GELNF (GELNF) Q4 2026 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Good morning, and welcome to the Gelion plc Final Results Investor Presentation. [Operator Instructions] Before we begin, I would like to submit the following poll. And I would now like to hand you over to CEO, Matt Wood. Good morning.

Good morning, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Gelion's 2026 Results and Strategy Presentation. My name is Matt Wood, and it is my great pleasure to be the CEO of Gelion and to steward the company on behalf of our shareholders. I've spent more than 20 years in energy and materials, primarily focused on developing, scaling and growing materials businesses, including in the battery materials space. Today, I'm joined by Amit Gupta, our Chief Financial Officer; who's a deeply experienced finance professional who also brings experience in corporate development and M&A. Amit will walk us through the details of our 2026 financial results. I'm also joined by Louis Adriaenssens, our Chief Technology Officer, who has more than 20 years working in material synthesis and electrochemistry, including as the supervisor for chemistry for Panasonic at the Tesla Gigafactory in Nevada. Louis will present some of the fantastic technical progress we've made this year with our partners. I will then talk about Gelion's strategy and where we're going. However, first, I will touch briefly on who Gelion is, our mission and what Nano-Encapsulated Sulfur is. So Gelion is an advanced battery materials company. We are developing and commercializing a sulfur cathode material called Nano-Encapsulated Sulfur or N-E-S or NES. In lithium-ion battery, you can see on the screen, there are 2 main types of cathode active material. That's on the left. They are called LFP, which is an iron phosphate-based cathode material and NMC, which is a nickel, cobalt and manganese-based cathode material. And these are black powders. They are then mixed into a slurry or an ink and applied as a coating to a foil, which you can see in the center picture and then dried and rolled to produce a cathode, which is on the right-hand picture. Our NES is a direct replacement for these cathode materials. It is also a black powder, and you can see that now in the left-hand picture. It replaces NMC or LFP. And all of the rest remains the same, the cathode coating and the production of the cathode itself. So NES is a proprietary high-performance cathode material made from an abundant byproduct, which is sulfur, and which is a drop-in to existing battery chemistries and existing battery manufacture. So here on the next slide, you can see our mission, and that is to establish our NES sulfur cathode as a compelling replacement for today's cathodes. We're pursuing this mission in order to provide a cathode market, which is in shortage with a high-performance, cost-effective alternative that can be made through a domestic supply chain from an abundant raw material. And this slide shows that there is -- in terms of abundance, there is over 20x more sulfur produced globally each year than lithium, nickel and cobalt combined. It is also a byproduct of the desulfurization of oil and gas. And so its supply is geographically distributed unlike LFP and NMC, which rely on mining and processing supply chains that are heavily concentrated in certain territories. And so there are 2 well-understood benefits of sulfur as a cathode. It has extremely high capacity to store energy, around 4x that of NMC. And as we've just seen, it is abundant. However, traditionally, there are several [indiscernible] shortcomings of traditional sulfur cathode technologies. So it's inherently low power. And it suffers from something called the polysulfide shuttle effect, whereby the sulfur in the cathode leaches out of the cathode into the electrolyte and that causes a rapid capacity fade. And so the high capacity that you get drops very quickly. So other sulfur cathode technologies aim to mitigate this effect by redesigning the rest of the battery cell using bespoke components such as bespoke electrolytes. Gelion has solved the polysulfide shuttle effect using something called nano-encapsulation. So you can see the animation in the center of the screen. Effectively, we build a cage or a shell around the sulfur, which allows the lithium or sodium depending on what the charge carrier is. It allows the lithium in and out, but keeps the sulfur in place. And so you can see in that animation that the yellow sulfur particles are being encapsulated by a black shell and then the colorful lithium or sodium ions are able to shuttle in and out but not the sulfur. So effectively, traditional sulfur cathode technologies mask the symptoms, whereas Gelion's Nano-Encapsulated Sulfur has cured the problem. This means our NES cathode provides high energy density, high power performance, stable cycle life and a very broad operating temperature range, all from an abundant raw material. And we like to say by locking up the sulfur, we unlock its benefits. So on to 2026. We have made significant operational progress in technology development, in market validation and in setting up the path to scale. With existing partners, we signed an exclusive license with the Max Planck Institute. Our partnership with TDK has proven NES in pouch cells and continues very much on track. And we had outstanding results from the drone mission demonstrator with QinetiQ. And Louis is going to talk through some of the specific results from those programs shortly. But we've also, in the past year, secured new partnerships, which go beyond the objectives that we laid out for the year. In electric vehicles, we secured a grant-funded partnership with Nissan Europe to incorporate Nano-Encapsulated Sulfur into solid-state batteries. And more recently, we've secured partnerships with the top 15 and a top 5 automotive OEM to evaluate NES in a wide range of electric vehicle battery chemistries, one of which is a co-funded program. We also announced our entry into the U.S. market in partnership with the National Lab of the Rockies, which is the leading federal institute in the United States for Energy Technologies. And that program will both validate Nano-Encapsulated Sulfur performance and also provide a pathway to pilot scale production. And then lastly, on this slide, we have a funded JDA with Mitsui Kinzoku, which both provides commercial revenue in 2027 through their option -- sorry, and through their option to negotiate a license for certain territories in Asia. That sets out a path for the commercial production of NES and associated license and royalty revenue when we get there. So a lot going on and a lot being delivered, but the key message is momentum, momentum on technology, momentum on market validation in defense, in commercial drones and in EV applications and in setting out the path to scale and commercial revenues. And much of that has been announced since June, which we believe shows accelerating traction. And it's all been done against the backdrop of strong financial stewardship, which has yielded good financial results, which you can see the headlines here on the screen. And we're very, very proud of this. It's taken a lot of hard work, a lot of care and attention to detail. And so let me invite Amit now to walk us through those financial results.

