ITM Power Plc (ITM) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

October 19, 2026

AIM GB Industrials Electrical Equipment earnings 57 min

Earnings Call Speaker Segments

Operator

operator
#1

Good morning, and welcome to the ITM Power plc Investor Presentation. [Operator Instructions]. The company may not be in a position to answer every question received during the meeting itself. However, the company can review all questions submitted today and publish responses where it's appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll. I'd now like to hand over to the team at ITM Power plc. Good morning.

Dennis Schulz

executive
#2

Good morning, and welcome to our Capital Market update. Financial year '26 was a strong year for ITM Power, in which we delivered our highest ever annual revenues of GBP 43.6 million, representing a 68% increase year-on-year and a more than 700% increase over 3 years. We have continued to strengthen our position as a leading supplier of electrolyzers, underpinned by our proprietary stack technology, deep manufacturing expertise, strong reference plants and a product portfolio trusted by industrial customers. Today, Amy, Simon and I want to cover a wide range of topics. First, a bit of setting the scene and then a deeper dive into the market we operate in. Following a short recap of our business model, I would like to then draw attention to the Hydropulse project we announced last week. We will then continue with a project execution update before going into more details about our collaboration with Rheinmetall. Simon will then update on the U.K. government investment in ITM and on our Chronos program. Amy will report our financial year '26 results and provide guidance for FY '27. Let's kick off with a look on the market and competition, which I will keep brief as the next slide is going into more detail. Macroeconomically, the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East continue to highlight the structural fragility of fossil fuel-dependent energy systems. Geopolitical shocks, price volatility and supply chain disruptions underscore that energy security cannot be taken for granted. The strategic rationale for accelerating the energy transition has become clearer and more urgent. Scaling clean, sovereign and resilient regional energy systems enables to reduce dependence on imported fossil fuels. Electrolytic hydrogen plays a key role in these systems of the future. It offers critical grid balancing and energy storage capabilities and extends decarbonization into hard-to-abate sectors like steel, chemicals, fertilizers and synthetic fuels, including for defense purposes. As previously reported, Europe remains the most attractive market for green hydrogen and our products with robust policy frameworks, substantial pipeline and wider infrastructure investments and a growing push for made in Europe. Of course, other regions are progressing their hydrogen ambitions as well, including, for example, Japan, South Korea, Australia and Canada, but Europe remains the focal point with projects advancing at scale and at pace. From refineries replacing fossil-derived hydrogen to energy companies converting renewable power into hydrogen to supply industry, ITM has evolved into a trusted partner with proven performance and a strong reference plant situation. In an environment of fierce competition and market consolidation underway, operational data from sizable reference plants with credible customers and execution experience do matter. As a result, we are seeing strong customer engagement, in particular, for Alpha 50, NEPTUNE V and Hydropulse. Operationally, we have never been in a stronger position, be it on core technology, project execution capabilities or manufacturing. Our competitive and comprehensive product portfolio has enabled us to win important projects in the year, including a NEPTUNE V project with Westnetz in Germany, and NEPTUNE II project with a cement producer in Spain, a Poseidon contract with MorGen in the U.K. and the NEPTUNE V contract with Octopus Energy Generation. We also secured important project supplier selections for opportunities progressing towards FID, including with Uniper for the 120-megawatt Humber project, with a confidential customer in Asia for a project larger than 300 megawatt and with German Stablegrid for 2 projects totaling 710 megawatts. In addition, we entered into a 150-megawatt capacity reservation with RWE. I will skip the U.K. government investment and our Rheinmetall partnership for now as we will talk about that later in the presentation. Project execution has progressed at pace across multiple flagship projects, including RWE's 200-megawatt Lingen plant, Linde's Leuna project and Shell's 100-megawatt REFHYNE II. Our list of high-profile reference plants keeps growing. Next up is our financial position, which I will keep short because Amy will talk about it later in the presentation. It is worth highlighting, though, that we closed the year with more cash than we entered it. Our strong balance sheet remains a clear competitive advantage, particularly in light of the ongoing market consolidation. Our order backlog remained at a healthy level despite recognizing record revenues in the year and is now consisting of 83% profitable contracts, up from 60% at the start of the financial year. This brings us to our strategic priorities, which have proven right over the year and remain valid. Technology leadership and competitiveness continue to be central to our strategy. Full ownership of core science, IP and manufacturing enables rapid innovation, supply chain resilience and product differentiation. In October last year, we reinforced this leadership by the successful launch of Alpha 50, our scalable 50-megawatt full scope hydrogen plant. Alpha has generated strong customer engagement as it aligns with the market's appetite for standardized industrial scale hydrogen solutions from trusted technology providers with convincing reference plants. In support of our long-term vision to build an integrated hydrogen company, we launched Hydropulse in 2025. Hydropulse is our new build, own and operate business model, which is poised to fundamentally transform the financial profile of our company. I will pause here because I'm updating on Hydropulse later in the presentation. Let's now take a closer look on the market we operate in. The outlook for electrolytic hydrogen as an essential building block of the energy systems of the future remains compelling with significant growth forecasted over the next years. That said, many final investment decisions short FID continue taking longer than anticipated. In contrast, the underlying fundamentals have strengthened. A phase like this is naturally favoring companies with the discipline to focus on project execution, the preservation of capital and to relentlessly build the capabilities needed for the future. Just getting on with it effectively and efficiently, this is how we build a resilient market leader. On this slide, I would like to focus on the bottom bit, which attempts to illustrate growth momentum by use case as we experience it right now. We are seeing the biggest demand pull from refineries today. Refineries are turning to green hydrogen to cut emissions and to meet the binding RED III targets, including 42% RFNBO use by 2030. Refineries require hydrogen to remove sulfur and impurities from oil products and to convert heavy hydrocarbons into