temperature fuel cell, it's got a high thermal mass. So you can easily load, vary based on what a data center demand is, which is very good. There's low noise. There's no particulate emissions. So no NOx , no SOx. Yes, if you put natural gas in it, it will be producing some CO2, but 1/3 less than if you were burning the CO2 with no NOx, no SOx, as I said. And you are ready to be to collect the CO2 as well because it's a much more concentrated CO2 emission. So you can much more easily capture it. As I said, the fuel efficiency is high. It's at least 60% and much higher if you needed to -- could use the heat. And it's -- as I said, it works with natural gas, but it obviously works on hydrogen. So if you have -- if you make this kind of investment, you will be ready for hydrogen where hydrogen is available as well. So the idea, all our partners are building these in modular systems that will go from megawatts to gigawatts, but that's up to our partners. And in the U.S., they've even added some tax credits for -- which is 30% on the fuel cells. And the big player there is Bloom, and Bloom Energy has -- their valuation has gone up enormously this year because they've signed quite a few data center deals and they benefit on top of it for investment tax credit. And when you're talking about data center and the need for resiliency, it's -- when you have smaller pieces like stacks for fuel cells, you can provide resiliency at a lower cost. So actually, despite the fact that people are paying a premium at the moment for power, it is actually very cost efficient. Just wanted to put one slide from one of our partners, Delta, to just show that's how they sell this because we don't sell direct to customers. Our partner, Delta, for example, they do. And another big thing for them, so they're looking at where the -- a number of areas where the systems apply. So where do you get your input gas? So either hydrogen or natural gas, either from a grid or from liquid natural gas. But the other thing that is interesting for them is that fuel cells provide DC power. And DC power, they are linking that directly to the need for data centers, which is also DC power. So they are -- and their course is electronics. So they see solid oxide fuel cells as also very good at improving the efficiency, the electrical efficiency and reduce the complexity of providing the input to the data centers if they are co-located. So -- and as you see at the top, there's also potential for carbon capture. At the moment, we know it's possible. It's not top of the agenda, unfortunately, for most people, but it is absolutely possible and much more cost effective with this type of technology. I just wanted to leave you with just an equivalent electrolysis market. I know electrolysis is a lot less in vogue at the moment, and it's a much later market. But I'm just mentioning that Bloomberg still see this as a big market, but much later in the 2040s, but a much bigger market for SOFC. So I just wanted to mention that briefly so that it's not -- our technology does work in both directions. And there are some areas in the world where it does make sense to already do green hydrogen. So that's why some of our partners are interested. And showed that this is a system that DENSO already built and it's running now with our stacks, and it's JERA. So as a demonstration for making hydrogen. So it is happening. It is also a possibility with our systems. So this is all I wanted to bring forward. I know I've told Jonas, if you have questions, I'm happy to answer them in writing. It's not easy for me to stay on for your whole presentation, but I'm happy to get back to anybody with questions.
Jonas Nilsson
ExecutivesThank you, Caroline. Thank you very much for your participation here. And for me, it was very interesting to hear how you describe coatings and also how you describe the importance of coatings in your system. Thank you very much. And now we will have a short pause. And after that pause, we will listen to Rob Mamazza, who will give his view on the North American market. So stay tuned. [Break]
Robert Mamazza
ExecutivesPerfect. Okay. So first slide. Good. So my name is Robert Mamazza. I'm responsible for North America. I'd like to take a little time to give a brief history update where we are right now and what we see for the next 3 years. So for Impact Coatings, North America means Canada and the United States. In this area, the main drivers for us are water electrolysis. So we do the coatings for the anode pack separator plates, PTLs. So this is the lion's share, and most of it is PEM. However, in this region, we are seeing an increase in inquiries in some of our activities with solid oxide technologies and AEM. So AEM is anode (sic) [ anion ] membrane exchange. So this is kind of like PEM, but it moves a different charge. Otherwise, it's quite similar. And solid oxide is like solid oxide fuel cells, but in this case, it's solid oxide water electrolysis. So we also do some fuel cells, but it's a much lower level. So we've submitted coatings. We have some qualified coatings, but nothing commercially significant. And where we do have customers that do both, where the customers do water electrolysis and fuel cells, we have seen them divert resources from fuel cells to water electrolysis. So it's an interesting phenomenon. And in some cases, we've noticed that the fuel cell activities have been pushed offshore, specifically to China, and we're able to be part of the handoff to our Chinese colleagues over there. So it was a business that we started here wasn't lost because we were able to catch it on the other side. So to diversify the region and move a little bit outside of hydrogen, we have some -- we've been looking at other things as well. And to date, the only commercial traction we have is within MedTech, but we're constantly trying to push this to give the stool an additional leg, so to speak. Next slide, please. So just a little bit in terms of in the news type stuff. So here, we have one of our own press releases. So to date, this year, mostly in the second half of the year, our new orders from our main customer that we have in this region so far have superseded USD 1 million. So this is a very exciting trend, and we expect this to continue throughout the rest of this year and through next year as well. You also see here some prominent names are also investing in the region between Canada and the states. And you see Cummins here also having some cross-border activities. So Cummins in Canada, delivering some PEM technologies to a power generation facility in Niagara, New York, where the Niagara hydroelectric will be supplying the power to generate the green hydrogen. So there are some big names at play in the region. So we also see this as confirmation that we're in the right place, doing the right thing. Next slide, please. So in this region, in particular, we acknowledge that policy support is important. I think everywhere with green hydrogen policy support is one of the things that enables it to happen. So in the United States, we have the Inflation Reduction Act, and we