Invinity Energy Systems plc (IES) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and welcome to the Invinity Energy Systems plc Corporate Update. [Operator Instructions] Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll. I'd now like to hand you over to CEO, Jonathan Marren. Good morning to you, sir.

Good morning, and apologies for being a few minutes late. We were just dealing with a couple of IT gremlins as often happens, but we can begin now. So welcome to the corporate update for Invinity. I will make the introductions to my colleagues who are on the other screen in a few moments. But the presentation we have today and Q&A intends to last about an hour. This is the same presentation and format that we have been going around and speaking to institutions with all weeks. So delighted to also share that with all of our investors here as well. There will be some Q&A at the end. I think there's been quite a number of Q&A submitted. And interestingly, I think most of that is covered in what we're going to say, but I'm happy to elaborate on that as needed. So the -- we'll cover the corporate update. We will cover where we are with ENDURIUM and then a market update and then outlook. But if I can start on really just a summary of what we announced this week. So on Monday morning, we put out 2 really quite important announcements. Firstly, to give an update on where we were heading with LDES and at the same time, give an update on current trading. And this really has been the first opportunity to give an update since I took over as Chief Executive in September and give an update on the 5 corporate milestones that we had set out at that point in time. And if you recall, I said that we felt we needed to give some visibility to investors as to what we were looking at and really show that we were focusing on the areas that we thought would drive core value to the business and then give an opportunity for us to track along that route. And the reason I do keep focusing on this is just not the external message, but it is very much the internal message. And my colleagues in the room opposite and others will know that every single senior leadership meeting we have, the agenda is structured around these 5 points. We have an awful lot to do. We cover many different areas and having focused to make sure we achieve this is critically important. So I'll tell you where I think marking my own homework where we are at the moment and to give you a sort of a flavor as to how that's achieving. But I think one of the critical things that we did announce on Monday morning was that we were in line with both numbers at the end of last year and also into this year as well. And we'll cover in a little bit more detail when we go through. But given what we have announced and specifically on the LDES contracts and the grant income that comes with that, which was always expected to go towards our revenue forecast for this year, we are broadly about 90% covered for the '25 years. So on that first bullet point there was shipping remaining orders to hit those '24 numbers. We did that, and we've announced that we have succeeded there. So that is a green light. Those units were for Rincon, which we announced last year and obviously delighted that from a perspective of a U.K. manufacturer, we've actually exported that product to the U.S. So obviously, we'll talk about a broader strategy on U.S. manufacturing in due course. The second bullet point on ENDURIUM, again, that was needed to be launched by the year-end. We had been talking about and working on what was a Mistral for about 4 years. And the VS3 product has served us extremely well, but we knew that the product that the market needed, wanted and we could sell at scale is ENDURIUM now, and we have to get that out so we can start marketing that commercially. And it's a result of having that out that we're now leading into 2025. We announced the STS contract, and that's why we are able to say now that we're about 90% covered. So again, another green mark. The third point there, I've moved it from red to red and amber. And arguably, I've maybe been a little bit harsh on ourselves, but there is nothing more that will move the share price and get it going than some substantial traction on the commercial front. So I do not want to take that pressure off us internally, both on a wider basis, but on that commercial team. The announcement of LODES and the up to GBP 10 million of grant income does allow us to show where we are with coverage of this year's forecast. So we are doing well. I think it's right to say that is red and amber, but I want to see more from the business, particularly as we build to close out the pipeline in 2026 to give some even further visibility there. On the advanced cost reduction program, when I announced -- so when we announced in September where we were, we said that we were making very good progress, but probably a little bit behind where we needed to be. And the first institutional meeting we actually had on Monday morning, the question was asked, we were reminded that when we were previously talking about Mistral and how much cost we needed to take out, we said that pretty much out of the box on day one, we felt we would be at a 40% drop from where the pricing on VS3 was. And the direct question was, where are you? Have you hit that? And actually, when we look at the pricing on STS versus where we were last selling these VS3, we have exactly hit that 40% number. So pleased to say that. So I would say we were back on track, hence, the amber button. But this is a highly competitive market with competition that is narrowing, but