diesel, petrol and jet fuel. REFHYNE II with Shell is such a project, as is Lingen with RWE, which will supply the Total refinery in Leuna via pipeline. Refinery applications, whether directly or indirectly dominate our sales pipeline today. The second growth area, although much less mature, is defense, meaning synthetic fuels, which can be produced independent from fossil fuels and offer unparalleled sovereignty and resilience advantages. We will explain that in more detail later in the presentation. Interest in mobility-related applications has moderately declined though, over the recent months. Looking back over the last couple of years, mobility-related applications were making up a big portion of our sales pipeline. These projects are typically small, say, 2 to 10 megawatts. And while there still are these projects, the trend is undeniably going for larger scale applications instead. Don't let the gray horizontal arrows fool you when it comes to the next 3 items. We are seeing continued but unchanged in trend, demand from energy companies who aim to convert especially surplus renewable energy into hydrogen. The amount and cost of curtailed renewable energy are mind-blowing today, and it will continue to get worse from here. We expect an increasing demand from this segment in the future. Industry continues to offer a wide range of use case opportunities such as for steel, cement or chemicals. We are not seeing a major trend here in our sales pipeline, neither a material decline nor a material increase in demand. The same applies to derivatives such as ammonia for fertilizers. This is actually surprising as recent crises have exposed, for example, in the U.K., a dangerous dependence on imported fertilizers. Domestic green hydrogen-based sovereign fertilizer production could strengthen food security, reduce geopolitical dependencies and cut emissions. We, therefore, expect the penny to drop in the future and demand to pick up substantially in this segment. In the capital market update in January this year, I showed you this slide and explained our business model. I won't go through everything again, but want to highlight the Hydropulse model briefly once more. ITM is originally coming from the core technology. And over the years, we acquired the capability to design and manufacture market-leading electrolyzer products, which we sell to our customers. We also built the EPC capabilities required to integrate our technology into full plants and on customer sites. These capabilities form the basis for our strategic evolution into becoming a build, own and operate company as well. Under the brand Hydropulse, we will invest, build, own and operate hydrogen production plants to serve industrial offtakers under long-term contracts. This business model is not only significantly profitable, but also highly cash generative and it offers long-term contracted recurring revenue streams, which will fundamentally transform the financial profile of our company. The introduction of Hydropulse represents an important strategic move, broadening our route to market and addressing key barriers to quicker hydrogen adoption. By eliminating customers' CapEx and mitigating perceived operational and technology risks, the model has resonated strongly with prospective customers. This market traction is evidenced by the signing of heads of terms for large-scale green hydrogen project between Hydropulse and a leading oil refinery in the European Union. We announced the deal last week alongside a dedicated capital market video. At 150-megawatt capacity and with a planned 10-year contract duration for the operational phase, the project demonstrates the massive scale and potential of our BOO model. Our customer is planning to provide land and utilities, including power, mitigating our exposure to electricity price risk. A joint FEED study is already underway, and we are targeting FID in 2027 with hydrogen production targeted to start already in 2029. As explained last week, financing discussions are moving ahead constructively. If progressed through FID, it would represent by far the largest contract of ITM to date and establish a material long-term contracted revenue stream for the group. And this is just one of many Hydropulse projects we are progressing. For industrial customers to take it seriously for such massive projects like the Hydropulse one, you don't only need a robust technology, but a track record of deployed reference plants of comparable size. We are beyond proud that we have written history by successfully deploying the largest PEM electrolyzer in the world and Europe's largest operational electrolyzer of any technology. The first 100-megawatt project in Lingen for RWE has marked an important milestone for us. The second 100-megawatt project for RWE on the same site is already in commissioning with 60 megawatts already done. Shortly, we will have delivered the biggest electrolyzer in Europe twice and most importantly, to a happy customer. This should also end the false debate about alkaline technology being the most suitable technology for large-scale deployments. As I said earlier, we are simply getting on with stuff, and we are continuing to prove what's possible instead of just talking about it. And another happy customer, 101-year-old family company, Guttroff, has been our first NEPTUNE V customer, and they have overseen us complete the unit and put it through extensive customer-witnessed factory acceptance testing short FAT. FAT went smoothly and the unit's performance is exceptional with efficiency and hydrogen production rate better than contractually committed, providing our customer with a valuable business case upside. We thank Guttroff for their trust and look forward to more joint projects, some of which are already in development. This brings us to another exciting topic, our strategic collaboration with the German Rheinmetall. Together, we combine proven industrial scale hydrogen technology with defense and Power-to-X integration to strengthen fuel security, military operational resilience and supply chain sovereignty. We plan to achieve that by building decentralized synthetic fuel production plants, which will utilize locally produced green hydrogen with captured CO2. The result is drop-in diesel, jet and marine fuel fully compatible with existing NATO equipment, including vehicles, aircraft, vessels and fuel infrastructure. Our collaboration focuses on the U.K. and Germany, the 2 most important nations for Europe's fuel backbone. Joint discussions are underway with both governments. These discussions are happening on the back of an increasing threat level to European security from the East. The conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East have yet again demonstrated that fuel and energy infrastructure are primary military targets and that dependence on fossil fuel supply chains would severely limit our defense capabilities. The underlying program driven by Rheinmetall is called Giga PtX, and it aims to partner with NATO members to build a distributed network of several hundreds of modular Power-to-X plants for synthetic fuel production across Europe. This makes the network inherently resilient and difficult to attack with no single point of failure. Rheinmetall works with selected technology champions to ensure local content where possible. I will now hand over to Simon, who will explain you synthetic fuel and how it compares to conventional fuel.