have the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. So both of these, we have seen to be very positive for green hydrogen activities. And very specifically within the 2, there is a section that's referred to as 45V. So a lot of people will just say 45V is this and so forth. What that is, is it's a tax incentive, and it goes up to USD 3 per kilogram for clean hydrogen. So the cleaner, the closer you get to the $3. In the case of water electrolysis, it is clean. So you would get the full $3. So this is a massive pull that is driving everything else behind it, right? So any facility, any component manufacturing, the stacks themselves, is all being driven by this financial incentive. This was suggested to be at risk with the recent administration, and we noticed some of the issues started to arise even before the election when it was believed that the election results would be how they turned out. There was some anxiety in the market, and I think this caused a tapping of the brakes or pressing pause because it was understood that if this went away, things would really take a turn for the worse. However, with the most recent bill that was passed by the new administration, this was preserved. So we still have the $3 per kilogram in place. There were some modifications to it, probably the most significant one was to be eligible. The date at which you have to break ground for your hydrogen facility has been moved forward in time. However, I think this can be easily overcome and all the projects that are in motion right now are fully eligible. So that was a huge positive. And when that made it through, you could feel a surge in things with the confidence renewed. This doesn't mean, however, that 100% was good. There are some funding that was going to various projects that had been targeted and some of it was actually cut. However, what we've noticed, specifically in California, that the Governor, Gavin Newsom said, yes, independent of the federal dollars, we're still going to move forward. And also with the California example, they had budgeted about USD 12.5 billion with a B for their hydrogen projects and $2 billion of that was coming from the federal government. So it wasn't 100% dependent on federal dollars and they claim that between state dollars and additional investment that they'll be fine. And to put this in perspective, the states in the United States themselves can be quite economically powerful. So if you look at California and if you were to assume it were its own country, it would probably be the fourth or fifth biggest economy in the world. So it's comparable to Germany. So they have the financial resources to handle these things. Other states that are important to these hydrogen hubs, so there are 7 altogether. Texas and New York. They also have substantial resources, and they too, Texas and New York, if they were countries themselves, they'd be in the top 10 economies globally in terms of size with GDP. So there's resources there to make things happen. I think it's going to be fine. Some dollars have to shift. If anything, some of these projects might push to the right a little bit, but they don't go away. On the Canadian side, they took a slightly different approach where in the U.S., they were incentivizing the end product, the commodity itself, the hydrogen. In Canada, they were incentivizing the CapEx to make things happen. So a slightly different approach. It's difficult to say, did one work better than the other. I think they're both working. Also in Canada, they have distributed ways to keep things happening. So you have the Canadian Infrastructure Bank. The regional governments are doing quite a bit. Quebec had some announcements that they're doing quite a bit with the green hydrogen. So we think governmental support and policy is in favor, and you can see this. And all of this is really prompting up the water electrolysis. So I think this is why you see that shift from fuel cells to the generation of the hydrogen itself. That way, it's more of an energy topic than something on the consumption of the energy side. So next slide, please. So the 3-year outlook. So what does all this mean as we go forward? I think the -- it's going to continue to grow. Yes, there might be a little bit pushing to the right. You might see a little bit of a consolidation, at least in the customer base, we've noticed some of this. I think any time there's a little bit of a slowdown anywhere. The bigger you are, the easier it is to keep going. So yes, it's -- things are moving. We see the demand to be sustained, albeit things have kind of reshuffled and readjusted a little bit. Nonetheless, it's going to be 2-digit growth, most likely in the 20-plus percent range. And this takes into account that some of the hydrogen hubs have pushed to the right in terms of their time line. Still, it's still a healthy annual growth rate. We also see that PEM is likely going to remain dominant for the next several years. However, the solid oxide technologies are on the coattails of PEM. They will be ramping thereafter. They're going to have more of a market share, but we're involved in both of them. So for us, either way it goes, I think we'll be fine since we have a play in both. Both of these technologies require coatings and advanced materials to reach their performance potential. They're heavily reliant on that, and this is what we provide. So we are enablers in both of these technologies. So we're happy with our position in this value chain, and we're ready to go. And we're talking to these guys who are doing these things. So we're in the right place as well. And next slide. So if we put it all together, North America, it's going to be a multiyear growth engine for revenue, right? We're seeing that already. We're positioned. This is going to be the outlook. With the main players, those who are going to be making it happen on the hydrogen delivery side, we're involved. We have commercial relationships. We have ongoing technical relationships. So we are in the right place. Also, the buildup for the hydrogen is happening, right? There was some speculation a little bit earlier about this, but things are trucking ahead. So most of the revenue is going to come on the PEM side, but we're involved in the solid oxide. We're there, and I think it's going to offer longer term some upside to all of this. Although there is some federal policy uncertainty that we've seen in Canada, that environment is stable and the U.S. governments, I think, are going to play a big role in this. So yes, at the federal level, you may see some things at the state level, it's entirely different. The final point, we've had some discussions about brick-and-mortar in North America. This is still planned. We will do it when it financially makes sense. However, in the meantime, we're processing out of Sweden. Our customers are okay with this. Yes, there's some talks about the tariffs here and the tariffs there, but we really haven't seen the impact on what we're doing. So it's not been such an issue with us. So that's it from my side. Thanks for your time and attention.