equally from a cost perspective is something we need to focus on. So we are well positioned, but we will talk in a little bit in some more detail, there is a -- and we have only just started this journey, and there's probably about 4 areas that we can focus on to continue to take cost out. And if you take a step back, that is exactly what any manufacturer does when they go from a launch of a first product as it comes out to then manufacturing that at scale. So we have all the plans in place to know how to do that, and that will remain amber as we continue down that journey. And on the fifth point, we do have a balance sheet that I regard as constrained. We will always regard it as constrained whilst we're in a position that we are loss-making. And even then, we're not going to be frivolous with our cash. So that is an amber point because our new CFO has sort of taken over from where I left off in terms of that relentless focus on cost and is making some very good progress there. So just a quick step back to say where do we sit now that we've launched ENDURIUM. And those who have followed us for quite a period of time, whether that be through redT, more recently through Invinity and obviously, those who knew Avalon, we've been collectively working on this for well over 15 years. What we've really been waiting for to see this developing and growing substantially is that box on the right-hand side, that market support at scale. And again, following the traffic light system, we've given that the green light. We are now seeing that start to come through in a number of jurisdictions across the world at scale and probably faster and broader and deeper than we first thought. So it is very much the case that now is the time for us to really exploit that opportunity. And I think you saw us allude to that in the statement. But we would not be able to do that if we hadn't been working on all the other areas of the business up until now. And the VS3, and there's a good question of where does the VS3 sit, why are you doing LODES with VS3? And again, we will come on to that. But that experience from the VS3 is the only reason that we are able now to address this market. We have over 1,500 vanadium flow battery modules operating in the world. We have dispatched over 5 gigawatt hours of power from those batteries and quite a significant amount more than that since they were put into operation, this is the VS3s. That is a very credible track record that sets us apart from certainly other flow battery businesses and most other long-duration technologies. So that experience and reputation means we have a seat at the table. These are key infrastructure assets sat on the grid. You cannot just launch a new product with no track record and expect to be able to sell into that. But also, we have the data that is coming back from those assets. And when I was in Vancouver with some of the software team a few weeks ago, I was delighted to sit down with some of our software engineers who are running that data through AI models. And what that enables us to do is to work out how to increase the round trip efficiency, how to extend the life of component parts, how to expand that operating -- those operating parameters. All of that effectively gives us an advantage from a cost down perspective because people are -- this is a financial product. You need to put the parameters into your financial model and that impacts on the ability to pay. So all of that comes because we have that data and very few others do have that. And the ENDURIUM launch, as I say, absolutely critical with that. Without having launched ENDURIUM, we would not have the right product for this and we are getting very good feedback from the market that our ability to put these units side by side, to double stack them with the parameters they have is needed and allows us certainly on a space basis to compete broadly alongside lithium on a sort of per acreage basis, but also is enabling us to continue down that cost curve so that we can remain competitive. There are 3 boxes there in yellow. The systems and ERP side is something we are upgrading at the moment. We are just implementing an ERP. We have previously been living off some sort of rather basic financial systems and spreadsheets, which is fine for a business that is growing. But as we progress to the sort of scale we are anticipating, we need to make sure we've got proper systems and we can control that growth. The manufacturing and supply chain, we have got a 26,000 square foot facility in Motherwell, 4,000 square foot in Bathgate, another facility in Vancouver. So we've got manufacturing capability. We are looking to expand into the U.S. and we are looking to deepen that supply chain, but we can do that from a base that we've worked on for quite a number of years. So very well positioned there. And then customer operations, we have got a fabulous team there. They are a small team. And as we see the growth, we obviously need to expand that. But again, from a basis that we know what we're doing. And all of that leads to volume production and then volume production is where you can really start to take some very meaningful cost out on top of all the other R&D efforts. So we get a seat at the table because we have been working on these building blocks really for the last 15 years. And now we have that market support at scale, I believe that we have the ability to sell into that market. So this is the time when I introduce you to my colleagues. Matt Harp, you have obviously met before, but I will spend this time to introduce you to Adam Howard, who is now our Chief Financial Officer.