Simon Bourne

executive
#3

Thank you, Dennis. The proposition Rheinmetall are pursuing is the production of conventional hydrocarbon fuels by using renewable power, water and carbon dioxide. Via the process we're all very familiar with, electrolysis uses renewable power to split the water into hydrogen and oxygen, while the CO2 is made available from industrial or even ambient air sources. These are the 2 key ingredients which feed the Fischer-Tropsch process, which joins the hydrogen and carbon atoms together into long hydrocarbon chains, which ultimately make up the fuels, fuels that carry the benefits and convenience of the conventional diesel and aviation fuels that we're familiar with. This application is about bringing together established technologies to produce fuels that are already validated for use. And in doing so, it becomes feasible to produce conventional fuels in close proximity to where they're needed, while distributing the fuel infrastructure and therefore, making it far more difficult to attack and reducing the complexity and risk associated with fuel logistics. Put simply, electrolysis used as part of this process creates synthetic liquid fuels that go with the grain of existing engines while presenting strategic options for NATO. As you've heard from Dennis earlier in this presentation, we're demonstrating success in large-scale project execution. We're surpassing customer expectation during factory acceptance testing of our new NEPTUNE V product and attracting a range of new opportunities. All of that is based on the leading performance delivered by our Trident stack platform but we're not complacent. Using the capabilities we've developed over our 25-year journey, we're progressing numerous core technology improvements and the larger stack platform called Chronos. Together, these bring cost performance and footprint benefits, which all contribute to further reduce the cost of green hydrogen for our customers. By way of a quick reminder, we announced in April this year a government support package of GBP 86.5 million to underpin the validation of Chronos and to establish its manufacturing line to be capable of 1-gigawatt per year. This will be additive to our existing Trident manufacturing line. The GBP 85.6 million came in the form of a GBP 40 million investment in ITM by Great British Energy, together with a GBP 45.5 million grant from the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero. This was the outcome of a long and detailed process, and we consider it a strong win-win position. It brings obvious advantage to ITM while being strongly aligned with the U.K.'s hydrogen ambitions and its view of hydrogen as a key pillar to energy sovereignty and resilience. It also positions ITM as the natural partner for hydrogen projects in the U.K. The Chronos program itself is progressing to plan. The core technology continues to offer outstanding performance, and it's underpinned by over 20,000 hours of operation at component, cell and short stack level. The Chronos bill of materials is defined and the manufacturing processes are undergoing robust validation. A crucial process given the level of automation to be adopted. Chronos will be manufactured in our Sheffield facility, enabling us to take advantage of several synergies with existing Trident manufacture and testing processes. In developing the factory, we've given particular attention to make versus buy decisions. As you may know, I'm passionate about maintaining control over elements that define cost, performance and longevity of our core product. We'll continue to operate according to that philosophy. The flow of the factory is mapped and is being coded into a flexible digital twin, and that will be used to fine-tune the layout and optimize material movements. The program as a whole benefits from strong and collaborative relationships with both GBE and DESNZ. We've made a number of key appointments, in particular, for the production engineering function, which is leading the effort to realize the Chronos production line. Early on in my career, I was once told by a very experienced engineer that it's important to measure twice and cut once. This is the approach that we'll continue to adopt to ensure that Chronos is an industrialized and robust stack platform manufactured to the high-quality standards our customers expect from ITM.