Jonas Nilsson
ExecutivesThank you, Rob. And Rob will stay for the Q&A session. So if you have any questions to Rob, you can just post those questions, and we will come back to Rob during the Q&A session. So now here with me, I have Kristian, and we will have just a short pause, I think, or shall we run right away? Yes. Okay. Then we will go ahead. So the floor is yours.
Kristian Hillgren
ExecutivesThank you. Thank you. So during the next 15 minutes, I will talk about how our technology can make us grow faster with our existing customers. And also how we can use it to bring on new customers in new markets and new applications. And I will do this in 3 steps. First, I will talk about the INLINECOATER as a platform for producing high value-added parts. And then I will move on to the focus for this talk, the iridium oxide for cost-efficient PEM electrolyzer manufacturing. And last but not the least, how we can use our technology for solid oxide fuel cells. So let's jump into it. To set the stage here, the INLINECOATER is all about manufacturing. It's a high-tech equipment to produce advanced coatings. It's built for industry. It can achieve a very high volume, high production capacity. It has high repeatability, meaning that you get the same coating every single time. And it also has a small footprint. And this is important for the factory floor space. If you compare the INLINECOATER to some competing PVD solutions, to the left here, we have a competing batch system. That one is not ideal for producing parts for fuel cells and electrolyzers. And to the right-hand side, we have a very, very large linear coating system. Those systems are usually very, very expensive. And they kind of only make sense if you have really, really large need for volume manufacturing or if you have very, very large surface areas that need coating. So in that sense, the INLINECOATER is a superior market fit here. So the combination of its capacity and scalability and economics is a reason why it's the market's choice here. And one really important thing here is that we have the same equipment for different applications. So the system looks the same, but what we do is that we configure them differently. We equip them with different coating materials to solve different problems for our different customers. Now introducing iridium oxide. But first, I would like to set the stage from the perspective of the PEM electrolyzer. Typically, you will see that the PEM electrolyzer is often illustrated as a containerized solution. And inside this solution, you will find various components and functionalities like pumps, compressors, power electronics. But critically, you also have the stack. And it's inside the stack where the water is split and where the hydrogen is produced. And the components that we coat, they go into the stack. And to the right-hand side here, you have 2 components. On the top, you have a separator plate made of titanium. This is usually plated or coated with gold and platinum. It's about the size of an A2 paper for a megawatt class electrolyzer. And on the bottom, you have a titanium porous transport layer. It's kind of like a titanium sponge that is flat, you could say. And these we routinely coat. The main purpose is to provide electrical connectivity that should be stable throughout the lifetime of the stack. But to add further value here, we move into the PVD iridium oxide, and this coating is catalytic and it opens up a new field for us. Today's reality, what you find in commercial stacks on the market today is that you have the iridium oxide catalyst on the so-called membrane. And this works, but it comes with a huge challenge. And that is that the typical designs require hundreds of grams of iridium per megawatt. So Inside the stack, you have the porous transport layer. This is normally coated with platinum and you have the membrane with a very, very thick iridium oxide layer. And to put some numbers to it, 500 grams of iridium is about EUR 75,000. Iridium is very, very expensive, and it is limited in supply. So this really is a bottleneck. So is there anything we can do about this? Yes, there is. We can actually coat the porous transport layer with Iridium oxide instead of having the membrane coated. And this we do by PVD. So you can think of it like we are moving the catalyst functionality from the membrane onto the PTL. And by doing this, we can reduce the need for iridium from hundreds of grams to tens of grams per megawatt. So some numbers to that. Well, you can see on the slide here, it says EUR 3,750. So we're talking about an order of magnitude in cost saving. And this, of course, has tremendous value to our customers. So the opportunity here is actually quite