Yes. Thank you, Jonathan. Good morning all. So I've joined the business around about 3 months ago. Prior to that, I was with National Wealth Fund looking after grid and solar and before that around 20 years or so in energy and project financing at EBRD and ING Capital Markets before that. Most of that has been project finance into slightly larger projects. That's helpful here because we're now looking into cap and floor '27 and beyond into larger projects backed by customers with project finance that have slightly different needs to the pilot projects we've been selling into to date. In those first 3 months, I've spent the first month getting around the business, and the second month on our budget for '25 to ensure cost discipline and some inflation OpEx growth. And then the third month closing out LODES, which we'll come to later on is very important for our business. So thank you all, and good to meet this morning.

Good. Thank you, Adam. So let's move on to ENDURIUM. And Matt, if I hand the slides over to you to take on.

Absolutely. Thank you, Jonathan, and great to be here with all of you this morning. Look, what we're most excited about over the last few months is not only that we got the ENDURIUM product finished, we had it manufactured. But now that it is operating and really going through its spaces with our customers, Gamesa Electric at their site in Spain. We are learning a tremendous amount about how this product is really operating and how we can operate it better to really maximize the potential of that platform. We've already significantly increased the amount of energy and power that we can get out of those individual units. We're getting about 15% more energy than we have designed for, which is a direct cost savings for every one of our customers because it means that they can deliver the energy they need out of a smaller number of boxes. And all of that data is going in from that test is going into, as Jonathan was mentioning earlier, some of the work that our engineers are doing to process that operating data through AI, through machine learning algorithms to be able to further optimize how that battery is really performing. We're currently manufacturing our first full-scale array, the 14.4 megawatt hour product that we will be delivering to Everdura later on this year. That delivery is going to include all the enhancements that we have made on the basis of this first test. And as that even larger array gets installed and as our test program at La Plana proceeds, we look forward to further enhancing the way that these batteries are going to operate together in the near future. So if you want to go on to the next slide, one of the other things that we are most excited about is the preparations that we're making to not only have those -- that battery design ready to go, but to be able to manufacture and deliver those in an optimized and efficient manner. Some of you may have been with us last summer at our Capital Markets Day when we opened our factory in Motherwell. That is where we will be doing final assembly test of our products for delivery to the U.K. and Europe. We, since then, have been working on converting our stack manufacturing over to an optimized sort of partially automated stack production methodology at our existing factory in Bathgate. That semi-automated production does 2 things. It definitely increases the throughput through that building, allows the workers who are putting those stacks together on that line to be most efficient in how they do their work. But perhaps most critically, it gives us a tremendously enhanced degree of quality control on every one of the components that go into every one of our cell stacks, which is going to give us tremendous benefits as we start to build ever more of these products, ever more of these cell stacks for the much larger deliveries that we see coming along in the near future. We have -- one of the things we're watching closely is what we will do for delivery of projects into the U.S. given the fluctuations in trade policy and industrial policy we've seen in the U.S. over the recent period, we are being as nimble as we can in terms of locking in our plans for U.S.-based manufacturing. We do, however, have some very, very exciting projects that are in the final stages of negotiation. And once we get to the point where we have ink on paper for those deals, we will be pulling the trigger on making sure we have the manufacturing capacity to support those projects. It's worth noting that those aren't big buildings that we're looking -- could be looking to sign leases on. We are looking in the U.S. to primarily expand our manufacturing through partnerships. Some of our existing suppliers already have a significant footprint in the U.S. And so our goal is to be able to be as nimble as possible and as capital efficient as possible as we go and make those plans. Finally, at the bottom right, you see the factory that our partners in Taiwan, Everdura are -- where they are starting to build out their factory for delivery of projects into their country and into other countries in Southeast Asia. What they are doing is they're going to be taking that 14.4 megawatt hour array that we talked about in the previous slide and using that as a first article to really help build out their factory and their manufacturing capacity in the most efficient way possible. We, in the past few months, have been encouraged by the amount of commercial progress that we've been able to make, especially following the launch of ENDURIUM in December. We've had a big uptick in the demand that our customers are expressing for that product. The project that is going to Everdura is obviously sort of the cornerstone of our 2025 production. We announced earlier this week the 20-megawatt hours of our VS3 product that will be going here in the U.K. into our LODES project. Smaller deliveries into the U.S. This remains very much a product of interest for especially behind-the-meter electricity users who do not like the fire risk that lithium-ion batteries involve. And so for example, HITT, this recent sale that we made are going to be installing one of our batteries alongside their headquarters because they like the fact that there's such little fire risk with having one of our products in place. Finally, we announced a few weeks ago a 10.8-megawatt hour ENDURIUM product with our Hungarian partner, STS. This is a follow-on deal to the smaller VS3 projects we delivered to STS about 1.5 years ago. So tremendous validation for us that the projects that we have delivered into the field are giving customers the confidence that they need to go and place much larger orders in the future. Those projects together give us a pretty good handle on our revenues for 2025, in line with the forecast that have been in the public domain. As we look forward to 2026, we've got a number of much larger projects coming along. Some of the projects funded by the U.S. DOE that we had announced about a year ago will be -- we still believe will be part of that picture despite the tumultuous nature of the U.S. market right now. It's worth noting that the programs that funded these projects were programs that originated under the previous Trump administration. And so we think that there is a very good chance that they will continue forward as was previously indicated. Finally, when we look into 2027 and beyond, really, it's the larger projects that are specific to long-duration non-lithium storage that we see starting to emerge around the world where we think we will have the largest portion of our commercial traction. And of course, here in the U.K., that is the jewel in the crown of those opportunities is the U.K. Cap & Floor scheme, where we see projects that have very large non-lithium characteristics like ours are going to have a really good place to play as that scheme gets rolled out over the coming weeks and months.