Amy Grey

executive
#4

Thank you, Simon. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I am delighted to take you through a strong set of results for the year ended 30th of April 2026, demonstrating the significant progress we continue to make in transforming ITM into a financially stronger, more profitable and increasingly scalable business. This follows an extensive first year audit with our new auditors, BDO. I will then take you through our guidance for the year ending 30th of April 2027, which reflects our confidence in the continued growth and improving financial performance of the business. We are pleased to report record revenues of GBP 43.6 million, marking the third consecutive year in which ITM has achieved its highest ever revenue. This represents a growth of more than 700% over 3 years, demonstrating the scale of the transformation that we are delivering. This performance was primarily driven by equipment sales of GBP 40.7 million with a further GBP 2.9 million generated from engineering studies, maintenance, replacements and spare parts. As our product portfolio has evolved, so too has the way in which we recognize revenue. It now reflects the product that is sold along with specific commercial terms of individual contracts. The completed contracts method has been used historically, whereby revenue is recognized at a specific milestone towards the end of a project. This milestone could be delivery, testing or commissioning, depending on the individual contract terms. Sales of the Trident products or other standardized repeatable products continue to fall within this category. For our Neptune, Poseidon and Alpha projects, where there is any customization or significant site integration, we now apply a percentage of completion approach, allowing revenue to be recognized progressively over the life of the contract. Of the equipment sales recognized in the period, GBP 36.8 million related to legacy contracts recognized at a point in time. Importantly, we also recognized GBP 3.9 million of revenue from Neptune and Poseidon contracts under the percentage of completion method. All of these contracts were secured on a profitable basis and continue to show positive project margins. This represents an important milestone for ITM as we begin to see the financial benefits of our improved commercial discipline and the transition towards a higher quality profitable revenue base. Turning to gross loss. We have delivered a step change improvement with our gross loss reducing from GBP 23.7 million in the prior year to GBP 6.1 million. The improvement reflects production volumes, continued cost discipline and importantly, the significant progress we have made in executing our legacy contracts. In particular, strong progress on Lingen 1 and Lingen 2 and the robust performance of our products has provided us greater certainty over the remaining cost to complete, allowing us to release provisions established in previous periods. These improvements have flown through to our adjusted EBITDA loss, reducing significantly from the previous year of GBP 33 million to GBP 20.2 million. Throughout the year, we have maintained strong focus on cost and cash discipline while making excellent progress on all our projects. These results demonstrate that our transformation is delivering an improved financial position. We are delivering record revenues, materially reducing losses and building a stronger financial foundation from which to accelerate our growth and progress towards profitability. Turning now to our contract backlog. We have ended the year with a contract backlog of GBP 144 million compared to GBP 145.1 million at the previous year-end. Maintaining our contract backlog level while delivering significant revenue growth during the year and more than 700% growth over the past 3 years is a clear demonstration of the underlying strength of our order book and our ability to replenish revenue as we execute existing contracts. As a reminder, our contract backlog comprises firm customer orders for which revenue has not yet been recognized. This provides important visibility over future revenues and gives us a strong platform from which to continue delivering growth. What is particularly encouraging is that we are not only maintaining the scale of our backlog, but fundamentally improving its quality and profitability in a competitive and consolidating market environment. And that brings me to the next topic. This slide demonstrates what I believe is one of the most important achievements in ITM's financial transformation, the fundamental change in the profitability of our contracted backlog. Looking back to January 2023, when Dennis joined and started the company transformation, 100% of our order book was comprised of loss-making contracts. By April 2025, we had made substantial progress with 60% of the backlog comprised of profitable contracts. Today, I am delighted to report that as at the end of April 2026, 83% of our contracted backlog comprised of profitable contracts. This is a significant achievement and reflects the structural improvements we have made to the business. We have fundamentally reset our approach to pricing, commercial risk allocation and project selection, ensuring that new contracts are secured on terms that support sustainable profitability. At the same time, our operational teams have made excellent progress in delivering some of the larger legacy projects, steadily reducing the proportion of historical loss-making contracts within our backlog. The remaining 17% of our order backlog relates to legacy projects, which are expected to be recognized over the next year. As previously communicated, these contracts do not contribute to margin but are fully provided for. We continue to apply rigorous project governance, cost control and execution discipline across all of our projects. And now on to cash. We ended the year with a cash position of GBP 215.6 million, representing a net increase of GBP 8.6 million in the year. Throughout the year, we have maintained a disciplined approach to cash management, carefully controlling expenditure and ensuring this investment is aligned with operational requirements and strategic priorities. In early April, we were delighted to receive a GBP 40 million equity investment from Great British Energy, resulting in net cash proceeds of GBP 39.2 million, strengthening our balance sheet. Looking at the chart in the top right, we are also seeing increasing stability in our inventory management. We have maintained a consistent balance between raw materials and work in progress and finished goods, reflecting improved production planning and control over the timing of working capital expenditure. This is particularly important as we continue to scale our operations, ensuring that growth is supported by disciplined cash management. Capital expenditure increased modestly to GBP 13.2 million during the year, reflecting continued progress on Chronos and the successful installation of our auto stacker equipment. This represents another important step in increasing automation, improving manufacturing efficiency and preparing our production operations for future scale. Our financial position remains a significant strategic strength. We have a substantial cash balance, a disciplined approach to expenditure and the financial capacity to continue investing in the technologies and capabilities that will underpin our next phase of growth. Finally, turning to our guidance for the year ending 30th of April 2027. Our guidance reflects our confidence in the continued growth of ITM, supported by our strong contracted backlog, improving project profitability and disciplined operational execution. We expect revenue of between GBP 50 million and GBP 60 million. This represents further year-on-year growth and an increase of more than 900% over 4 years. Importantly, the composition of this revenue is changing significantly. For the first time, profitable contracts are expected to account for the majority of our annual revenue at approximately 2/3. This revenue will be predominantly recognized progressively through the percentage of completion methods on our Poseidon and Neptune projects. The revenue that remains, which is approximately 1/3 of the total, is expected to relate to legacy contracts, which are fully provided for and not expected to contribute to gross profit. Turning to EBITDA. We expect an adjusted EBITDA loss of between GBP 17 million and GBP 20 million, representing another year of improving financial performance. This reflects the increasing contribution from profitable contracts alongside the expected completion of the vast majority of our remaining legacy projects. At this stage of our development, our losses are primarily driven by factory utilization with our manufacturing infrastructure and cost base established to support a higher production volume. We remain firmly focused on controlling production costs, executing projects efficiently and maintaining discipline across our overhead base. Finally, we expect to end the year with cash of between GBP 170 million and GBP 180 million. Our guidance reflects continued financial discipline with expenditure carefully managed and aligned to our operational and strategic priorities. It also includes our first forecast capital expenditure on the new Chronos manufacturing line and important investments in the next generation of ITM's technology and future manufacturing competitiveness. That concludes our presentation. Thank you for your attention and for your continued support.