Thank you, Matt, for the great summary. In terms of financial results, as Matt summarized, we have achieved all the financial metrics, which is above market expectations. It's not easy. It takes a lot of careful consideration of all the development programs that we are running and the requirements for those. As you can see on the next -- on the slide, our adjusted EBITDA loss was GBP 4.1 million compared to market expectations of GBP 4.4 million. The increase is largely due to the integration services revenue. In last year -- in FY '25, we generated approximately GBP 900,000 of integration services revenue. There was almost nil this year. And Matt is going to talk about the strategy around the integration services business as well. A large part of this decline in revenue was offset by the grant income and the R&D tax credits in U.K. and Australia. These are very, very important for a business like Gelion, which is deep tech and there's a lot of development activity. This is nondilutive funding, and it shows the support that the Australian government and the U.K. government provides to Gelion and their belief in the technology that we are developing. R&D expenses increased slightly. However, in FY '25, approximately 1/3 of that related to zinc program, which we're not running anymore. So you can see in '26, we are all in on sulfur and going further as well. So all the money, all the capital is going through the sulfur development program. Overhead increased slightly. This represents expansion in territory, so U.S. entry, the recruitment of our Senior VP, Tracy Sizemore in the U.S., our global partnerships program, and you have seen the result of all the partnerships that we have signed. The key metric that I'm sure everyone is monitoring for Gelion, and we do very, very carefully as well is the pro forma cash and cash equivalents number, GBP 9.6 million at 30th of June. This includes the R&D tax incentives as well as the grant income that we have earned but not received, so receivables. But even at the cash -- reported cash number at the end of the year, we are circa 20% above the market expectations. So again, I think this is the fifth year in a row where we have exceeded market expectations, and it's been done very, very deliberately, and we are very proud of the results. And the summary is, we are taking very good care of shareholder capital. We are tapping into non-dilutive funding as much as possible and trying to fund that -- the development program of the business as much as possible as well. This slide summarizes our actual performance compared to market consensus across all the metrics, you can see adjusted PBT is 5% better than what was the consensus compared to the pro forma cash and cash equivalents, which is above 21% and income being 17.5% (sic) [ 17.1%] above. We will -- the way we plan our business and the way we go through the development programs and other activities in the business, we want to keep hitting these numbers year-on-year and very excited for what next year -- what the next year holds for Gelion. I'll only focus on the bottom 2 charts on this slide, grant-funded R&D. You can see 63.5% -- 63.2% of our development program was funded in 2026 compared to 49.8%. That's a significant jump. The grant programs are live. They are valid for the next couple of years as well, but we're not stopping there. We continue to look for additional programs that we can sign up for to continuously subsidize our development programs. It's a very, very good use of that non-dilutive funding. And the bottom right chart, which is underlying net cash use. Matt summarized all of the technical and the commercial progress that we have made, but we have done all of that within our expense kind of pool of capital that we allocated last year. When we came in October 2025, we communicated approximately GBP 5 million of annual run rate, so in terms of cash spend. And the good news is we have stuck to that number, and we have delivered everything over and above what we promised within that pool of capital that we had allocated. When I look back of what 2026 meant, it's a year of enormous achievements, technical, commercial. We have executed agreements which are co-funded plus the JV agreement with Mitsui Kinzoku. FY '27 is going to be a phenomenal year for us. We are at an inflection point. We start generating commercial revenues, although modest at this stage, but we will generate commercial revenues in FY 2027. As Matt spoke about the Mitsui Kinzoku potential licensing and royalty income as well. So these are all pathways of us moving towards increasing commercial revenues in the next year or 2. And then who knows what is -- what 2027 has to provide to Gelion with all the traction that we have got in the last -- especially in the last 3 to 4 months, we're expecting that to continue with new partnerships and programs announced as we execute them, but there is definitely a lot of interest in the market space about what Gelion is doing. Thank you, and I'll pass it on to Louis to take us through the technical program.