So second now on cost and where we are at. So when this management team spoke to you last year, the commitment of a 40% reduction on cost on the new ENDURIUM product. It's fair to say the path of that has not been linear, but that has now been achieved. So if you look at where we're selling STS at compared to VS3 in 2024, that has achieved that 40% cost reduction. Around about 24% of that has been achieved after launch, both improvements to stack design, but crucially working down through our supply chain in China. The interesting part about this graph here is we've achieved on a percentage basis over the last 5 years, around about the same cost reduction as a lithium has with around about GBP 40 billion to GBP 60 billion of investment a year compared to the GBP 20 million of OpEx and R&D that's going into this business. The reason I mentioned that is because we think there is further to go working down through our supply chain. Those factories in lithium are working about 95% utilization. We're working a long way below that given the lumpiness of our order book. And so we think we have sight on further cost reductions from where we are today in order to try and achieve that. So a little bit on LODES itself. This is a really important project for us. Initially, we're selling this to a customer. We've now essentially done this project ourselves and therefore, have the full benefit of the up to GBP 10 million grant from DESNZ. And the reason this is important is because when we're speaking to customers about Cap & Floor projects, we can now prove out the revenue stack with our own data, which is critical. And it also means we're sitting on the other side of the fence experiencing all the same pieces there are in terms of putting these projects onto the grid, an important validation in the U.K. market for the cash flows that they're putting behind these projects and the difference crucially in the revenue stack for trading long-duration batteries. I'm going to take a moment to step back here in terms of why we're here and what we're trying to achieve. So in the U.K. market, we have the highest electricity prices at the moment in the advanced world, around about 120% up pre-COVID. And the interesting question is why is that? Because we have solar renewable penetration over 50% at the moment. And we actually have slightly cheaper gas prices than the rest of Europe as well. And the short answer is marginal pricing. So renewables will bid in first into a price auction at close to 0, then you tend to get nuclear and coal bidding in and then finally, gas. And the last electron to balance the system is the price that everyone pays. In Europe, last electron is gas about 40% of the time. In the U.K., that last electron is gas about 97% of the time. The short reason is we've taken coal off the grid before we had anything else to balance it out, and that is driving high prices across our market. The government has now become aware of this and put in place some solid schemes. And this essentially is what we're seeing underneath Cap & Floor. So in the same way you saw the CFDs in the offshore wind sector, Cap & Floor will now put a floor on these revenues that allows lenders to come in and put project financing against these projects. The first scheme to move was actually in Hungary. That's the project you've seen us sell STS at. The second scheme, Cap & Floor has been announced in the first quarter of this year. The window opens next month, and there'll be a 2-month window for developers to bid into that. Matt has been working very hard with those names in this space in order to supply our technology into that regime. Subsequent to that will be the Italian scheme in the second half of the year. And what's common across all these schemes is that they're all government bids essentially to take on long duration storage for long periods of time, typically 25 years plus, and that is benefiting in terms of this technology's ability to have produced degradation and cycling. I'm going to go into a little bit more detail on the Cap & Floor itself. So there will be a floor that will cover the cost of debt and a minimum return on the equity and then a cap whereby profits are returned back to the customer based on the trading revenues of the battery. The important point for us is there are 2 streams. The first stream is the mature technologies, essentially hydro and lithium. The second stream for less mature, what they call [ TOL8 ] technologies. And within that is essentially our cells, compressed air, liquefied air and a couple of other technologies orientated around flow batteries. That's important for us because we think within that stream, we probably have the longest track record of some 80 projects just shy of 200 megawatt hours. A number of those other technologies haven't had the chance to have that level of traction across that broader range of projects, which places us in a good position to be able to attract financing under a scheme like that. So really quite important development. Important caveat to mention here is that this will be, as I say, a window open in this quarter, awards second quarter next year, contracting back end of next year. So that will start to give us some visibility a little bit beyond where we are today.

I think what's been most compelling commercially for us over the last few months and maybe even the last years in the broadest possible terms is how programs around the world are evolving and emerging that will support exactly the kind of product that we are developing and selling in the market. Whether it's programs in Ontario or New York where there are specific carve-outs for non-lithium technologies or whether it's folks like here in the U.K. with Cap & Floor or in California, where there's a definite push to have multiple different technologies, certainly the electric grid. We're very encouraged to see policymakers taking the view that path dependency towards a single technology for the world's future energy storage needs is not the right answer. Fortunately, as we look across these programs, what we're seeing is that programs that existed 3, 4, 5 years ago, where we were the recipient of, say, tens of millions of dollars to go and build some of these pioneering plants. We've taken those funds. We've deployed those projects. Those projects are now operational and our customers are driving great benefits from those projects. That proof of capability is putting us in pull position to -- now that these programs are not in the tens of billions of dollars -- sorry, tens of millions of dollars, but now in tens of billions of dollars. So as these programs get rolled out, we think the proof that we have in the market of our capabilities is going to hold us in really good stead and put us in a great position to take advantage of these programs as they go live.