Operator

operator
#5

[Operator Instructions] I'd like to remind you the recording of the presentation along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A can be accessed via investor dashboard. I'd now like to hand you over to Justin Scarborough, Head of Investor Relations, to host the Q&A. Justin, as you can see, we've received a number of questions. Could I, therefore, please ask you just to read out the questions and give responses where appropriate to do so, and I'll pick up from you at the end.

Justin Scarborough

executive
#6

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the call. Without any further ado, we'll crack on with the questions. The first question is for Amy. Congratulations on the 150-megawatt Hydropulse announcement. How much cash will it use from ITM's balance sheet?

Amy Grey

executive
#7

Okay. Well, thank you. We're very happy that we've been able to announce heads of terms on the Hydropulse deal. It's a very exciting time for us and the deal if it turns into a contract that could fundamentally change our future. Let me just take a moment to explain the financing and the cash flow profile of a Hydropulse deal and then what we might do to finance that. So first of all, importantly, it's very different from our traditional equipment sales. Our traditional equipment sales come with a, at worst, cash flow neutral position. So we don't require any level of financing upfront. We use customer inflows to finance our outflows. Hydropulse is very different to that. So we go through a 2- to 3-year build phase where we're not receiving cash from the customer upfront. So without any financing, that would be a cash outflow for 2 to 3 years. At the point where it gets to an operational phase, so after that initial build phase, we will go into a 10-year operational phase. From the start of that, that is cash flow positive on an operational basis. So every year, we will increase the cash that we receive cumulatively. But at that point, we've still got the debt to pay off for the first 2 years. So it would take a small number of years to become cumulatively cash flow positive. Now that's what it would look like without any financing on it. We're then looking at how we would fund that. So if this was a small deal, if it was maybe 10 megawatts, we have the balance sheet strength to fund that ourselves. Clearly, 150 megawatts is a different proposition and a different scale. So we're looking at different options, and we've been progressing talks with banks to do that. First of all, that 2- to 3-year build phase needs some financing, and we're looking at some kind of working capital, a typical project type financing for that. So that would be financing us during that 2- to 3-year period where we're not receiving any cash receipts. And there's options for how we pay that back. The first option is to pay that back over a number of years as we start receiving revenues in the operational phase. That would reduce the amount of cash that we -- net cash we have every year until it's paid back, but would take a small number of years to pay it back, and then we go into a cash flow positive overall position. So that's option one, which is a traditional project financing type arrangement. The second one is to have the working capital finance and to combine that with bringing forward customer receipts. So at the start of the 10-year operational phase, we effectively revenue finance the project, so bring forward some significant cash receipts to do a couple of things. Firstly, pay off the debt. Secondly, give us some cash to fund the rest of the 10-year operational phase. And the third element would be to potentially invest back into other projects depending on our overall needs at any given time. So that's what we're looking at. So there's different options to that, and we're progressing those talks with banks alongside progressing the contract with the customer.

Justin Scarborough

executive
#8

Thank you, Amy. The next question is for Simon. How do you see the competition between alkaline and PEM technology playing out?