All right. Thank you very much, Amit. So the technical progress that I'm going to talk through today largely looks at taking some of the phenomenal results from our NES material that we showed last year and how we've taken those results in that material, we've moved it towards more commercially relevant cell types, so pouch cells and how we've done that with the facilities of our partners. We spoke a lot about our partners, and we're really proud of those partners. They give us a lot of capability. And the technical results essentially show how we're able to take those embryonic results that we had last year and turn those into something with much more commercial relevance. So if we start with the panel at the left on this slide, this is data from TDK. So TDK, our Tier 1 cell-producing partner. And what this data shows is the exceptional durability of RNS material. So if you look at the green line, which goes horizontally, and that's very important across from one side of the plot to the other, that green line represents the capacity. And what I want you to focus on here is that as we go beyond cycle 100, 200, 300, that line retains a high degree of horizontal nature. And what that shows is that as you go beyond those very, very important cycle numbers, the capacity fade is minimal. Now very critically, we're not doing this at a weak C-rate. We're using an aggressive C-rate, which is actually designed to accelerate degradation. So this is a 1C, 1-hour discharge and 100% depth of discharge. And I would like to highlight that this is in a pouch cell, a multilayer pouch cell produced by TDK at their facility in Japan and tested at their facility in Japan, backing up what we said a year ago about the durability of our material. Moving to the panel on the right. This is some recently announced data from our collaboration with QinetiQ. So this is part of the ARMD4 program, which has recently completed very successfully. QinetiQ, of course, a U.K. headquartered company with focus on defense and aerospace. And what we were able to do with QinetiQ was actually send them our material. They assembled that material into a pouch cell at their facility. They tested that pouch cell at their facility. And if you look at the data, what I want you to focus on is I want you to focus on the black line, which is actually going across from left to right, the bottom black line. This black line represents the discharge of the battery, and it's that discharge, which is involved in actually powering all the maneuvers that this simulated drone would undergo. So starting at the left, we have a 6C vertical takeoff. So we're presuming this is a quadcopter drone. We have 6C, which represents a vertical takeoff of that drone. And that pulse, that high-power pulse actually allows us to do that aggressive maneuver. We then transition to an aggressive quadcopter cruise, that's a 3C phase there. And then when that 3C phase is done, the quadcopter cruise is done, we then engage in a vertical landing maneuver, which is again a 6C maneuver. These are incredibly aggressive cycles, and I want to highlight that it's not just one cycle. This battery was able to actually achieve 50x of these cycles showing that not only can we engage in these aggressive maneuvers, but you can actually then recharge the battery and with the same device, actually do that again. Now from my assessment, considering that this is a battery that's capable of fully domestic supply chain. So within that group of batteries, these results are really unique. And these results, specifically the power capability in partnership with the durability of our battery have actually raised a lot of attention from players who work in industries which make devices like the quadcopter drones that we've shown on this slide. If you go to the next slide, please, Amit. As have our results from the National Lab of the Rockies. So I'll just give a brief introduction. Matt did a great job on that earlier, but a brief introduction of the National Lab of the Rockies. They're part of the U.S. government laboratories of the National Labs. And specifically, the National Lab of the Rockies is the division of that, which is focused on research, development and application of energy storage and energy usage. So specifically, what we're looking at here is a phenomenal power capability, again, of our battery. What we -- what National Labs were able to do is take our material, assemble that into a cell and test that cell at their facility. And those are the results we're looking at here. Starting at the left, you have a 0.1C rate that corresponds to a 10-hour full charge and discharge. And on the right, you have a 2C rate that corresponds to a half hour charge and discharge. That is a 20-fold increase in rate. In doing that, we retained 92% of the capacity going from a 10-hour charge discharge to a 30-minute charge discharge. Compare that to a standard lithium-ion battery where you'd be looking at retention of between 80% to 90%. So we're able to make this battery with a fully domestic supply chain, and we're able to at least match, if not better, the results which are obtained using a standard lithium-ion battery. What's really important about this, especially these results at the National Lab of the Rockies is that the national labs actually represent a pathway to U.S. government institutions and agencies. So for instance, the Department of War. And critically for Gelion, it also represents a pathway to the actual procurement programs of those agencies. So for us, this is a phenomenally important result, and we've been very, very happy with the traction that we've gotten from this result, both within the National Labs and beyond. At this point, I want to -- if you go just back for a second, please. I just want to highlight that we've shown data from Asia, so Japan, data from Europe, so the U.K. and also data from the United States. Remember that Gelion operates with a licensing model. So the ability for our materials to be shipped to partners and work out of the box as advertised is absolutely critical. And so we're really, really proud of the fact that we're able to actually take our material, we're able to send it out to our partners, and we're able to actually have that material operate first time out of the box as advertised. It's critical to the way the company operates, and it's just something we're really, really proud of. I also want to point out that with all of these partners, especially with the national labs, these results are only going to get better. These partners have their own technologies in supporting componentry. So for instance, the anode and the electrolyte. And as we actually leverage some of those technologies, we expect that this performance is actually going to improve. If you go to the next slide, please, Amit. So we had ambitions that we spoke about when we came out a year ago, 5 key ambitions, and we're really happy to say that we've hit every single one of those. I want to focus on the middle one, so progressing market fit with TDK, our Tier 1 cell manufacturing partner. In doing that, we've kind of identified 2 key battery types that we're working on and developing towards commercial application. So the first is a variant which uses our NES cathode and pairs that with the lithium metal anode. This would be a battery which is focused to defense or aerospace. We've talked through some of the performance there. So very high power capable of 3C continuous and 6C pulses to do all of the aggressive maneuvers that are required for anything that operates in aerospace. High specific capacity, greater than 800 milliamp-hours per gram of cathode active material. I want you to compare that to 200 milliamp-hours per gram, which is observed for high-performance NMC and high nickel. So this is over 4x higher specific capacity than those incumbent technologies. Excellent durability, 300 cycles under aggressive conditions in a pouch cell assembled with lithium metal. These are really phenomenal results. And of course, the wide temperature range that we spoke about before, operating down to minus 20 C and up to 40 degrees C. Moving to the other cell format. This is a graphitic anode cell format. All of those performance metrics and performance advantages still apply. So we've got high power, high specific capacity and, of course, also a wide temperature range. But moving towards a graphitic anode, we're looking more towards a broader spectrum commercial applications. So it would be commercial drones, devices and EVs. Here, we partner with the graphitic anode, which is a much more stable and safe anode compared to lithium metal. And in doing so, we're able to increase our durability. So we're able to go to above 1,000 cycles, again, under very, very harsh 1C charge discharge conditions, 100% discharge, which brings us in line with where we need to be to actually operate in those markets. And pair that with the fact that our material is compatible with lithium-ion battery components. That means the electrolytes, the separators and the anodes and all of the machinery that's used to make those components and handle those components in cell assembly in gigafactories today. That gives us the opportunity to move our material forward as an actual drop in. So we don't need to retool factories. We don't need to make new factories. We can use the gigafactories that are available today. And because of the compatibility, we can actually drop in there. Additionally, a domestic supply chain, as Matt talked about before, we use sulfur and we use carbon, both of these byproducts of local industries. So for instance, oil refineries, which are available in most places in the world, giving the world, let's say, a democratic viewpoint in how they can produce their batteries. And last of all, just briefly touch on this, there's an economic advantage. We've had our batteries third-party cost modeled, and they come in at cell level, so not just the cathode active material, but actual whole cell level, 15% lower than the incumbent with the equivalent performance. So that's a massive cost benefit, which pairs with all of the performance advantages. I just want to summarize and say these are really fantastic results, and we've done this in a very, very careful and thoughtful way, as Amit highlighted. We're very proud of them. We think it's been a great year for Gelion. And with that, I'll hand back to Matt, who will talk you through what our ambition is for the year to come.