Okay. Thank you, Matthew. So I will finish with sort of the outlook statement, but just to give a little bit more clarity on the LODES project because obviously, that was one of the 2 big announcements on Monday. And for those who have chartered our journey for a while and followed the announcements, I will not pretend that is how it has ended up is how we originally envisaged it. And we have a number of sort of bites of the cherry as you saw from the various announcements as we went through. But when I take a step back, I am very pleased with where we now are. And I think when we had previously talked about this project with retail shareholders, with institutional shareholders, they were pleased to see that we would be sort of ending with a significant asset connected to the grid. It will be Europe's largest flow battery, we are told, which is great. But actually, we were effectively handing that value to a third party. And now we will have the benefit of having full control of that asset. And I really don't want to sort of understate how important that will be to us. It is going to be a commercial operating battery asset. So we will be getting a very useful revenue stream from that. It is a 5.5 megawatt asset. If you were to look at revenue curves from [indiscernible] who we typically use, those curves are anywhere between 100,000 and 200,000 per megawatt. And those prices are typically higher towards the South and Southeast of England where our asset is. So I'm not giving any predictions on that because we're not giving forecast, but that will deliver through a good amount of gross cash flow. And of that, obviously, we look after our own O&M with the people we have already. You've got to pay the cost of leasing the land and the insurance and some into [indiscernible], et cetera. But this will be a useful asset and the demonstration ability to existing customers and investors, undoubtedly, when this is up and running, we'll do a day for retail investors to come and have a look as well, I think will be really, really helpful. And why did we do this with VS3 rather than ENDURIUM? It's a question that everyone has asked us. There are a number of reasons for that. Firstly, the grant was specifically for the VS3. So we had to do it for the VS3. We also had, as we've said before, some VS3s on the balance sheet, and we wanted to monetize those. So very important, we did that. But ultimately, a customer wants to see how the revenue stack will build up and he can put that into his financial model. And you can -- it's not difficult to change the efficiency levels between ENDURIUM and the VS3 and change the CapEx number. So it still provides all the necessary data. We obviously have a system at La Plana that's been installed that has been commissioned. Gamesa are very happy with that. And that sort of proves out that ENDURIUM technology works. And obviously, we have systems going to Everdura and STS. So that's just a little bit more flavor on LODES. But just sort of rolling that back, just to confirm being in line with expectations now the revised ones for last year and this year. When we spoke before, this was all about resetting priorities, setting out our trajectory and then reporting against that and doing it on a measured basis. And so that when we say that we are in a position that we can give comfort that, that is our best held belief as to where we are heading. And hopefully, this is a first step to shareholders to showing you that we are really focusing on achieving that. That internal focus on scaling up manufacturing capabilities, we have an enormous challenge coming with the growth and particularly with our markets in the U.S. and the U.K., but we think we are well positioned on that. And then just finally, what we are seeing with the Cap & Floor regime in the U.K., but also elsewhere is now the support for long duration stories that we have been waiting for, which is why we are very excited. So I think now we can perhaps move on to the Q&A for whoever [indiscernible].

[Operator Instructions] What I'll do now is I'll hand over to Joe to chair the Q&A, and I'll pick up from you at the end. Joe.

Brilliant. Thanks very much. And yes, we've got an incredible amount of questions. So thank you, everyone, that's been sending them through. Right. I think we're going to start with -- there's a question here asking about the first ENDURIUM deployment at the La Plana site at Gamesa La Plana site in Spain. The trading update states that the ENDURIUM performed in line with expectations. Can you please expand on what that means? And Matt, can I start with you?

Yes, I'm happy to jump on that. What the team at Siemens Gamesa had presented us with was a pretty comprehensive suite of tests that they were going to put the battery through. What we have found is that it met or exceeded all of the performance parameters that we were expected to perform. And those performance parameters are things like looking at the energy output as a function of what power batteries are operating at, the ramp of efficiency as a function of how long those charging discharge cycles last and secondary performance parameters like the response time, how quickly are we able to ramp up the battery from 0 to full power. What has been compelling is that we've exceeded most of the performance parameters that we set out to achieve. The one that I would flag, just as an example, is that this was a product that we had originally rated and expected to deliver 300 kilowatt hours per building block, and we are pretty consistently getting more than 340 kilowatt hours out. So at least about a 15% improvement over what our expectations have been. That's absolutely critical because that 15% extra energy is basically a direct 15% cost reduction to our customers, right? We are able to deliver fewer of these boxes while meeting our customers' needs. And therefore, we can enhance the performance of the system and enhance ultimately, our ability to deliver these projects profitably.

And sticking with that theme, there's another question here asking -- I think we'll stick with that theme on ENDURIUM, there's quite a number of questions. The next one is asking around sort of cost down and sort of anticipated sort of margin growth. And I know we touched on that in the presentation, but Jonathan, perhaps I can go to you just to sort of just add a little bit more on that.

Yes, No. Absolutely. Thanks to -- and in the last 6 months since I've taken over, this has been a key area of focus because it is critical. And I think it is worth noting that there are quite a number of areas that we are looking at. Matt's focused on one of the most important ones. Our ability to understand the performance of the existing product we have today using both the work done at ENDURIUM and from the VS3 and how that operates is one way to take cost down because we price on a per kilowatt hour basis, if you're getting more kilowatts out of that same product, that's an instant cost down. If you look at the bill of materials, we've said before that the vanadium electrolyte is broadly 40% of that cost. And that vanadium electrolyte comes from vanadium that goes through quite a number of processes to get it to high grade before you convert it into electrolyte. And we are working on ways of taking the ore sort of effectively out of an earlier stage and then putting it into process. That takes cost out. That doesn't mean there's any change in the overall price of vanadium, but we just -- that processing cost is quite significant and then looking at ways that we can deal with a greater number of sort of potential contaminants that sit within that. And we're making very good progress there. And we are seeing that cost of the vanadium electrolyte come down potentially quite significantly. So that's one area. There is the old adage that if you want to take cost out of a product, you remove bits until it breaks and then put 10% back in. And I will -- I won't necessarily give credit to who said that, but I think you can work out who I mean by that. There is very much something in that. We have a product that has come out of product development as a first iteration. There is a lot we can do to now optimize that existing product with the parts that are in there. And then what we haven't talked about within that is how significant volume can drive the cost out. The reason we have a modular product and we have one box, and that means we can put that one box through the supply chain through our manufacturing, it means that we can drive significant cost out of it. And we need to be conscious of a competitive market. But the ability to sustain margins is that effort on the cost down and making sure we have got the parameters that we manage to sell those virtues to clients that it doesn't degrade and that it does operate over that 25-year period plus such that if you are looking to put that product on site, you don't have to overspecify nearly as much as you would do if you were trying to put a different type of technology on there. And that again sort of adds to our ability to sustain margins.