simple. We use less iridium, we can use it more efficiently. And of course, we want to combine it with an industrial manufacturing process. And that's exactly what we are targeting here by placing the iridium oxide on the PTL using the INLINECOATER. So we're already coating PTLs at industrial scale today, platinum. And then to -- in the cartoon here, you can see that we have 3 coating chambers. We run an adhesion. We will run the platinum deposition, double-sided. And then in the third chamber, we can add the iridium oxide, but only on one side where it's needed, and we only add it in a very, very precise and tiny amount. And then, of course, for our customers, it means less iridium. They get a lower cost per stack, which makes their products more competitive in the electrolyzer market. And additionally, it means there is no extra production step for the catalyst coating because we do the catalyst coating in the same run. So it simplifies the membrane as well. And for us, well, it means a much higher value per PTL. We can sell more coatings, more revenue, the same customers. And we can also have a higher utilization of the same INLINECOATER. And then I would like to touch upon the major theme of today, solid oxide fuel cells and how we can apply our technology here. So I mean, for us, this is a new market, sure, and we see a very high volume manufacturing need. And essentially, there is a need many, many -- for many, many small, coated metal plates per stack. And things get really interesting here. I'm going to paint you a picture like every megawatt of solid oxide fuel cell power can need tens of thousands of coated plates. And that -- this means that for 1 gigawatt, we're talking tens of millions of plates. And then you've given the market data from the previous sessions today, you can crunch some numbers. But it's a great opportunity for us because we can use the same existing in coated platform. And material-wise, I won't go into too much detail here, but we're talking about metal layers, ceramic layers, some rare earth elements, which we haven't really been doing in the past, but our machines are perfectly capable of producing these kind of coatings. So value for customers here. As Caroline mentioned, these coatings are critical for lifetime. So the INLINECOATER can produce dense high-quality coatings, and this gives the desired corrosion protection to prevent chromium poisoning. And this really is the cornerstone for long-life durability in a solid oxide fuel cell. And of course, talking about power generation, these things need to last for years and years. The INLINECOATER also brings very efficient -- cost-efficient manufacturing regardless if it's in Coating Services or if it's really that high-volume manufacturing where we have dedicated equipment. So for us, it essentially means there is a new growing market that can drive equipment sales. So -- and if we put the iridium oxide and the solid oxide development into kind of one simple strategy slide, this is an Ansoff Matrix and it kind of visualizes strategies for growth based on existing products and new products and existing markets and new markets. So if we start with our existing products and existing markets, sure, we have the INLINECOATER, we have the PEM market where we do precious metal coatings. Now we have done product development. So we have developed the iridium oxide coating. And this now essentially means that we can sell more products to the existing market. So this is a step to the right in this cartoon here. If we instead look at the solid oxide fuel cells and well, also the solid oxide electrolyzer market, it's a new market, but we do have the INLINECOATER platform ready to go. So we move one step up here in this Matrix. We take our existing products and existing technology and move it into new market. Then of course, this is another opportunity for growth. And then I would basically like to wrap up here. First, just stepping back a bit from the details. I mean the common thread, what we're really seeing here and what we're really doing is that we're turning our coating technology into a competitive and profitable platform that adds value across multiple energy technologies. It doesn't depend on hydrogen or natural gas or those specifics. It's all about energy and how we can add value to the energy sector. And specifically today, I covered 3 topics. I covered how the INLINECOATER is on production platform. I talked about how we can reduce the iridium usage in PEM electrolyzers by moving the catalyst from the membrane to the porous transport layer. And lastly, why the solid oxide market with tens of thousands of coated plates per megawatt is a really good fit for our technology. Thank you.