Thanks, Louis. So not only do we have a fantastic product, which, as Louis described, has been validated by leading players in our target markets, but there's also a significant commercial opportunity. And I'd like to just spend a few minutes talking about where that is, what it is and why we believe in it. And so really, why sulfur and why cathodes? And so on this slide, we see some data from Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, a leading market intelligence and price reporting agency who specialize in batteries and critical minerals. The chart on the left shows the rapid growth in battery demand and the chart on the right shows the global cathode market. And we can see on the right the benchmark forecasts that the global cathode market is in deficit in 2026, followed by a prolonged deficit from 2032 onwards. Furthermore, with the dominance of NMC cathodes and LFP cathodes, from a performance perspective, today in the market, there's a two-size-fits-all approach. And therefore, we really see the need for an alternate cathode technology that combines high performance with manufacturing practicality and a lower-risk supply chain. So we have a large growing battery market driven by the macro trend of electrification of energy infrastructure, of mobility, of defense, which is served by a cathode market today that has unmet supply needs and unmet performance needs. So there is a material opportunity for Gelion NES cathode. To deliver on this, we need to focus. We need to focus our efforts, attention and our resources on that massive opportunity. So today, we have 3 business units at Gelion. We have chosen to focus on our NES cathode business on the left, where we have a significant market opportunity, as I just described and have advanced to the point where we are poised for success. However, this means making prioritization decisions elsewhere in our portfolio. So we have taken the difficult decision to wind down our integration solutions product offering. This unit was established with the aim of generating revenue from Gelion through the integration and installation of Battery Energy Storage Systems or BESS, using third-party cells. However, after delivering successfully an initial project, the market has become significantly more challenging. It's become commoditized and oversupplied, and Gelion doesn't have a sustainable competitive advantage in that market. And so we've chosen to wind it down, which will save around GBP 800,000 per year, which can be redeployed to our core NES business so that we can continue to grow the amount of activity that we're doing in that business without materially widening the operating envelope. Additionally, we have a battery recycling unit. And this is actually fantastic technology that Gelion has taken to the point now where it's also ready to scale technically. But this will require meaningful investment, and it will be competing for capital with our NES cathode business. And so we're currently working through a strategic review to identify how this fits within Gelion and whether working with a partner could be a better path forward. And so we have chosen to put our strategic focus on our NES sulfur cathode material. And then within that NES cathode business, our strategic priority is on the applications and activities that will lead us most directly to commercialization. We call this strategy the drive to commercialize, and there are 3 pillars against which we're aligning our resources and our priorities. They are discovery which is R&D demonstration, which is market validation and commercialization. And we have chosen within that to prioritize commercialization ahead of demonstration and discovery. And so there'll be more emphasis on commercialization. That's why it sits on the left than on demonstration and discovery, but there will still be demonstration and discovery activities because they're still very important. In terms of what each of these entails, we will commercialize NES for defense and aerospace in lithium metal cells, as Louis described. We will commercialize NES for commercial drones, devices and electric vehicles in graphitic cells, and we will scale up our NES production to serve those programs, and I'll talk shortly a little bit about how we intend to do that. Within demonstrate, we will narrow our focus to NES for solid-state batteries for EVs, which has a really meaningful prize in high-performing EVs, but a longer time horizon and still validation work to do. And then there are many, many other opportunities for Nano-Encapsulated Sulfur and nano-encapsulation technology, but our discovery efforts will focus very clearly only on programs where we have access to both funding and partnerships. These are really, really important. There are so many things we could do, and they are all very, very worthy things to do. And we believe that nano-encapsulation has a really strong role to play in many of them, but we need to focus. And we can come back to some of those once we reach commercialization of our NES, but in the meantime, we will focus on discovery efforts around funded programs with partners. And an example of that would be sodium ion cells because NES can act as the cathode very, very ably in a sodium-ion cell as it can in a lithium-ion cell. So we are focusing on Nano-Encapsulated Sulfur. And then within that core business, we are focusing on commercialization in our target markets of drones and devices, which are nearer term and EVs, which are a larger market, but more medium term. And then when we look at the progress we've made, we look at that strategy and we look at our current activities, how does this all fit together? So this is a little bit of an eye chart, but hopefully, with the voice-over, it will make sense. So the base of the house is a very, very strong IP foundation that's now fully in place with our own IP, with ongoing IP arrangement with -- exclusive IP arrangement with the Max Planck Institute and then IP that we've acquired both from Johnson Matthey, Oxis, and OXLiD. Built upon that is the fantastic market validation work that the Gelion team has completed together with our partners, much of which Louis has described. And then in the market, we have programs underway with leading partners across all of our target applications in the right chemistries. And then feeding that will be a successive -- successively different scales of production. And so I'll just sort of talk through that. So we have lab-scale production today in Sydney. We are at the second scale of that production, and we are in the process of delivering the third and final scale of that production that will happen during this fiscal year -- early in this fiscal year and supported by our partners, you can see on the screen. That will provide us with sufficient material to keep feeding the market validation programs that we have in the top row of this diagram. But they're hungry, and as they come, they go through successive levels of requirements. So if you imagine the difference between creating enough material to put in several handfuls of cells for testing with one of our partners, that's very different to needing sufficient material to eventually put into enough cells that go into a pack and drive a car around a track -- a test track. And so we will need to get to pilot scale production. And then beyond that, we will get to commercial scale production, but we will do that with partners. And one of those pathways is with the joint development agreement, a funded joint development agreement with Mitsui Kinzoku. That's an example of where we have a pathway to negotiate a commercial scale license and production. The pilot plant is important because not only will it feed the programs above as they get to the requirement for volume, but also it will give us the engineering package that we can license. So instead of licensing only technology, also licensing engineering packages. And so this is a really, really important step for us. And lastly, please don't forget, go right back to the beginning. This looks very complicated, but it's actually quite simple. This is all built around and fed by one single black powder, nano-encapsulated sulfur. And Amit, if you don't mind just clicking on the build on the slide. And so the IP is around that single black powder. The validation work is using that single black powder. The market work with our partners is around that single black powder into multiple chemistries for multiple applications. And when we go through that scale-up of successive levels of production ourselves and with partners, it will be making that single and very fancy black powder. And so I wanted to sort of bring it back to where we started. So looking ahead, what to expect next from Gelion? The executive team and I believe that actually it's very clear what we need to do. There's a lot to do, but we believe it's very, very clear what we need to do. And so it falls into 2 reasonably simple work streams. So on our partnerships, we need to deliver against the milestones for our existing collaborations, we need to deliver the commercial revenue for those that have commercial revenue associated with them, and we need to add a discrete number of new drone and EV partnerships into that stable of market partnerships. And then on scale up, we will deliver the increased lab-scale cathode production, cathode active material production, our NES production from our lab, and that's underway so that we can continue to feed those programs in 2027. We will scale up our lab-scale pouch production -- pouch cell production, both in Australia and in the U.K. That's not because we want to be a cell manufacturer. That's because we need to produce cells to be able to partner with our customers on validation. And then we will advance our project for the pilot scale production, so we will initiate that and the first piece of which is early-stage engineering, and so we think it's relatively straightforward. And the last thing I would like to add is having been now in the seat for 3 or 4 months, that we have a great team to get all of this done. You've met 2 key members of the team today. We have a great team to get all of this done. I am extremely grateful to my predecessor, John, for various things, but the principal among those is the great team that I've inherited, and so I have total confidence in this team's ability to deliver the things that we just laid out on that last slide. So in summary, we have delivered strong financials in the past fiscal year. We have done that whilst delivering continued progress on market validation and of our partnerships as promised and in some cases, beyond what was promised. We have, I believe, a very clear strategic focus on commercializing our NES cathode opportunity and clarity within that on how we want to go and do it and what's most important to us as we make careful choices about our resources. And we have fantastic momentum. We have built and continue to enjoy fantastic momentum in our target markets of drones, both defense and commercial drones, and EVs. And then lastly, I would like to thank our shareholders for their support. There are many, many stakeholders that go into achieving all of this, but our shareholders are very, very important stakeholders among those, and so we'd like to thank you for your support. And now I'd like to open up to any questions that you might have.