Thanks. And I'm going to lead on with another question, which dovetails very well with this. And it references the obvious cost and cycle life advantages of ENDURIUM. But how are other nonfinancial advantages being conveyed via marketing and customer engagement strategies, Matt?

Yes. Look, so we've got a number of different characteristics that we talk about in terms of the way that our batteries are better than lithium. Cycle life and cost are one thing, but fire safety is another, recyclability is another. The ability for these batteries to retain value at the end of life rather than being a pile of not very useful hazardous lithium cells that need to be disposed of is -- could be a big advantage as well. I would say that it really depends on which customer we're talking to. Specific customers have specific challenges around the projects that we're trying to deliver. And so we typically listen to what they have to say and then we will pick from all those different advantages and really evangelize for which ones are most helpful. I'll give you an example of one recently where we had some significant challenges. We're talking with a customer who has -- is planning to deploy one of our batteries at -- in combination with a solar project. And they are obviously financing that solar project over a 20-year period. And they went to the bank and they said, well, we want to add lithium batteries alongside those as well. And the bank said, no way, we see lithium batteries wearing out in 7 years. There's no way we're going to give you a 20-year wrap around that product. And so for us to be able to go and say, no, this is a product that we have proven in the field has the kind of durability that we'll see it operational for 20 years and beyond. And therefore, having that be an asset that can be financed alongside something fundamentally durable like a solar panel -- solar array is a tremendous advantage to that particular customer.

Thanks, Matt. And again, sticking with the sort of on this theme, and then I think we'll move to a different one. There's a question here asking around Gamesa Electric and their acquisition by ABB and how that -- how Invinity are looking to sort of leverage that in respect of the European market. Jonathan, can I put that one to you?

Yes, I can answer that. That acquisition is announced and progressing as I understand it. It is due to complete. And I'm reassured it is on target to complete by the end of this first half of this year. So for the moment, they are 2 separate companies. And typically, from an M&A process, there's not a huge amount of engagement before that happens. So I'm not expecting there to be a quick win at the moment that takes place. But what I do know is that -- the interest from ABB in Gamesa Electric is because they see some very significant growth that can come from that acquisition, and we are a key part of their strategy going forward. And in some of the conversations I've been having recently with Gamesa, they have been asking us how we can assist them with that. So I'm very pleased to see how that is progressing. And I think there are some very exciting opportunities to come from that because obviously, ABB themselves has a very substantial track record and reputation alongside Gamesa. So to be partnering with them can only be very helpful.

And sort of sticking with that theme of markets, let's just -- there's a lot of questions here about the U.S., which is obviously understandable. There's a number of questions around U.S. manufacturing strategy, which I think we covered extensively in presentation. But -- and obviously, there's a number of questions around tariffs and our approach to those. I think all 3 execs have probably got something to say on this. But Jonathan, perhaps we'll start with you and we can move around.

Yes. Look, absolutely. We are -- it is useful that we have flexibility. We have a decent-sized manufacturing capability in the U.K. We have manufacturing capability, obviously, in North America and Vancouver, perhaps the wrong side of the border for this discussion. But also we've got substantial capabilities in China through Baojia, but also we've got capabilities being developed by Everdura in Taiwan. So flexibility is helpful within this. But our U.S. strategy always assumed that we would need to develop U.S. manufacturing in due course because certainly, the -- some of the Department of Energy projects do require U.S. content. So the fact that the President is saying foreign manufacturers need to move to the U.S. to compete here is not a challenge for us because we were always intending on doing that. It is -- I can't pretend that not having as much flexibility to supply as we would wish to, to sort of smooth manufacturing across those different locations is helpful. But we do have that flexibility as things change. What we need to make sure we don't do is sort of rely on the fact that for the moment, we have a reasonably cautious tariff regime compared with other areas, but things do change quite quickly. So we have been talking to the supply chain within the U.S. for well over 12 months and have made very good progress. Our partner in China, Baojia does have U.S. facilities, which -- so therefore, a transition and get them to work on a substantial amount of the product is something that is well within our gift to do.

If I can just pile on quickly, Jonathan. And one of the things that we've seen commercially that has been really encouraging is customers have been very willing to be very collaborative on trying to minimize the impact of these tariffs. And whether that's putting flexibility into our contracts in terms of the locations from which our components and the products can be delivered to minimize the impact of tariffs as the regimes change and evolve or whether that's a willingness to share the burden of any cost of those tariffs as they get finalized, we think everyone -- a lot of people we work with have been very willing to play ball and really minimize any uncertainty that comes from this world that we find ourselves operating in.