Jonas Nilsson
ExecutivesSo thank you, Kristian. And also Kristian will stay. So if you have questions to Kristian, our CTO, then you can post those questions, and we will take those questions during the Q&A session. So now we have come to the last part of our investor presentation. So we are at investment case and outlook. So let's start with the outlook. As we have talked about today, Impact Coatings changes its short-term strategy to focus more on power generation with solid oxide fuel cell, commonly fueled with natural gas to power AI data centers. And the world experiences a big need for off-grid power, and that is mainly driven by AI data centers. This creates an opportunity for us to shift our short- and medium-term strategy to focus more efforts on SOFC. And we do have the solutions that the market needs. Meanwhile, we continue to support existing and new customers in the hydrogen market, and we are going to take the things we learn in the commercially driven SOFC business and feed that back to hydrogen to continue to find more cost-efficient solutions also for hydrogen. Looking at systems. So based on the current sales pipeline, the company expects to achieve system sales in each of the 4 major markets during next year, during 2026. So the markets are Energy, Automotive, Electronics and Luxury Goods. If we look at Coating Services, based on current customer forecast, the company expects Coating Services net sales in 2026 to exceed that of this year 2025. So we have proven technology with around 50 delivery systems and established Coating Service Centers in Europe and China. We have a strong presence in the fuel cell and the electrolyzer markets, and we have the new area of SOFC that will drive revenues and commercial terms. Our flexible business model makes it easy for customers to buy. We have implemented significant cost reductions and efficiency improvements. This has lowered the breakeven point. So with today's cost level and the sales mix of 2024, we would be EBITDA positive. We have strong strategic partners and reference customers that supports our credibility and long-term growth. Looking at use of proceeds. The first section is about doing more of what we already do and scaling it to volume. We have talked a lot about SOFC today, and you also heard Caroline Hargrove's view of the market. And you heard that coatings is essential for the longevity and long-term durability of SOFC stacks. And you heard that the lifetime of the stack is essential for the complete SOFC economy. So we are right at the spot to matter. But there are also other opportunities such as iridium oxide, which Kristian talked about. The second section focus on new applications for our existing technology. The third section is about reducing the production cost of our machines, and we have good opportunities to achieve meaningful cost reductions. And last, strengthening working capital. Here, you can see the time line of the Rights Issue. The subscription period runs from November 21 last Friday to December 5. So that was all for today. So now we will move to the Q&A. But first, one last slide. So I would like to end with this slide that innovations are driven by problems. And here, we have both a problem and a solution. And also, as we heard from Caroline, we also have access to the complete ecosystem needed to deliver. So then we just take a short break, and then we go for the Q&A. [Break]
Unknown Attendee
AttendeesThank you very much for that presentation. And let's open up the Q&A section here. First, we have Lara from ABG calling in with a few questions.
Lara Mohtadi
AnalystsLara here from ABG. Just a couple of questions from my end. As you mentioned, coating system sales have been weaker in 2025, partly due to a softer market and customers taking a more wait-and-see approach. But you also mentioned clear policy signals in the U.S. and China. But what can we expect in Europe?
Jonas Nilsson
ExecutivesYou mean when it comes to systems?
Lara Mohtadi
AnalystsYes.
Jonas Nilsson
ExecutivesYes. In Europe, we have the automotive market. So what we can expect in Europe is primarily from the automotive market. If we look at energy, energy is more towards the APAC region and maybe some U.S. If you look at electronics like antennas, waveguide antennas, it's more towards APAC. And if you look at luxury goods, yes, that's also Europe.
Lara Mohtadi
AnalystsOkay. Great. And you said that you've noted that you haven't lost any recent orders to competitors. What do you think is driving that? Is it primarily your technology? Is it your customer relationships? Or are there other factors?
Jonas Nilsson
ExecutivesWell, our machines, they are designed for advanced multilayer coatings of flat objects. And what we have done is we have selected market verticals where we have a very good product market fit, which means that where we are active, we have a strong position. So many customers, they do regard our machines and our offering as the best option. I would say that the main reason why we haven't seen any machine sales this year is that there are uncertainties in the market. And when there are uncertainties, regardless of which type of uncertainty, you postpone your investment decisions if you are in a position to postpone investment decisions. If we look at Coating Services, we do coating services and we sell machines for the same applications for the same markets. Now we see an increase in Coating Services, although we have seen a decrease in machine sales. So we believe that machine sales will pick up next year, and we believe that we will sell machines in all 4 areas.
Lara Mohtadi
AnalystsOkay. Very clear. And you also talked a bit about exploring new target markets such as semiconductors, defense applications, heat exchanges and so on. In these segments, do customers currently use PVD coatings or do they use other methods like CVD? What's more common? And also on this, what do you see as the main barriers to entry for Impact Coatings?
Jonas Nilsson
ExecutivesSo in some of the markets, they use PVD coatings, for example, in semiconductors, yes, PVD is a very common technology. We believe that we can find niche segments within semiconductors where our machines are competitive. In some other markets like heat exchangers, many heat exchangers, they are uncoated, but with new application areas for heat exchangers, well, there is also a need for coatings. And heat exchangers, it's flat obvious. They look similar to fuel cell plates. So it's -- from a technology perspective, it's a perfect fit. And what we are doing is we are evaluating, okay, what's the need for coatings in this market, which type of coating, how big is the market? So explorative research of the markets. Also, when you look at the defense market, the development in the last years makes that a very interesting market. So we are also looking at the defense market.
Lara Mohtadi
AnalystsOkay. Very clear. And if we just talk a little bit about your new application area, SOFC sales. You talked a little about the potential market size. But can you just give us a sense of potential revenue contribution from this business over the next couple of years?