Simon Bourne

executive
#9

Okay. So we've talked about this many times before. Look, I mean, both technologies, as we've said many times, have their pros and cons. Alkaline has long been considered to be the traditional large-scale electrolyzer technology and PEM being much smaller, much more capable of reacting to renewable energy profiles. But look, I mean, we're now in a position where Lingen 1 is now operational. That's the plant that we've deployed with Linde for RWE. It's 100 megawatts in size, and it's the largest electrolyzer that's operational in Europe today of any technology. And I think that speaks volumes. Quickly behind it, we've got Lingen 2 and REFHYNE II and also the Hydropulse deal that we've talked about already. So for me, it is no longer a question of PEM versus alkaline. It is PEM is delivering today at large scale and still has huge potential to improve even further. So it's PEM for me.

Justin Scarborough

executive
#10

Thank you, Simon. A question for Dennis. Which world regions do you see as the most attractive for ITM going forward?

Dennis Schulz

executive
#11

Yes, I don't think that has changed much recently. I still believe Europe remains the most attractive region for ITM going forward. When I say Europe, that always includes the U.K. and the Nordics. Within Europe, I think Germany will continue to be the biggest market as it has been for us, and I do see that continue. We also see quite a lot of movement in Spain or the wider Iberian region, the Nordics and since recently as well Poland. The U.K. is a bit behind the expectations and developing a bit slowly. We see delays in HAR1 and HAR2, the government funding programs, but I'm sure we will speak later a little bit more about the U.K. market. Other world regions, the U.S. under Donald Trump remain challenging. We don't see much potential there for the time being until there is a new government in place. Asia, wider Asia, including Australia, is interesting. There is potential, but it's in terms of development, significantly behind Europe. So we see the future for ITM to remain in Europe. I'm often asked about the Chinese market as well. The Chinese market is a bloodbath. Competitors are underbidding each other at low cost levels, and we expect many of them to drop out over the next couple of months, be it just based on cost, be it on performance of the kit or on safety of the equipment.

Justin Scarborough

executive
#12

Thank you, Dennis. Back to Amy for another financial question. Given the EBITDA outcome relative to guidance for FY '26, could you shed any further light on the factors that significantly improved the EBITDA performance?

Amy Grey

executive
#13

Yes, of course. We were really pleased to be able to upgrade guidance for that metric. So the main thing that's impacted us within that is actually our progress on both Lingen 1 and Lingen 2. So what that has allowed us to do is true up our provisions for events that were in place at the end of the year that we have come to light since. So our project progress operationally and the fact that we've got 100-megawatts on Lingen 1 working and operational means that we are a lot more certain of our costs on those loss-making projects. So we've been able to release some provisions accordingly.

Justin Scarborough

executive
#14

Thank you, Amy. Back to Dennis. How confident are you about converting your sales pipeline into contracts? And do you see any trends in product split or markets?

Dennis Schulz

executive
#15

It's an important question, I guess. So I already spoke today about the industry segment trends which we see, where I said mobility is declining a little bit. And I would say, wider industry, especially refineries, we see to increase in terms of demand. Now with refineries, steel and other larger applications becoming more interesting, we also see the size of projects becoming bigger. This has 2 effects. It naturally favors NEPTUNE V, but especially Alpha-based plants or large-scale product deployment, where we are also venturing into more EPC services ourselves. And the other element is that -- or the other effect is that it takes a bit longer to get to FID. Larger projects usually require a FEED, oftentimes together with the customer and they have a longer lead time from first discussion with the customer through negotiation all the way to FID. Now this means that the prize gets a bit bigger. So the revenue and the order intake we get from these projects is bigger. At the same time, the downside, which is emerging is that it's pretty black or white in terms of lumpy order intake. And that can happen in a given financial year. It can go into the next financial year. But it means that there's not a constant stream of smaller orders, which sometimes we would prefer to be fair, but a fewer number of very large projects. A positive from that is that the amount of electrolyzer companies who are capable to deliver large projects of that magnitude is much smaller than for smaller projects. So we are talking about a smaller pool of competitors being able or being credible enough to do that. Simon just mentioned Lingen, REFHYNE II and now the 150-megawatt Hydropulse deal. I think we are playing in a small group of a handful of companies who is able to deliver that, which means we believe we will get a bigger piece of the cake.

Justin Scarborough

executive
#16

Thank you, Dennis. Back to Amy. Could you explain why ITM released the FY '26 results so much later than in previous years?

Amy Grey

executive
#17

Yes, of course. So we have been in our first year audit with our new auditors, BDO. There's 2 pieces to this really. Firstly, we chose a partner in the first instance with BDO to work with who, as it was running up to year-end, unfortunately, had to take some time out of work due to personal reasons. So we had to swap partners. So BDO gave us a new partner to work with. That clearly caused a little bit of a late learning curve and a little bit of an extension in terms of getting everybody up to speed. And then unfortunately, first year audits are just difficult and do take time as there is a lot to learn and a lot more to test than an auditor that's been around 8 years. So it just did take a little bit longer than we would have ideally liked.

Justin Scarborough

executive
#18

Thank you, Amy. One for you, Simon. Could you update us on the Horizon time line? And have you taken FID yet?