Just as an add-on to that on scaling manufacturing capacity. So our current manufacturing capacity is around 0.5 gigawatt hour. We publicly announced in the past before another semi-automated line costs us around GBP 1 million. That's another 200-megawatt hours of capacity. We'll manage that CapEx in a judicious way based on firm orders. The lead time on those lines is around 6 months. So that places us in a good place to be able to scale manufacturing capacity to meet firm orders.

Thanks very much. And Adam, you managed to cover off another question that's come in there. So thanks for slotting that one. So I think we're moving back on to sort of the market side of things. There's a few questions here asking around data that we're getting from our batteries and how we can use that. And if we have enough data, we feel we're confident with the amount of data we've got, that's going to allow us to sort of scale up into some of these large projects? And Adam has already answered sort of the question around how the manufacturing scales, but how does our data scale and how do we use that data and interpret that data to improve the product to be able to do these bigger projects? Matt, do you want to start?

Yes. Look, very happy to talk about that. One of the things -- one of the reasons that we adopted a modular strategy for our products going back a decade now is because we saw that the ability to have a consistent set of data from an absolutely identical fleet of products operating in the field was going to be totally critical for delivering the kind of very robust low-cost product that our market is ultimately going [indiscernible]. As it stands today, we've got over 1,500 of these individual flow battery modules that we have built, tested and operated. That's a larger fleet of flow batteries than the rest of the flow battery industry has ever built combined. It is a phenomenal resource for us that we can look into a database that includes operating data from -- delivered on a second-by-second basis from every one of those modules to really understand the fundamentals of how these batteries are operating. In terms of what we're doing with that data now, simple things like managing the algorithms that operate the pumps inside our batteries that provide the flow of electrolyte into our cell stacks to make sure that, that charge and discharge reaction can happen in the most effective way. Looking at varying those pump speeds so that we are getting the reactants into our cell stack without -- while using the minimum extra power in those pumps to make that happen is a huge advantage for us and something our engineers have been actively refining and we will be continuing to deliver enhanced performance in our products in the field over the coming weeks and months.

Just an additional note on that information. So our revenue stack for our customers trading on battery is confidential. That's their information. And for that reason, that's why that is particularly important to us. One of the requirements under the fundraising last year was to use a portion of that to invest in U.K. projects essentially for that reason to be able to put a project on the grid in order to have the information on the revenue stack in order to then go into the commercial selling of these batteries. So information and scaling coming from those is really important to us on that side.

Great. And a number of questions, totally unsurprisingly asking about the recent share price performance and asking for a comment on that. Jonathan, can you cover that?

Delighted to give my view, I think, is what I've got to say. And it's easy to speculate that there must be something going on. And I've been involved in public markets now for over 25 years. And inevitably, it looks like there must be something going on behind the scenes when there seems to be strange movements in share prices on good news. And I think I mean it is very frustrating. It's frustrating for us. It's frustrating for us as individuals. We need to incentivize our staff, and we pay them a fair wage, but equity incentivization for the staff is important and that is hard to sort of demonstrate value on a falling share price. So it really does mean something to us. And clearly, we had hoped on the good news we announced on Monday morning and the good news we've announced on Cap & Floor a few weeks ago on STS, we have seen a share price rise. I think we -- the markets at the moment are not in the best of health, which is perhaps the master of the understatement. Small-cap redemptions have had a very significant amount of outflows over the last number of years. And what you tend to see at the moment is that an announcement creates a trading event -- and if someone has a redemption and just is a forced seller because of it, you put an announcement out, and that is their opportunity to trade into volume and the market maker that simply isn't willing to take a position because of some difficult movements in general across the piece at the moment, that tends to mean the share prices go down. You've seen this not with us, but with others as well. And it's frustrating. My view is we've just got to take a step back and say, look, if we continue to deliver, at some point, that will change and the value will come back in. And this is obviously an opportunity at the moment for those who do wish to top up. But a lot of people have invested a significant sum of money, including us as individuals, certainly me, and I want to see this go higher. The way we can control that is by continuing to deliver to shine the light on the news flow and to not get too excited by events that sort of seem quite exciting. And then if you have to roll back a tiny bit, then there's an overdue reaction to that. So it is on our radar screen. We have supportive institutional shareholder bases. You've seen shareholders topping up. We've had a very good reaction from the institutional base we've seen this year. So we're well positioned. We just need to try and avoid sort of putting out announcements on the same day that there are big stock market falls because of tariffs coming through, et cetera. We've had a bit of bad luck there as well.

There's a couple of questions here around partners. And I don't -- I know we covered this in the presentation, but I'll throw this out to all 3 of you. Is there any elaboration you can make around our partnership strategy? It's a specific question saying, please can you sort of give a bit more detail on what Invinity's global partnership strategy is and then how it's developing? Matt?