Jonas Nilsson
ExecutivesYes. If you make a -- personally, I don't like top-down calculations. But if you start with the top-down calculation, if you look at the number that was presented by Caroline, she presented 2 numbers. One was the near term for SOFC and one was the future for electrolysis by solid oxide SOEC. But if we look at the near term, 2030, there will be a demand for 22 gigawatts of installed power from SOFC. If you do the calculation, like Kristian mentioned, okay, how many plates do you need to produce 22 gigawatts? It's a lot of plates. And if you translate that to machines, it's approximately 230 of our flagship model IC2000. So that's sort of -- you can get a size of the market. There are 3 ecosystems in the world that are big. It's Bloom Energy, it's Ceres Power and it's HD Hydrogen. And we are working with 2 of the 3 big ones.
Lara Mohtadi
AnalystsOkay. Great. That was very clear. And currently, your biggest market is China. If we talk about the SOFC side, where do you see the biggest market potential?
Jonas Nilsson
ExecutivesSo the biggest market potential for SOFC, it's in the APAC region. So Korea is very big when it comes to SOFC. We also see a market in Taiwan, but the sort of complete APAC region, we see the most activity for SOFC.
Lara Mohtadi
AnalystsAnd do you see more or less competition for SOFC compared to other segments?
Jonas Nilsson
ExecutivesI would say that we see less. And maybe this is because it's an emerging market. And we have machines that are perfect for this market. So it's flat objects, it's high volumes. It's the perfect size, both for our IC2000 and our IC500. So actually, SOFC plates, they are a little bit smaller, at least smaller than electrolyzer plates and also smaller than most PEM plates. So we do not see very much competition in this area yet, I have to say. Also, our strategy has been on the PEM fuel cell market. It has been our push-pull strategy. So we go to the customer's customer to get qualified by the customer's customer. And typically, the customer's customer is not that price sensitive as your customer. And if you are in at the customer's customer and if you're qualified, then you're quite hard to kick out. And if we look at what we're doing with Ceres. So Ceres is a company that is an IP-based company. They license their technology to their licensees. And if you look at their homepage, they describe their licensing model. So they give drawings of everything you have to do to build those stacks, but they also give you the supplier list, so they have a complete value chain where you should go and buy each part that you need in the system. And this, of course, includes coatings. So if you are qualified by Ceres, you have sort of direct access to their licensees.
Lara Mohtadi
AnalystsOkay. But how do these licensees currently coat the SOFCs?
Jonas Nilsson
ExecutivesSo there are competing technologies. Some of the licensees, they are quite early. Delta was one example, Delta Electronics in Taiwan. Caroline showed a picture of the new factory. And as you can see, they are currently building their new factory. We also saw a picture of Doosan's factory in Korea. So Doosan, they are today using a competing technology. They are using what is called pre-coated material, which means that they don't coat. They buy steel. They buy steel coils with steel, which already has a coating. And you have to form the plates. And when you form those plates, if you have the coating on the plate before you form it, well, you might crack the coating. If you put the coating on afterwards, after forming, which we do with our machines, then you are sure that you do not crack the coating in the forming process. So we believe that we have a huge competitive advantage compared to pre-coated steel.
Lara Mohtadi
AnalystsOkay. And then if we just stick on the topic of your collaboration with Ceres, do you see revenues primarily coming from Coating Services in the near term? And if so, when do you see potential for coating system sales as the scale?
Jonas Nilsson
ExecutivesSorry, you mean coating systems for the SOFC market?
Lara Mohtadi
AnalystsYes, sorry, yes.
Jonas Nilsson
ExecutivesSo given that there's a complete value chain for the SOFC market, we will experience the same as we have seen on the market for PEM fuel cells that the stack manufacturers for PEM fuel cells, they are typically not coating themselves. They go to the suppliers of the plate to the forming suppliers, and they tell the forming suppliers that, well, we want to buy plates from you and they should have this flow feel and it should have this coating. So our machine customers are typically the ones who are doing the forming. I showed a slide with a Feintool factory in China. That's a typical example of that. It's a forming company who have decided to enter the market of fuel cells. And in the example of Feintool, they are actually active both in PEM fuel cells and SOFC fuel cells. So this means that even in the early market, there are opportunities to sell machines to those companies who do the forming so that they can have the complete production lines.
Lara Mohtadi
AnalystsOkay. And with this new market opportunity, when do you see Impact Coatings needing to increase investments? Obviously, you said there's no immediate need in the near term and you have capacity to increase demand. But could that change as customer demand or pilot projects maybe scale up?
Jonas Nilsson
ExecutivesYou mean increased capacity in terms of Coating Services and increased capacity in terms of building machines?