[Operator Instructions] I would like to remind you that recording of this presentation along with a copy of those files and published Q&A can be accessed by our investor dashboard. At this point, if I may hand over to you to chair the Q&A, and I'll pick up from you at the end.

And so I think probably the best case to start, we've had a question around share price. And so the question was why are we seeing such large fluctuations in the share price and why have we had such a negative reaction to recent potential commercialization announcements. And so I'll take this one. I mean we are acutely aware of the share price. We watch it every day, but I don't dwell on the share price. We don't control it directly, and there are factors such as market liquidity and the macro environment that have a huge impact and often in the opposite direction to the progress that the company is announcing. And so we are focused on getting our heads down and building a great business. That said, we are taking steps to engage more with the market. To give some examples, my role, the CEO position with John's retirement, the Board has taken the opportunity to move that to the U.K. to be closer to the market. And I'm now engaging more frequently both with our institutional investors, and we will be attending a number of retail shareholder events. That will include actually even in November, the Yellowstone Advisory event, which I think is on the 11th of November, and I'll be at the Nello Investor Conference in London on the 17th and 18th of November. So we'd be very happy to see people there. And we will continue to look for those both in London and outside of London. So yes, just to recap, I don't dwell on the share price. We are acutely aware of it, but we're building a great business, and we believe that, that is where material shareholder value will be created.

Okay. I was going to take the questions in order that they were submitted. So the first one was how much of a threat to your strategy are recent advances in sodium ion?