Simon Bourne

executive
#19

Sure. We have taken FID. We're moving forward positively with that program. And perhaps I should explain, Horizon is the project that is the validation of our new 2-megawatt stack platform, Chronos, but also all of the manufacturing equipment to produce that in our ITM facility. So we, of course, are taking every capital investment on a case-by-case basis as we progress through the project, but we're well underway and progress is on track.

Justin Scarborough

executive
#20

And a follow-up, Simon. When do you expect to release Chronos commercially?

Simon Bourne

executive
#21

Okay. So I'm kind of going to say what I did last time. We're not guiding for a commercial release date of Chronos, and that is really to avoid us cannibalizing sales of Trident-based products. Trident is performing extremely well in the field and is doing very well. We don't want to interfere with that. So no release date just yet, I'm afraid.

Justin Scarborough

executive
#22

Thank you, Simon. Amy, regarding last week's Hydropulse announcement, when will the project be profitable?

Amy Grey

executive
#23

Okay. So the very simple answer to this is that the Hydropulse project will be profitable from day 1 of operation. So what I explained earlier was the cash flow profile. But what happens from day 1 of operation is we will start invoicing revenue. The revenue is flat. It has an inflationary element every year. But essentially, we're invoicing an amount every month that stays consistent. And our operational costs are relatively consistent and stable as well. There may be some months where we do a little bit more on site than others, but in the grand magnitude of it, the stable operational costs as well. So from day 1 until the end of the contract, it will be profitable.

Justin Scarborough

executive
#24

Thank you. Back to you, Dennis. You mentioned the U.K. earlier. Is there any update you can provide on the progress of the U.K.'s hydrogen allocation round # 2 plans?

Dennis Schulz

executive
#25

Yes, it has certainly gotten a bit quiet on HAR2. So maybe for those who are dialing in from not within the U.K. So the HAR the hydrogen allocation round program is the U.K.'s funding program for incentivizing project developers to bridge the cost gap a little bit between gray hydrogen and green hydrogen. And HAR1, which was the first phase already saw quite significant delays. I think it was delayed for more than a year. We have seen first projects being awarded, especially also to us. HAR2, as I said, it got a bit quiet. The messages we received from government, also from the new administration now, is going in the direction that is still going ahead, which would be important for us because we have been selected as a supplier for many of those projects, and some of them are very decent in size, like the Uniper 120-megawatt Humber project, which we announced, but also many, many others which we haven't yet announced. Interestingly, there's also first engagement on HAR3, so the subsequent phase where companies are now already invited to submit interest or submit first projects. It's not great that -- I mean, I just want to be straightforward, right? It's not great that the government is so slow in awarding funding to these projects because this neither helps the business developers nor the offtakers nor does it help the business cases behind these projects. If I had one wish to make, it would just be -- I mean, government, just crack on and award the HAR2 funding so that our customers can build the projects for their offtakers deploying our technology. That would be very helpful.

Justin Scarborough

executive
#26

Thank you, Dennis. Amy, could you explain how the DESNZ grant process works and when ITM expects to start drawing down on it?

Amy Grey

executive
#27

Of course. So the good news is the grant is now fully awarded. We announced that a few months ago now. We have to report to DESNZ regularly. And then we do a quarterly report of all our spend that submits quite a detailed not only financial statement, but project progress as well. And based on that, DESNZ pay us based on our spend. So it's just a quarterly submission and a receipt of cash after that. And in terms of when we start drawing down on it, we're actually doing our first submission over the next few weeks. So then it will be regularly quarterly after that.

Justin Scarborough

executive
#28

Thank you, Amy. And staying on the subject of U.K. government relationships. How is your relationship with GBE developing as they are now a shareholder in ITM?

Amy Grey

executive
#29

Yes. So we've certainly kept in contact a lot with GBE. We have various touch points throughout the organization. We have lots of great working relationships. They similarly get updates on the Horizon projects and our spend levels and GBE have been really proactive with helping us if we need any further government contacts, if we need help with anything. So they've been a really active member of our shareholder community. We are still waiting for a nominated representative to be put on our Board, but that should be coming at some point soon. So I would say they are being very positive with us.

Justin Scarborough

executive
#30

Thank you, Amy. Another one for you, third.

Dennis Schulz

executive
#31

Maybe if you allow me to comment on that.

Justin Scarborough

executive
#32

Sorry.

Dennis Schulz

executive
#33

I think it's also fair to say that both sides, and I think we said that last time, see this investment as a start of a joint journey. And we are also in very positive discussions about, I would say, wider engagement between GBE and us to further advance and boost the hydrogen industry in the U.K. I think there's lots of potential opportunities to work alongside GBE to do something very interesting for the economy as a whole.

Justin Scarborough

executive
#34

Thank you, Dennis. Third in a row for you, Amy. Regarding ITM's future revenues, could you provide a split of the revenue expected to be booked a point-in-time basis versus percentage of completion?

Amy Grey

executive
#35

Of course. And it normally doesn't take this many questions for me to get on to the topic of revenue recognition in one of these updates.