Lara Mohtadi
AnalystsYes, both.
Jonas Nilsson
ExecutivesIf we start with building machines, we have a very good factory here in Linköping, and I invite you all to our factory tour tomorrow. Today, we have a capacity of 12 machines per year, so 1 machine per month. We can produce that with the equipment we have. We can increase that to twice the amount to 24 machines per year, 2 machines per month. And to do that, we need some investments. But we don't need a new factory. We do have a very good factory. So the investment need is quite low. If you look at Coating Services, well, if we see that Coating Services volumes increase, maybe we need more machines. But we do have space for more machines. So again, if you look at our factory here in Linköping and our clean room here in Linköping, yes, we do have space for more machines. And we are a company producing machines. So if we need more machines, yes, we can make more machines. Of course, it is an investment, but it's not a big investment.
Lara Mohtadi
AnalystsOkay. And could you maybe give some examples of how you're working on reducing your build materials as you stated yourself, cost of materials?
Jonas Nilsson
ExecutivesSo our machines, they consist of the machine core and then there's an electrical cabinet. In that electrical cabinet, there's a lot of equipment. The machine core, it's designed by the development to the developers of Impact Coatings. So there's a lot of experience in the machine core. In electrical cabinet, it's also a lot of experience that has gone into that, but it's more or less off-the-shelf standard parts. It's power supplies, it's pumps, it's different things. Here, we have one benefit of being a Swedish company with operations in China, which means that we can do local sourcing. For example, of power supplies in China, that will significantly reduce bill of material costs for a system. So that's just one example. And what we now is doing is we're changing the purchasing function from strategic purchase to more technical purchase, which means that we can look at all the components we have in the system and see, okay, can we do some changes? Are there other alternatives to this component? Can we source it somewhere else? Do we really need this requirement specification? Or is the real requirement something else on this component so we can use another component. So there's a big potential to reduce COGS.
Lara Mohtadi
AnalystsOkay. And recently, you also implemented cost savings initiatives. Have these fully kicked in? Or can we expect some further effects in the coming quarters?
Jonas Nilsson
ExecutivesThe effect has not kicked in fully yet. So we expect the full effect in Q1. And so in Q2, we will see the full effect, and we will still have effect that is kicking in, in Q1. So we have made some staff reductions now in Q4. So it takes some time for that to kick in. But with the cost savings we have done, we have put ourselves in a good position because -- we have done some sort of development and during end of '23, during '24, we delivered the first IC2000 machines to customers. Those customers were using those machines heavily. So our machines got battle proven. We have streamlined the production here in Linköping with our new factory. So we are much, much faster to assemble machines. So with the current staff we have, we do have the capability to deliver the same sales mix as we had in '24. And with the sales mix we had in '24, we will become cash flow positive with the current staffing. So what we have proven in '24 was that we are able to sell. We reached SEK 110 million. And what we have proven this year is that, well, we are able to do some savings also. And if we combine this, we will be profitable.
Unknown Attendee
AttendeesOkay. Let's take some other questions that we have received here. We will take the first question from [ Johnny ]. To go straight to the key question for investors, are you signaling that based on your assessment of clients, markets and cost-saving initiatives that Impact Coatings is expected to achieve its first profitable year in 2026?
Jonas Nilsson
ExecutivesYes, I will continue on where I answered the last question. So in '24, we increased sales. We had a sales about SEK 110 million. Now we have done cost cutting with the same sales mix as in '24, we will be EBITDA positive. And if we look in the sales pipeline for machines, we see that we have a strong pipeline in all 4 areas we are active. So Energy, Automotive, Electronics and Luxury Goods. So we expect during next year that we sell machines in all those 4 areas. And we also expect that Coating Services will increase. And if we do that, if we sell machines in all those areas and if we increase coating services, yes, then we will reach the sales mix of 2024.
Unknown Attendee
AttendeesThank you, Jonas, for that answer. We'll take the next question here from Andreas. Is Mark Shay and Accendo Capital still committed to their investment in Impact Coatings? So far, it has been a disappointing investment.