Great question. So I'll take this. And then Louis, I'll open up to see if you've got anything you'd like to add to it. But I actually don't see sodium ion as a threat. I see it as an opportunity. And the reason is that sodium and sodium-ion batteries, the ion, the sodium is the charge carrier. So it's the element of the battery that moves between the anode and the cathode through the electrolyte and it is the charge carrier. And so it works like a lithium-ion battery. It's just a sodium rather than lithium. And so there is an anode, there is a cathode, and sodium has distinct benefits and drawbacks compared to lithium. And so our material can work as a cathode in a sulfur -- sorry, in a sodium battery as it can in a lithium battery. And so it is actually part of our strategy in the discover pillar, but it's just a little bit longer wavelength. And so our near-term focus is on commercializing this in lithium systems for EVs and devices. But hopefully, you saw in the strategy presentation that sodium-ion batteries are very much within our strategy. And as I said, that's a great opportunity, and we don't see it as a threat. Louis, anything you'd like to add to that?

Just second, I think for the markets that we highlighted in this particular presentation, sodium-ion battery is not going to be an applicable battery technology. So for things that fly, you need to be lightweight and high power and sodium is not going to provide both of those. The EVs that we're targeting are going to be -- they can be competitive with absolute state-of-the-art lithium-ion batteries. So again, your sodium-ion batteries aren't going to provide that level of performance. So the markets we've highlighted to go into first, sodium ion is not a competitor. But as Matt said, we very much do have our eye on sodium, and we see it as an opportunity for the future.

The next one is a first of a number of technical questions. So how does the NES carbon structure perform under the intense pressures of calendaring?

I will gladly defer to Louis on that.

It's a real interesting question. So the short answer is -- I'll give you a little bit of the history. When we first started making the material, we did try some calendaring studies and the first iteration of the material actually, it didn't work. I'm very pleased to say now that with the later iterations of the material, we are able to calendar it and we don't see any drop in the utilization of sulfur. As we develop more and more, there will be processing steps. And what we found is that as our understanding of the material and the way we make the material advances, we've gotten much, much better at actually being able to design not just better electrochemical usage, but also mechanical properties such as hardness and mechanical durability as well as those electrochemical properties, which are absolutely essential for things like processing. So short answer is, yes, you can calendar it and as you calendar it, the performance is largely the same as it was before.

The next technical question. You've reported 4Q aerial capacity in coin cells. How is that translating to larger pouch cells nearing 10 amp hours?

Yes, sure. So the most recent results or the most recent materials that we shipped to TDK, they are all 4 milliampere-hours per square centimeter cathodes. The results that we recently were able to acquire with QinetiQ through the ARMD4, a component of that was using 4 milliampere-hours per square centimeter cathodes. The importance of 4 milliampere-hours per square centimeter is that as you reach a 10 amp power cell, you're able to actually hit or exceed that critical number of 400 watt hours per kilogram. So that corresponds to a really lightweight battery, which is appropriate for things that fly. So I suppose to answer the question, we are rolling that aerial capacity out into our pouch cell development. There is a schedule of things that have to happen as you do that. So we've hit that step, and we're continuing to develop that material on towards 10 amp power pouch cells in the not-too-distant future.

The next question is for sure for you, Louis. Regarding the September patents, how does the anode protection patent impact dendrite formation cycle life and performance for cells with lithium-metal and silica? Can you explain how the thermal control tech will impact cell to pack efficiency? Is the anode protection and thermal control tech being integrated and tested in full cell packs in existing partnerships?

Yes. So a very good question. So specifically, so the lithium protection layer, that is for an alkali metal anode, so that would be lithium or sodium. What that patent actually protects is the application on top of that anode of an initial layer, which functions to actually alloy with the sodium or lithium, which is plating or stripping onto that anode, and a second layer on top of that, which is an ionically conductive layer, but electronically insulating, which actually facilitates passage of the lithium and sodium onto that anode. What that does is it smooths out the plating and stripping and it vastly reduces the tendency to form dendrites. So that's how that technology works. I would see this as being a really, really important patent for us, especially due to parallels and connection to what's happening in the U.K. at the moment around developing our solid-state batteries. It has a very, very strong connection to that, so this is one of the patents that we acquired from Johnson Matthey to the OXIS portfolio. And as we develop, we find that a lot of those patents are incredibly relevant to what we're doing at the moment. So there's a strong connection to the way we're going in the U.K. with that patent, and that's roughly how that works. The other patent on the thermal management, what that protects is a way to actually cool or heat or retain the temperature of the batteries. But what's specifically cool about it is rather than heating the pack and relying on the heat or the coldness to actually radiate into the batteries, you directly use the current collectors within the batteries, which are copper metal or aluminum metal, highly conductive to actually translate that heat directly into the middle of the cells themselves. So this is a very, very efficient way to translate -- transfer heat into the batteries. And so as we start to scale up beyond cell level and into pack level, that will become a very important technology. Again, this is one of the patents that we acquired from Johnson Matthey, the OXIS portfolio. And like I said before, we're seeing that a lot of those patents have a lot of relevance to where we're going. As a specific example of how that thermal management one might be useful, let's say, beyond EV where there's an obvious application, if you think of drones, right, and you think of things that need to operate in very extreme environments, so for instance, in defense, the ability to actually control the heat of that battery, so let's imagine you're in an incredibly cold temperature. Let's imagine we're doing something in the Arctic, right? And you need to heat the battery. We have the power to actually operate that battery at a very, very, very low temperature. But let's say we're way lower than minus 20. Let's say we're operating like minus 50, something like that. We can actually use that very efficient way to heat the battery. We use the residual power that the battery has, we transfer that directly into the cell, we heat that battery, and bam, our device comes to life. So that, again, is a really exciting pattern, not just from, let's say, commercial markets, but also for some more specific niche vehicles. That's how that patent works, and that's how we might be able to harness it in the future.