Sure. I'm happy to jump in and Jonathan, you have a lot of these people in your regular contact as well. So feel free to jump in on top of me. Look, we have long said that we will not achieve the global ambitions that we have for our product and for our technology if we try and do everything ourselves. We need to work through partnerships in regions where we do not have boots on the ground, where we do not have sort of a native understanding of how electricity markets work and how our products might be deployed. And so because of that, we've been aggressive in going out and finding the right kind of partnerships who can deliver ever larger volume through of our product into those markets. We have an existing partnership in Asia with Everdura. We have the partnership with Siemens Gamesa that we think is going to be a significant portion of our European growth strategy in the medium term. And beyond that, we have a number of other partnerships that are developing in the background that as they come to fruition, we think will give us access to the very front of the queue in some of the other more interesting markets around the world where we see our products being very valuable.

Thanks, Matt. I think we've only got time for one more question before I'll hand over to Jonathan to close out the call. And I'm going to pick this one. It's a good one. It's -- Joe, can you ask the exacts which commercial market they are most excited about? So can I go around the 3 of you and ask you just a couple of words, which market are you most excited about, let's say, over the next 12 months? I'll start with Matt and Adam.

Yes. Look, it has to be the U.K., right? The Cap & Floor program now that it's finally been announced, looks like it's going to be incredibly compelling for us. Just the fact that we've got the U.K. government saying that they want to bring somewhere between 2 and 9 gigawatts worth of long-duration storage onto the U.K. grid within the next few years is nothing short of transformational, transformational for the U.K. grid, transformational for long-duration storage and ultimately transform for us as well.

I'm going to be incredibly dull and pick the same answer as Matt. Reason is we're a small company, we do need to focus our resources. Those core markets for us are the U.K. and the U.S., where we sold a lot of battery to date. The size of the program going into the U.K., how it fits with our technology and the problem it's addressing is a good fit. That's what's encouraged me to move into this role in solving that next challenge of the energy transition. So that would be my pick as well.

I'm not going to disagree with that, but I'm going to add to it potentially because I think the -- there is a very interesting opportunity in the U.S. given what is happening there at the moment. And I think there will be a number of manufacturers that will struggle to compete by deploying product in there. And I look at where we are positioned commercially, say, in California against our long-duration peers there. And we know from speaking to partners that know the competition that our technology is performing better, and we have a better reputation. And we are now heading at a price point that really can compete against those. And I think there are -- given the relationships we've got with the California Energy Commission and elsewhere, I think actually, we can start to develop a really quite interesting business there in the short term. The Cap & Floor brings through hopefully significant volume, '27, '28, '29. But I think there is also even possibly in the more immediate term, quite a bit more to come from that U.S. side. So I'm not going to disagree with my 2 colleagues, but I'm just adding to that with a little bit of extra excitement there that I see.

And sorry, just -- I might just shoehorn this at the end, just I think we've obviously covered in the presentation, but we've not covered it in the Q&A. So just very brief. There's a few questions here asking around sort of the forecast for '25 and '26 and revenues and funding that sort of stuff. Jonathan or Adam, do you want to just give a little bit of color on that?

I think if I was CFO, I would have stuck my hand up. Adam is now CFO, I'm going to hand it over to you.

Thanks, Joe. So obviously, we're a public company. We cannot give forecasts. However, we are covered by 3 analysts, Canaccord, BSA and Craig. [indiscernible] thank you. And we have numbers out there in the market. We are 90% covered on those '25 numbers based on what we have announced to date. That relies on the full grant from DESNZ and also STS securing funding as a comfortable place for us to be on the 31st of March for '25 numbers. We're seeing some excellent opportunities, as we mentioned, in Cap & Floor for '27 and beyond. So that -- this gives us visibility of at least 12 months from a cash flow perspective. And Matt has talked a little bit to the opportunities we're seeing also in '26 in our pipeline.

Thanks a lot. Right. I think we'll leave it there as we're already 2 minutes over. But Jonathan, can I just -- can I give them to you just for a final sort of roundup and to close off the call, please?

Yes. Of course. Thanks, Joe. And I do appreciate everybody. We've had a very significant number of people joining in this session remotely. So very pleased with that. We've had a good week presented to shareholders. I think in general, across the board, people can see the progress we are making. They can see that we are measured in that in what we say, that we are focused -- relentlessly focused on delivery. This is a highly competitive market. Nothing goes in a straight line. It is challenging to manage that. But I think the investments we have made to date, the people we've got and critically, the technology we've got are positioning us well. And I've been involved in this business for quite some time. And if we take a step back and I think and chart the progress that's been made, the progress is very significant to go from where we were with redT, where we went with Avalon beginning of the merger, to the number of products we now have out in the field. That significantly over the 5 gigawatt hours of dispatched energy is not something to be sniffed at. That's a significant amount of energy. Our batteries work. There's no doubt on that before. People are always wondering where is our technology. That's disappeared now. It is all about the things that are in our control, which is cost and that relentless focus on cost. It's about the execution and delivery, and it's maintaining that competitiveness. So that's very exciting, not sort of under sort of taking away from the challenge that's ahead of us, but the reward is very much there as well. So again, thank you for your interest and time, and we look forward to speaking again soon.

That's great. I'd just like to thank you all for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close this session as you now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that the management team can better understand your views and expectations. On behalf of the management team of Invinity Energy Systems plc, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good morning to you all.