Mark H. Shay
ExecutivesI'll take that one. Mark Shay here. I'm the Chairman of Impact Coatings since May 2018 and senior partner at Accendo Capital. Accendo has been the largest shareholder in Impact Coatings since December 2017 through a Rights Issue at that time. And today, we hold about 34% of shares outstanding. I have a personal shareholding of 300,000 shares. That's separate from the Accendo fund. So we have -- over the time, we have been owners in the company. We have given Impact our full energy in terms of my engagement, but also engagement from my colleagues. We added a Board member this year additionally from Accendo Capital, Johanna Pynnä, who brings valuable industrial experience and has made a terrific contribution so far. So it's from Accendo since the beginning, all hands on deck for Impact Coatings. And we've also contributed capital at each opportunity since the 2017 Rights Issue, and there have been several of those opportunities. Most recently, the issue announced at the end of '22 completed in Q1 '23, where of the SEK 148 million capital raise, Accendo Capital contributed about SEK 100 million, and that's what took us to 34% ownership and through an underwriting commitment for that. Unfortunately, as things look right now, we are, as many funds are from time to time, fully invested. And that means that we don't, at this time, have capital to allocate additionally to Impact Coatings as much as we would like to. So Accendo Capital will not be participating in this Rights Issue, but we do still have our full energy and focus on the company. Personally, I will be contributing SEK 1 million from my own accounts separate from Accendo Capital. That covers my pro rata allocation in the rights issue, so the 300,000 existing shares plus a substantial additional commitment in that SEK 1 million. So hopefully, that clarifies and answers the question. And finally, I'd just like to say thanks to Jonas and the team and especially Dr. Caroline Hargrove for a great presentation today, informative and inspiring. But to Andreas, I hope that clarifies and happy to take any follow-ups.
Unknown Attendee
AttendeesThank you very much, Mark, for your answer there. We'll take the next question here. A question from Johnny. Does this outlook include moving forward with a plan coating center in North America?
Jonas Nilsson
ExecutivesThe volumes we have today, we coat those volumes here in Linköping in Sweden. We still have the plan to establish a Coating Service Center in North America, and we are sort of holding our finger on the pause button. But there's -- we should be smart here. And we do not want to take a lot of costs before we see the revenues. So before we really need the coating center in North America, we will not do it. And maybe there are other opportunities. Maybe we can sell machines to customers instead. So it's still in the plan. It's something that we can do if we need to do it to deliver in North America, but it's not sort of in its own interest to do it.
Unknown Attendee
AttendeesThank you, Jonas, for clarifying that. We've got a next question from [ Christer ]. Can you describe the difference between your electrolysis solution and Smoltek?
Kristian Hillgren
ExecutivesI will take that one. There are, of course, many different ways to put on a coating for the iridium oxide. And the so-called porous transport layers, they are manufactured in different ways. They can be powder-based, they can be made out of fibers, they can be woven and so on. And then different companies have different ideas for how to produce the catalyst structure. But regardless, there is a need to put down the iridium oxide on whatever. And we can do this by PVD. And we have different knobs that we can tune to steer the process to get the right performance and properties that our customers are looking for. So I'm not exactly going to discuss Smoltek's solution at detail here, but I will just leave it that there are different ways of achieving this kind of performance. And we see that our PVD technology adds a lot of value here for the end customer regardless of exactly which will be the best solution in the future. And most likely, there will be different solutions in the future.
Unknown Attendee
AttendeesThank you, Kristian, for your answer there. And we'll take one final question here before wrapping up, and it's from Andreas. Do you view the German-based single-use technologies as a direct competitor in the SOFC coating space? And are they not better positioned for scaling this area?
Jonas Nilsson
ExecutivesWe regard them as a direct competitor when it comes to hydrogen and water electrolysis. As of today, we have not seen singles in the SOFC space, but maybe we will see them. They have a different machine architecture. They make bigger machines. We believe that our machines have the right size and the right size for a volatile market. And as of today, the SOFC market is volatile. It's a market where you have to be able to produce prototypes to produce small volumes and be able to produce large volumes to become qualified. And to become qualified, those small volumes has to be from the same machines or at least the same machine type as the large volumes. And this is sort of our expertise area. So we believe that we are very well positioned for the SOFC market with our machines.
Unknown Attendee
AttendeesThank you very much. And that concludes the Q&A session here. Thank you very much, and I'll leave the word back to you, Jonas, for some concluding remarks.
Jonas Nilsson
ExecutivesSo thank you, everyone, and thank you, everyone, for attending this Capital Markets update. So today, we have gone through our investor slide deck. You can download that from our website, and you can download that from the Investors section of our website. We have talked a lot about the new area. We have talked a lot about SOFC, solid oxide fuel cells, and the market driver for SOFC and the difference between the sort of old hydrogen market and the new SOFC market, the old hydrogen market, it's still a very interesting market for us. We are one of the market leaders and in China when it comes to PEM fuel cells for heavy trucks, we might be the market leader. It's still an interesting market for us, but what we see is that the SOFC market that's commercially driven compared to hydrogen, which is still in need of governmental subsidies. And that's the reason why we believe that the SOFC market is so interesting and that the SOFC market will drive revenues in the near future. And long term, of course, also hydrogen is very exciting. So with that, I would like to thank you, everyone. And I would like to invite you to our factory tour tomorrow. It will start at 1:30 and we will end before 4:00 p.m. And if you want to participate, please send an e-mail to [email protected]. Thank you.
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