Dennis Schulz

executive
#36

You can relate it back to the points to say we're going for larger projects potentially.

Amy Grey

executive
#37

So I'll just do a reminder of our revenue recognition policy on the product suite. So where we just sell Trident into bigger plants, so that's a standard product. That is generally a point-in-time revenue recognition, whereas if we're selling Neptune, Poseidon, Alpha, then that is a percentage completion basis. So that means from the moment we start producing or buying for those projects, then we are able to recognize revenue. So certainly, with the product suite, we've got more products that lend themselves to a percentage of completion basis rather than a point-in-time basis now. In last year's results in FY '26, we recognized our first percentage completion on our Neptune products, and that will continue over this year as well. And as we look at the market and projects are looking like they are bigger, then Alpha and Neptune will remain on that percentage of completion. So we'd expect that to grow along the order intake as it goes as well. If we look at the actual numbers that we've got, so we've got an order backlog now of GBP 144 million, approximately 17% of that is legacy contracts. Those legacy contracts are generally a point in time. If you do the math on that, that's about GBP 25 million worth of revenue still on a point of time in time and the rest of our order book is percentage of completion. Those point-in-time contracts will just about all be recognized in this current financial year, so FY '27. So we'll still have a split this year, but then next year, we will have more and more percentage completion.

Justin Scarborough

executive
#38

Thank you, Amy. Dennis, thank you for the update on Rheinmetall in the presentation. When do you expect we will see the first pilot projects announced?

Dennis Schulz

executive
#39

Good question. Together with Rheinmetall, we are exploring a number of different opportunities and locations for such kind of project, mainly in the U.K. and in Germany today. We usually don't guide for a specific date here also because I think it doesn't come as a surprise when I say that government processes can take quite long and are sometimes a bit unpredictable. But I think it's fair to say that the discussions are very positive. There's a big push from the 2 governments I just mentioned, but also others in terms of fuel sovereignty, the wider macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainty, which we see about fuel supply and the threats to the European security infrastructure from the East. Now it's also difficult for us to say when such project would materialize, but we are working very closely with Rheinmetall also on the FEED on the technical details. It's maybe important to mention that at this point, it's not yet decided whether that will, in the end, materialize as an equipment sale contract or even potentially as a Hydropulse opportunity. I think that is a very attractive offering to governments to potentially do it, including an ownership investment and then operational support. And of course, we will keep the market updated as we are progressing towards something more tangible than just talking about it. I think we have now built a track record of holding back information until there's something tangible to talk about.

Justin Scarborough

executive
#40

Thank you, Dennis. Simon, data centers and fuel cells seem to be grabbing a lot of headlines at the moment. Do you think that green hydrogen will play a significant role in this area?

Simon Bourne

executive
#41

Well, I think green hydrogen does have a role. Data centers are energy intensive, and they also require a lot of backup capability. But honestly, I think it's slightly overhyped at the minute. Hydrogen for decarbonizing data centers isn't incentivized in the same way as refineries, for example. Having said that, we are in discussions with some prospective end users looking at how electrolysis can best integrate with data centers and renewable power to really play to the strengths of the technology. But we're doing that in a very structured bottom-up way rather than engaging with perhaps what I would call a little bit of overhype for this particular application. So there is some there, but it's happening in perhaps a slightly slower and more structured way than you read about in the headlines.

Justin Scarborough

executive
#42

Thank you, Simon. We've got time for one more question, and that final one goes to you again, Simon. You often talk about ITM's unique position regarding IP and how you retain much of it in-house. Could you give an example of something that you have brought in-house recently or something you plan to bring in-house in the future?

Simon Bourne

executive
#43

Okay. Yes. I mean this is something I feel pretty passionately about. I mean, I've always felt it's important that ITM owns and understands the core technology that drives price performance and longevity. So having that in-house means that we're in control of our own destiny, and we can make improvements much more quickly than perhaps our peers who haven't taken the same approach. We have brought in a number of key processes. What we have been doing is applying a higher level of automation to those processes. So there are some examples around our catalyst ink preparation, where we've had that in-house for a long time, but we've introduced a lot of automation, partly for scale, but partly for quality control purposes, making sure that we're as tight as we possibly can in those crucial manufacturing stages. And as we've talked a little bit about Chronos, there are several of those manufacturing steps that we are bringing in-house. Now I don't want to talk in too much detail about that, but we have gone through a very rigorous process of identifying each manufacturing step, each piece of technology and making the decisions which we should in-source and which we shouldn't based on IP and based on value. So there will be more news on that as we progress through the Horizon program and look forward to making those updates in due course.

Justin Scarborough

executive
#44

Thank you, Simon. And that concludes the Q&A session, and we'll now hand back to the guys at IMC. Thank you very much for your attention.

Operator

operator
#45

Justin, thank you, and thank you to the ITM management team for updating attendees today. Could I please ask investors not to close the session to be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that management can better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a few moments to complete, and I'm sure will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of ITM Power plc, I'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good morning to you all.

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