Can you give any idea on volume and packaging of NES and how it compares with the established LFP and NMC cells?

Yes, sure. So as a component of the work we're doing with one of the automotive partners that we've recently announced, we were asked about this. And to be completely honest, we don't have actual measurements of this at the moment. So we're relying on modeling to look at that. This is a multiphase program. And as the phases develop, the performance of the battery will become better as we get the assembly, the processing, for instance, the calendaring that we talked about earlier better. We anticipate this coming in, in the third phase of that project, somewhere between an LFP battery and an NMC battery. So it will be more volumetrically energy dense than LFP, but likely be slightly shy of the volumetric energy density of NMC or standard high nickel cathodes. As we develop beyond that Phase 3 and we get closer to full commercialization, that may change. But I think that's probably the best answer that I can give to that question at the moment.

A few questions here from Daniel. Scaling, you've kind of answered this, what changes in performance do you expect when scaling NES from small laboratory cells to commercially relevant sizes? Have you tested at those larger sizes? And how did the measured results compare with your expectations?

I'll take the beginning of that question, and then I'll hand it over to Louis. So it's important to say that the good thing -- one of the many good things, but the good things about the way we make nano-encapsulated sulfur is that there is no invention of any kind of new process technology that's required. There are several process technologies that could be applicable. And so as we've tested the production of NES using different process technologies at different scales, actually, the electrochemical performance has worked in each case. And so as we've done that lab scale through different process technologies at different scales within the lab, it tells us a lot about how we might be best placed to make NES, and it's given us a lot of flexibility how we might make NES at commercial scale. And so we don't sort of worry about that. So the answer is, yes, we've tested it at different scales using different process technologies and it's performed. Really, the one thing we have to watch out for, in my opinion, as we look at scale to commercial scale is the final sort of processing step as we think about particle size and that kind of thing. And that will -- what's necessary there will be determined by which process technology we select. We will be working with, really a leading engineering company as we go through our early phase engineering for commercial scale production in order to help us solve those or answer those questions or really solve those problems. In terms of whether the measured results and how they compare, Louis, I'd have to defer to you on that. But I think just to recap, we have tried this at different scales, we have tried it with different technologies. And at each of those, it has worked. And therefore, that would inform us that actually we have some flexibility on how we do that at large scale, and we don't have major concerns about that. Clearly, we need to do it thoughtfully, and we need to do it in a measured way with data. But so far, the data has been very, very positive.

I've got one thing I'll add to that. So I was very grateful for this question when I saw it come up. So regarding the test results that we presented from TDK, there's a variety of ways that you can cheat when you make a battery. So you make a coin cell or a pouch cell, you can use very, very thick lithium-metal anodes, you can use a huge amount of electrolyte. What's really exciting about those results from TDK is that is actually -- those are some of the laser results that we have where we've removed those, let's say, artificial advantages. So those cells are made with an amount of lithium metal, a thickness of lithium metal, which is what we would expect to use when we're making a cell, which should be used, let's say, for instance, in drones and also without using flooded electrolyte. So our first foray into this and actually targeting some larger format cells and, let's say, more real-world cells has returned very, very good results. So thank you for the opportunity to share a little more detail on those results from TDK.

There are a couple of questions here, more than a couple, actually, on when you expect to receive proper commercial orders and how you see revenue developing over the next 2 or 3 years?

Yes. So I'll take the commercial orders part, perhaps and Amit, then I can flip over to you for revenue. So there is nothing stopping us in getting to commercial orders other than time. So I've worked in the material space for a long time and battery chemistry is comfortably the most complex chemistry of any of the downstream applications that I've worked in, plastics and coatings and rubber and lots of other things in drilling fluids. Battery chemistry is comfortably the most tricky, and it's comfortably the most application-specific. And so that's why it takes time, the companies to whom we're providing our materials and partnership on how to get it working. It is working, but there is a very well-trodden path that you have to go through at different scales. And then that varies -- the time it takes varies with what is the application and therefore, what's the chemistry and the approach that each company takes to that, the individual approach that it takes. So it just does take time. It's not a great answer. It's not one that everyone is going to be thrilled to hear, but it takes time. And as we march through that so far, we are getting over every hurdle that's put in front of us. But we have to persevere. The second thing I would say is, ultimately, we would like to pursue a licensing model. And therefore, it would ultimately be our partners that would be receiving the commercial orders. I saw a question in here that's related to this around downstream users. And so we are pursuing both, and it's really, really important in the battery materials space that you do pursue both, so we are talking to cell makers such as TDK, but also end application producers. And so those are drone OEMs and those are EV automotive OEMs. And so you have to come at it from both angles. Ultimately, you can get to application end use equipment manufacturers who will then sort of, if they've got qualification capabilities as the ones we're partnering with have, they will then provide the pull-through to their battery manufacturer. But we also need to work with leading battery manufacturers to show that it works and then get the pull-through from them to their customers. And it's really, really important that we do that with both. And so that's the pathway. And then Amit, in terms of expectations, I can give you the space to answer that question.

Yes. Thank you, Matt. So I'll also cover -- there are a few questions on cash, revenue, Mitsui Kinzoku, so I'll cover all of them in one go. So in terms of revenue expectations, as I summarized and Matt summarized, we are expecting modest revenue in FY 2027. I think we have to appreciate the last 3 or 4 months and the traction that we've got from funded agreements, and that's going to be largely our focus going forward as well. So the more agreements we can enter in terms of funded agreements, the better for revenue recognition. It's harder to say today what the revenue will be in FY '28, for example, because we're working on a number of agreements at the moment. But Mitsui, there's a GBP 2 million funded JDA based on milestones. We have invoiced the first payment to Mitsui, and we have received the cash already as well in the month of October. So it's starting with a very, very good -- it's a very good start from Mitsui Kinzoku program. The top 5, we have just signed. We have raised the invoice. It will go in the next couple of days and we will get paid as per the terms of the agreement in the next 30, 45 days. So these have all started. We will continuously focus on this. And then there was a question on the cap raise. We just released our audited results, clear going concern. We have looked at cash flow on the 31st of December, so the auditors didn't have any concern. I have summarized about our current grant programs, which are there for the next couple of years. We are looking for more grant programs in the U.S., in U.K., in Australia to continue to fund our development programs through this grant and nondilutive funding as well, so I hope that answers the question. In terms of analyst research reports, Longspur and Allenby, they both cover us. Longspur issued their report yesterday, so please go online on the London Stock Exchange website. The reports are available for everyone to download and read. So they have got their forecast as to where the -- how do they think the company is going to go. And in terms of cash burn, I've summarized that we are looking at a GBP 5 million annual cash spend, give or take, right? It will depend on the number of agreements, on the number of programs funded, what portion is funded, what's not. But that's kind of the envelope we are looking at. It will go up some years, it will go down some years. We have just spoken about the cost cuts in terms of integration solutions, the [ GBP 800,000 ] of annual cost savings, which we will use to fund the growth of the sulfur program. So we are still working within that GBP 5 million estimate of the OpEx and CapEx combined. I think I've covered most on the cash burn cap raise questions, Matt. And then I think we have got a couple of minutes. Maybe, Simon, to cover what's left.

I think we're bang up against the hour now, so let's do one last question. What are the competing technologies to your technology?

So I'll maybe set this question up and then ask Louis to touch on this. So the important thing for our specific technology, so that you've got in-kind competition and you've got not in-kind competition. And so there are other lithium sulfur, sulfur cathode materials out there. But as I said earlier in the presentation, our material with the nano-encapsulation means we're solving the root of the problem, we're curing it rather than trying to mask the symptoms. And so what happens there is that our material is a drop-in cathode material. We're providing to people and selling people the value proposition of sulfur and a drop-in cathode material. We are not selling people a redesign of the battery. And so a lot of sulfur chemistry, but also others say, well, if you like to take advantage of the benefits of this thing, here's how you'd have to redesign the other components of the cell. And so they would be selling a cell chemistry and we would be selling a cathode active material. And so they are sort of in-kind competition in sulfur, but actually offering something slightly different. And there is certainly room in that gigantic and underserved cathode market for both of those things. And then in terms of not in-kind competition in the cathode market, I mean, fundamentally, a battery has a cathode and anode separator and electrolyte and several other things. But that's the architecture, and so when we look at that, the main competition we said are NMC, and there are different flavors of that, largely with higher and higher nickel contents. And then LFP, and there are some flavors of that as well. So those are the principal competition. There are other alternate cathode materials out there, but they don't have the traction maybe that sulfur has, generally speaking. And many of them also come with the sort of redesign or the gymnastics that you have to do from a chemistry perspective. And so we could go for a long time on the specifics of each of those. And so yes, the main competition are LFP and NMC. It's a massive market and to be successful commercially with this company for our shareholders, we don't need to fully displace them. We need a modest share of an enormous market that's dominated by 2 principal things. And therefore, there is room for Gelion's NES for other sulfur technologies and for other cathode technologies. Louis, I don't know if there are any specific cathode technologies that you'd want to flag at this stage.

No, I think it's a beautiful answer. I think the proof of our ability to compete in that market is all of the collaborations that we've managed to enter into, many of them that come with funding and that have very, very serious long-term positive consequences. That's not easy to do, right? Batteries is a tough market. And what we've been able to do in the last year is really get people to see it and believe it, and it operates out of the box first time as we say. And so yes, there's competition. I think you did a really good job of laying out the market, and we're right there in that.

Matt, I think we're going to have to call it a day there. If you could sum up what you'd like investors to take away, we can then close the presentation.

Thank you, Simon. Well, look, thanks to the team at Gelion, especially Amit and Louis for today. But I think the key things that I'd love people to take away from this are absolutely fantastic progress in the market with the validation and moving to qualification, which is the path to commercialization of NES. We've done that with very sound financial stewardship of the company's money, so we've achieved an enormous amount without overstepping the boundaries and in a way that's yielded results above consensus expectation. We now have absolute crystal clarity on where we're focused and how we're going to go about that. And we have absolutely fantastic momentum in pursuing that. And so those are the 4 things I'd like people to take away, great progress operationally, sound financial stewardship, clarity on strategy and great momentum. And with that, I would just repeat, thank you very much.

That's great, Matt, Amit, Louis. Thank you very much indeed for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close this session as you'll now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback, which help the company better understand your views and expectations. On behalf of the management team, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation.