Good morning. Welcome to the Gelion plc investor presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen-only mode. Questions are encouraged and can be submitted anytime via the Q&A tab situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Just click Q&A, scroll to the bottom, type your question, press Send. Due to the number of attendees on today's meeting, the company may not be in a position to answer every question received during the meeting itself. However, the company will review all questions submitted today and publish responses where it's appropriate to do so.
Also thank you to all those investors for pre-submitting questions. Some of these topics will be covered off during the presentations and we'll pick up at the end on specific Q&A. Before we begin, I'd now like to submit a following poll. I'd now like to hand you over to Dr. Steve Mahon, Non-Executive Chairman. Good morning.
Good morning to you, good evening to those who are joining us from Australia. We have a presentation team here. We're really reflecting on, primarily on the annual results, but we'll reflect on the last year because it's approximately just over 12 months since we listed on AIM. At that time we really came to market with a suite of battery technologies addressing both the high energy market and the high power market, both storage for utility, solar, but also for mobility devices. We'll reflect on that today and talk about the developments in those spaces. As a board, we remain as optimistic as we were on the day of our IPO about the prospects for our suite of technologies.
One of the other elements we stressed when we came to market was around trust, and we were extremely respectful of the trust that the shareholders put in the company and the board. Part of that has been, and this year the board has been incredibly engaged, hands-on in helping the company make the transition from laboratory to commerciality. Part of that change is putting in the right management. We set ourselves the challenge of bringing or finding a fairly rare person, someone who has experience as a CEO of driving company growth and driving liquidity and shareholder returns, but also having deep battery market expertise. There are very few of those people around, and we are fortunate that we have found one, and John Wood is the very recently appointed CEO. I'll pass to John shortly.
John is now our full-time permanent CEO. It's taken us a little while to find the right person, but it's certainly worth waiting because it's a critical part of the success for the company to have the right leadership in place. It's a great pleasure to welcome John to the team, and I'll hand over to John to take the lead on the presentation.
Thanks, Steve. Thanks very much. You know, it's a real honor to be able to lead Gelion and to steward your investment in Gelion. As Steve says, my history is all about has been all about taking the great technologies that are developed by teams and ensuring those technologies are adopted worldwide. You'll come to know me as an entrepreneur in the spirit of Peter Thiel's book, Zero to One. I advise reading the book to understand it.
Basically, when you look around the world today, it's a very small place, and if you wanna compete in the innovation and technology space, you find quite quickly that you need to be one of the one, two, or three leading technologies that requires a particular approach to commercialization. In the course of the presentation today, I'm gonna share with you some of the things that you might expect from us in Gelion. This is a real opportunity for me. As well as my work in launching technologies globally, for the last 15 years, I've been involved in sustainability and particularly in energy storage.
As part of the energy storage community, I ended one of this quite in the early stages, have shared the journey to this point, and have many friends around the world across that community. Gelion is a particular challenge and opportunity because we have two remarkable technologies on both sides of the community. We'll talk about that in the course of today. It's a remarkable opportunity for me to work with Thomas Maschmeyer and the team. And I'll talk later about the specifics of what we wanna do with your investments. I'll pass now to Thomas to introduce.
Yeah. Thank you very much for your support as investors and for the trust you put in the company and the team. We will do our very best to deliver and we're very confident of doing that if we, as a next. Right.
I'll introduce myself as well.
Oh, sorry.
Hi, everyone. Thank you for investment. Good morning and good evening to investors in the U.K. and Australia. My name is Amit Gupta. I'm the CFO. I've been with the business for 15 months, and so we have achieved quite a bit in the last year and very exciting times to come. Thank you.
As you know, the company was set up for to help support the green energy revolution and to do that with innovative storage technologies. In terms of us being part of an ESG portfolio, we align very, very well with UN, the UN Sustainable Development Goals, as you can see here. We really play strongly into a whole range of different areas of incredible importance given the times we're in. Next slide, please. In terms of key progress since the IPO, we've now established a senior team that we're very, very confident of. The board's working together very well, as Steve Mahon, our Chairman, already alluded to. We've now got a sector expert CEO with huge international reach, both in terms of offtake, in terms of manufacturing, capabilities for our technologies.
We're really looking forward to his leadership. Getting us to that next level. The other thing, or amongst the other things we've done, is we've proven that the cells can be made not just in a lab by PhD students or by highly skilled individuals, but, in fact, they can be made in the commercial environment. We've transitioned out of the lab into a pilot manufacturing line that is in a commercial lead-acid factory in Sydney that was opened, and it was commissioned ahead of schedule, and it was creating such excitement that the two federal ministers of relevance, the Minister for Energy, and the Minister for Industry, came personally to open this pilot plant manufacturing line. We are very well visible within the ecosystem.
Those cells are assembled by just the normal staff that is working in that factory and making lead-acid batteries. The batteries themselves are going to be used in the Acciona Energía trial that we have. It's one of the largest energy companies in renewables around the world, and we're looking forward to those tests, those trials, the undoubtedly fantastic results, and to be able to share that with you in the coming year. The last point is that we've had substantial acceleration in the additives business. We've made a number of breakthroughs and are able to go significantly faster than we thought we would be into the development of a lithium-silicon-sulfur battery technology, and we'll talk more about that in detail in the following slides.
In terms of financial highlights, I guess the two key points here are that we have no debt, and the other one is that we have had as of the end of June this year, GBP 17 million in the bank still as cash. We feel we are very well-resourced to execute on the strategy that we will be introducing to you in the next few slides. One of the other things, not just the senior team, but the team as a whole has grown, and we've been able to attract just fantastic talent. Having done a little bit of a poll around the place, everybody is motivated by impact.
Of course, you need to eat and have a salary, but really people are coming to work because of impact, trying to make a difference, trying to really interact with that big challenge that we all face and push out those new technologies to help make a difference. It's a fantastic team, highly skilled individuals, very diverse, many nationalities, and hugely motivated, and we're all very proud to be associated with such a wonderful team. Now over to the business.
Thanks very much, Thomas. Next slide here. The reason that I was convinced to join Gelion really is the opportunity to work with this exceptional man, Thomas, and with what I found already some truly amazing employees that have assembled inside of Gelion. Thomas is a modest man, he's regarded as one of the top 15 chemists in the world. With a specialty in catalysis, which are the technologies that we are working to make these batteries happen. On my own side, as I said, I worked over the last 15 years in sustainability.
In my work in sustainability, I worked for many years on the side of the business that was lead-acid. We'll talk about relevance to the lead-acid industry of our zinc bromide cells, particularly as we proceed. In the last sort of two and a half years, I put just my own and my family's money back into sustainability and built an investment portfolio that goes across sustainability technologies with an emphasis in energy storage. The reason I raise that is that gave me an exposure across and participation across all of the activities or many of the activities, leading activities that are going on in energy storage across the world.
Against that background, the opportunity to work with Thomas and the team, on these two core technologies is something that I treasure and I understand very clearly. I'm gonna introduce it to you, in that context. In many ways, what I've done to date has been training to step into this role. You'll recognize pretty quickly down the bottom there's a number 50 MW on 2010 and 17 GW in 2020. This is not to scale, but I'll explain that to you. My engagement in energy storage started in 2008, that's really when the industry took off of energy storage supporting, renewable, renewables growth.
What happened back then is we had the global financial crisis, and under the Obama administration, there was the ARRA program, the American Reconstruction Act. U.S. Department of Energy, when that happened, under the stewardship of a remarkable man, Dr. Imre Gyuk , actually allocated $200 million to energy storage that was supplemented by another $300 million from private capital to set up 16 large energy storage projects in the U.S. I was fortunate enough to be leading a team at the time that provided the cells for two of 16 projects that grounded me in the growth of the opportunity. If this slide was building for you, what you would see is the remarkable growth that happened between 2010 and 2020 to the 17 GW that were out there in that time.
For me, as a participant in the industry, that was a staggering period of growth and innovation. What I want to draw everyone's attention to is what happens between 2020 and 2030. We go from 17 GW to 358 GW. These are actually numbers I shared at World Energy Storage Day. I gave the stationary energy storage presentation at World Energy Storage Day this year. The relevant factor is that 358 GW is not enough. In the presentation I gave at World Energy Storage Day, we talked about what was happening in wind energy, we talked about what was happening to solar energy, and we talked about what was needed to buffer it all. That is a staggering rate of growth.
We're gonna need energy storage to do all we can because even at 358 GW of energy storage, we're still gonna be curtailing the amount of wind and solar energy that is being generated. That's the background that we're working against. There's effectively an infinite market for storage. If you can provide it at the right cost with the right performance, you've got to sell it. You've got to sell it. Looking under the covers then to understand where that energy storage is coming from. There are two main contributors to energy storage today, and they are the lead-acid industry and the lithium industry. They're both today roughly the same size. Lead-acid is actually slightly bigger in GWh terms. Lithium is slightly bigger in dollar terms.
Between now and 2030, lithium will be an industry that is 3x larger. The lead-acid industry is still growing. I don't want to belittle other initiatives that are starting as well, like flow batteries and other alternative chemistries because there are chemistries like sodium-ion as well that are making a strong contribution. Basically today, the bulk of the energy storage in the world is coming from these two industries. When you look at the picture in front of you, I use this picture for a particular reason. On the left is the lead-acid industry. It's an industry where, you know, there's people and robotics, but basically it's a bulk manufacturing type industry. Large rolls of lead, lots of acid moving through the plant.
High automation, not the same sort of manufacturing as we have on the right, which is the lithium manufacturing, which is much more of a clean room, dry room type approach. More like silicon fab manufacturing when you compare it to the lead-acid world. I just put this up to context the world that we are working within. To context it a little further, this slide shows you on the left, at the top is a lead-acid battery. At the bottom on the left, well, that's a Gelion zinc bromide battery. You can see that the two, you know, basically look the same. On the right you have a standard lithium-ion cell. Lithium manganese cobalt, nickel cobalt type cell.
Down the bottom you have, this is a representative of what our intended pouch format will be for lithium silicon sulfur cells that would be using our additive technology. You can see that we've got a class of manufacturer and a class of cell that fits into both sides of our business. Talking first about the Gelion zinc bromide batteries. These cells that you're looking at now. Firstly, what I really wanted to do here was to acknowledge that to have this opportunity to build on what's been achieved by the leaders before me in Gelion. It's remarkable that Gelion has progressed to where these cells were made this year, actually in a lead-acid facility.
They were made using different processes, but these were made at our facility by our partner, Battery Energy in Australia. You can see they're representative production cells, which is a huge achievement. Looking at the lead-acid market then. The market today is large and there are three main segments. SLI, starting, lighting, ignition, stationary, motive. We see opportunity for Gelion to be part of that ecosystem, to build upon the strength of that ecosystem. We have certain advantages to build on. Firstly, our format is very lead-acid-like. We offer a very safe chemistry, fire-resistant. Thomas has tested the batteries by putting them on hot plates and taking them to 600 degrees Celsius. We are very high and low temperature tolerant without HVAC. Very relevant.
One of the projects I mentioned back at the start when the energy storage industry was getting underway, one of those projects we were awarded in the U.S. by the team I led at the time, Sandia Laboratories did a study on the efficiency of a system. We were 92% DC-DC efficient, 87% AC-AC efficient, when efficiency was adjusted for the effect of air conditioning, just around 50% efficiency. The ability to handle high temperatures without air conditioning in an LCOE, levelized cost of energy, sorry, term, is very important for energy storage. We have great cycle performance. We can use 100% depth of discharge in our cells.
Typically, in a lead-acid world, unless it's a specific deep cycle cell, more a partial state of charge of 20%-40% is being used. We can use 100% depth of discharge without accelerated degradation. A very important feature is that we can remain uncharged without accelerated degradation. We can actually sit empty for months on end. I'm gonna introduce to you just a slight pivot that I see Gelion taking, and I'm working with my team very hard on this at the moment. One of the strategies we're applying was to enter first the large scale energy storage market. This is not resolving from getting presence of Gelion in the large scale energy storage market.
What has happened, particularly in the last year, is that the hurdles in that market have increased as the competition. It's been the focus competition area in the sector. What does that mean? Customers are expecting 10 to 20 year, 10, 15, 20 year performance. They're expecting that the technologies that they deploy have a long history of operation and third-party independent testing. Takes a long time to enter that market. A very slight refocus here that I'm looking at with my team, analyzing the moment. What we're doing in our match to market. There's a lot of sectors in the lead-acid market where batteries are replaced much more frequently, maybe one year, two years or three years.
To enter those markets, we can enter those markets and support the ecosystem much earlier because we don't have to do such sustained testing. Also, as I said, the large scale energy storage market is the one that's under most competitive pressure, and you get the lowest payment per kilowatt hour, whereas some of the other markets are much more lucrative. One of the approaches that we're taking or going to be taking forward with Gelion is to do very close match to market in the entrance of our technology to make sure that we're successful.
This once again is following one of Peter Thiel's advice, which is often when you're entering, be large in a small sector, where you can, you can develop your strength from. I just wanted to introduce that concept to you in this, in this sector where we're-
Those small sectors are still billion-dollar markets.
Those small sectors are billion-dollar markets. They're very large markets. By entering those sectors, we have opportunity to enter earlier, taking less time in our testing. We're still making our cell more robust for the large scale market. You'll see from us, we'll continue to update you on this as we progress. One of the things I do like to try to attain as a CEO early is that transparency from my team, through my board, out to my shareholders all the way. One of the things that I'll try and achieve very quickly with you is to clarify this so that you understand the story all the way through and you understand how we're progressing. This is the Gelion cell.
Basically what you would see when you see inside this cell is you'll see all the same parts that are in a lead-acid cell. It's just there's zinc and there's bromide cake and different materials. Basically the construction of the cell is very similar with a lead-acid cell. This is also very important to understand. When you context with this slide with what I gave you earlier about the growth in the battery industry, this slide talks to what's happening to the metals prices as the industry is developing. The good news is zinc and bromide, they're those two lines right down the bottom of this slide.
We have an opportunity here, as the industry grows to make use of the fact that there's gonna be pressure on metal supply and that leads to cost increases. What are we trying to do? We're trying to maximize our use of those materials to increase our cost competitiveness while targeting the sectors where we can make the major impact and get the major gain. Thomas, if you would.
Yeah, sure. This is a picture of those two ministers I mentioned, that's, you know, at the opening of our pilot line in Western Sydney. You know, what I'd like to point out that, you know, why is it so interesting or sensible to go and partner with lead-acid companies? That is because more than 70% of all our manufacturing processes are very much standard lead-acid manufacturing processes. The rest of it are unique to us and largely connected to the different chemicals we're using.
Not so much that we have, you know, really sophisticated and different and difficult manufacturing steps as such. It's just somewhat different ones. It allows us to retrofit and go into existing manufacturing capability. We're really pleased that Battery Energy is our partner in this process.
All right. The Acciona Energía project. This is very important project for us just in terms of presenting our ability to deliver a system. You can see here, this is a 14 kWh system that we model of a 120 kWh system that we'll deliver to Acciona in Spain later this year. We're actually using the cells here that were produced at the site that we're working with Battery Energy. Those cells for the 120 kWh site are being produced now at the facility to be ready. We'll be in phase two. This phase one is testing and qualifying the operation of the system.
Phase two will see the deployment of the system up to Spain. An opportunity for us to demonstrate, learn more about the operation of our batteries in the field. I wanna be careful here to explain to you, this is a first stage of the product with, along with our match to market work and the feedback that we're getting from the field operation here and the understanding of the areas that we want to emphasize in the battery performance. We'll be following a technology plan through the course of this year in improving the cell, improving the cost dynamics towards having a commercially releasable cell as we proceed. Alright, so, the outlook this year, what can you expect from us in Gelion and around zinc bromide?
You can expect to start to get some feedback from the infield and laboratory testing of our, of our zinc bromide systems. I will share with you in updates as we proceed with our match to market and prioritizing the most compelling propositions. We'll have manufacturing process development. 2023 is a super important year for us in terms of preparation for commercialization and scaling. Over to lithium-silicon-sulfur. Now, how do I explain this to you? Well, I was really pleasantly surprised when I started to get and proceed and work with the remarkable team at Gelion to understand where we sit.
I'm gonna go a little bit off script here and go all sort of visual with you, so it's something I do from time to time, but let me explain. If I go to the next slide, and we'll come back to this one in a moment. Okay. The electric vehicles that you've got in the market today, lithium world is in that left bar, sort of starting to go a little bit to the one in the middle. What this bar shows is the energy density of typical, you know, nickel manganese cobalt base lithium-ion cells. Everybody wants to increase that. Way over here on the right above here, what we would be looking at is the effort to go to solid-state type lithium cells.
The work that Gelion is doing on sulfur cathodes is relevant in the solid-state cell context. I'm gonna talk to you today particularly to introduce you to a slightly different context. The pressure is on the industry in three areas: performance, cost and safety. The work that Gelion is doing on additives is relevant in all three of those things. We wanna get performance up here. What does performance up here mean? Well, if you get the performance up here and you increase the gravimetric, that's, you know, how much energy do you get per unit weight. If you wanna get performance up here on gravimetric, then one of the approaches has been the solid-state thing. What also happened in the industry is the industry made progress on doing high-silicon anode technologies.
Gelion at the time of IPO was looking at being in that high-silicon anode work. That high-silicon anode work is actually quite competitive. From a strategic point of view, the opportunity for Gelion is actually to work with that industry. The high-silicon anode companies, what they achieved is that they got the energy density of the. It used to be that the cathode was sort of leading on energy density, and then the high-silicon anode guys pushed their energy density on the anode up. The actual energy density of a cell is largely controlled by which is the less of the anode and the cathode controlled by which is less. The industry has progressed much more on the energy density of the anode.
Gelion, in its work in the sulfur cathode additives, we can't use all of the energy density advances that have been achieved on the silicon anode, although today. Gelion offers a path to utilize that advance by providing a sulfur cathode that has the requisite energy density to match up. There's also, most importantly, some really tight analogy in the way this has been achieved that means that it complements the work that was done on high-silicon anodes very closely. Here, we made a small sort of announcement earlier this week, which was the foundation announcement, just so we could start to talk to you about this.
In stewarding your investment. It's important for us at this point to balance what we're doing on protecting IP with what we're doing in terms of commercialization to get market presence with what we're doing in terms of getting our team the free air and scope to actually achieve what they need to or what they are achieving. This is science. This is research. You know, research in many senses is fungible. Some things can't be controlled in research sense. We have some of the most remarkable scientists that are making breakthroughs in this area and getting IP. And we need to give them the opportunity and the environment where they can be most effective. What does that mean to you as shareholders and particularly around messaging?
It means that I'm gonna keep you as informed as I can as we advance, and it means that I'm gonna try explaining the story to you so you understand it, so that when we update you, it's relevant to you. Our announcement this week was a very simple one. It said, "Well, we've got, you know, 300 cycles, and they're still 80% on a half cell." That's a fairly bland announcement to a shareholder. What it means is that that's a milestone in our progression towards later milestones. The next milestone our team will be working on towards a full cell result. Now, there is science to be done, and there's still unknowns to be managed as the team does that, but we're very confident we're on a tight path. I'm gonna pass to Thomas at this point.
Yeah, sure.
He might explain that.
Yeah. Just to maybe recap. In terms of the existing lithium-ion batteries in your phone, that performance is limited by the graphite in terms of energy density. The NMC could do more. Putting lots of silicon into the graphite means that now the anode can do more and is limited by the cathode, by the NMC. What we have been able to do is put in a sulfur cathode that now is able to liberate the full capability of the silicon anode. We are close to double or more than double, depending how you calculate the energy density. The beautiful thing is we don't need lithium metal and the solid-state approach. It's simply lithium-ion using existing manufacturing capabilities. We don't get dendrites, and we don't catch fire. Sulfur doesn't catch fire by oxidizing carbon.
NMC can do that. NMC is about 60% of the cost of a current lithium-ion battery. Sulfur is a lot cheaper. We are safer, we are cheaper, and we have around double the energy density once we get the full cell built. That's basically the story. One of the things that we said that still needs to be really fine-tuned and optimized in these systems is the electrolyte, the thing that is enabling the two electrodes to talk to one another. We have made very good progress into starting to find electrolytes that can do that. Traditionally, a sulfur-compatible electrolyte will destroy the lithium-silicon graphite side of the battery, will destroy the anode.
We are starting to show that that's not necessarily gonna have to happen, and we've got some electrolytes that are looking very promising, and marrying the two technologies, the lithium silicon anode and the sulfur cathode. We are confident that we will be able to update you with more and more progress on this.
Thank you. I mean, what can we say, guys? We're very excited about this. If you had one arrow to shoot at a bullseye in the industry, this is what we would do. This is very, very exciting technology. It's the goal that everybody's trying to attain. You know, increase the energy density of a lithium cell means that you can increase the range of electric vehicle. It means that you can move towards use of electric flight. Drones can go twice as far. Safer. Well, you know, it's higher energy density and safer and in a lower cost. We don't wanna overpromise, but we wanna let you know here, you know, we've got a tiger by the tail.
We're gonna be doing our utmost to work with the talent that we have in our team. I know personally from launching technologies around the world, there comes a time when you look across the table and you see the light in the eyes of the development team, and you know that this is something very exciting. It leverages our capabilities very well. We do have a lot of work to do. It is science. It is research. Watch for the announcements as we progress. It is a strongly contested part of the market. It really is gonna take mastery around the research and mastery around the commercialization.
Successful mean that we can replace more or less, you know, the majority of the cathodes in lithium-ion batteries around the world. That is, you know, close to an infinite market for us. So success is a extremely rewarding situation in this.
Cool. I'll walk you guys through the financial slides. Whilst you have heard Thomas and John talk about what we have achieved in the last year, I think it's a great progress from the company's perspective. We have done that whilst managing our cash balance quite closely. The results, the actual results are we have outperformed on the analyst estimates, which was basically finnCap equity research report on all measures, whether it's income or adjusted EBITDA loss or cash available at the end of the year, which is 31st June 2022. Whilst we are making very good progress, initial progress on both the technologies, we have continued to manage our cash very closely, reacting to what's happening in the global marketplace as well. This gives a little bit more further breakdown of the P&L.
Obviously, the costs have increased since FY 2021, reflecting kind of we are a public company now. Increase in the senior team, the setting of the senior team to deliver results on both the technologies. I think I flagged during the interim results, there was a one-off listing and other associated costs of GBP 4.7 million. GBP 3.8 million-GBP 3.9 million of that is the non-cash share-based payment expense, and the remainder is kind of the listing cost with brokers and advisors. The message is quite simple. I think a bit of repetition there. Strong balance sheet. A lot of cash still available to pursue all the opportunities that we have in front of ourselves, and no debt on the balance sheet. kind of a really, really strong position where we are at today.
A little bit further information on the cash flow. I'll not repeat this, but just gives a further breakdown on how the cash flow looks like. I'll pass it on back to John to kind of conclude the presentation for us.
All right. We've started to explain to you the business. One of the pieces of feedback I've had from investors already is they would like to have more messaging, more understanding of our business. The way I'd like to achieve that with you is updates like this that talk about our business, ideally quarterly updates at least, so that you understand. In an ideal world, the team, the board, the shareholders all understand the full picture of what we're working towards here. Progressive updates supplemented by announcements that you will understand.
If you understand the baseline and you understand what we're trying to do with our business, you're gonna understand each time we come out with one of these announcements to tell you how we've achieved milestones that progress the goals that we've shared with you. 2021, 2022, IPO, the establishment of the manufacturing facility for the part manufacturing cells for our first cells, and the proof point that these cells can be made in an industrial type context. This year, preparations for commercialization, all of the real detail that we need to do to build you a successful business and to successfully commercialize the technologies that we're stewarding. There is no way today to not be world's best. You must be world's best.
There is a lot of discipline and a lot of hard work to attain that, and we will be doing our very best to follow all the processes that we need to achieve that for you. That will set us up then to the progression of the commercialization. Two different battery technologies, two very different commercialization progress. You will see differences about how we do that. The zinc bromide much more, the whole process is in our control. The lithium-silicon-sulfur is going into the most competitive part, the area of the industry, energy storage industry, where the most investment is being made around the world today, and it's right in the middle of that mainstream.
The approaches, the strategic approaches, the tactical approaches on the commercialization are gonna be very different on these two businesses. The messaging that we share with you and the approach to that will be very different as we proceed. Buckle in on that. We're gonna do our very best to explain to you and keep that understanding as we progress but, wow, great team, great scientists. We are today a guppy in a really big industry. We need to gather strength quickly given our ambitious goals. We'll be trying to secure paths to do that. I think we're well-positioned, and we have some really great ingredients to work with in this dynamic market. Thank you. Be happy to take questions.
Fantastic. Thank you very much indeed for your presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, do please continue to submit your questions using the Q&A tab situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Just while the team take a few moments to review those questions already, 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 your investor dashboard. We have received a number of questions, both pre-submitted and throughout today's presentation. If I may, start with the first one. It reads, "How important is the Acciona trial for you?
Acciona trial is important to us. It, you know, just like the establishment of the manufacturer of the, of industrial cells at Battery Energy was a proof point and a milestone attained by the company to show, you know, these things can be made in a factory. Acciona is important trial for us in showing that we can make a system utilizing the cells. Now, the Acciona trial then also creates or builds on a relationship.
What I will say is that, it complements what we do in Match the Market in that while the particular business model, it's a, it's a trial and You know, exploration of the technology as opposed to being get this right and we're gonna do 1 million of these systems site trial. It provides a foundation for us then to combine with our match to market work, and to take forward and to aim it at applications that we can expand out commercially. Also informing our cell development so that we can do what's necessary in our cell to get cost reduction performance in the important areas to get the maximum out of our cells. It's a, it's a progressive step, one more progressive step, for the company.
Fantastic. Thank you very much indeed. Next one we've got here. What are the main challenges you see to scaling the business?
That's fairly obvious. I think we are a guppy, and we've got two great assets. The tactics that we're gonna apply on both sides are gonna be different. We're gonna be drinking out of a fire hydrant at the start, quite simply, to make sure that we harness the best of both these technologies, while keeping things tight and not having distraction across the business. We've got a lot to do. There's a lot to do on the science, the technology, the product, and there's a lot to do on commercialization and partner development. Yeah. Lots of hard work in there that, you know.
Also, I guess nothing that wouldn't be expected.
No.
At this stage of technology development. In that sense, we are starting with a really good starting point on two different technologies, that are reasonably well advanced and for which we have great hope to go, you know, all the way and all the challenges are challenges we would expect in this kind of space, and there's nothing unique about that.
Fantastic. Thank you very much. Next one we have here is: When can shareholders expect to be getting some returns on their investment, especially if their investment was part of the IPO?
Return on investment can come a number of ways. I guess I'll answer the question first by saying the greatest way we can get shareholders a return on their investment is by stewarding the assets and the team that they've invested in to greatest purpose to make real commercial progress, to make real maximum realization of those technologies. How that then converts to shareholder return. It can convert in time to shareholder return, in terms of participation in the income generated by the company. It can also convert to shareholder returns in terms of share price, or inorganic things that happen as we progress. There are two areas that I wanna concentrate on shareholder return. I absolutely respect that that's what the purpose of being a shareholder is.
The first one is I'm gonna focus. Well, with the team and my board, we'll focus on evolving the asset and stewarding the asset. The second thing is we'll try to get more visibility to the progression that's being made with those assets. Now, that reflects in two things. One is that, as I said earlier, we are a guppy in a big pond at the moment, yet we have technologies that, in their own context, are super important for energy storage. To realize those assets, we have to get visibility to Gelion and stature for Gelion quickly. That calls on marketing and messaging to achieve that. You know, you can say a cross effect of that is that it also means that people across the stock market should become more aware of what we're doing as we progress that.
There's an aligned objective that for the commercial success and the stewarding the technology and of the team's creative effort, we need to say more about what we're doing. We need to get people understanding what we're doing. That'll be part of our goal going forward as well.
That's right. Thank you, John. Where's the sales focus now? I.e., which market segments, both in terms of client and geography?
I am going to beg on that one that I have joined recently. So I'm going to use that excuse again, but in this case, I have. And when I joined, one of my first, the team, if any of the team at Gelion are listening in, they know this because they're busy. This has been a focus since I started. So what I'm, what I'm sort of pivoting slightly there and what I would like to do is to say to shareholders, the next update, I'm going to give you a whole lot more clarity on the specifics of the strategy in terms of our match to market and where we want to go. Not resiling from anything that was said in the past, but using approaches that can get us, get us there in the end.
In the broadest context, on the zinc bromide side, the goal is to complement what the guys are doing on lead-acid. You know, if we were super successful on the zinc bromide, what we would do is to work in partnership with the lead-acid ecosystem to actually provide products that extend upon what they're doing today, and build out the future with them. That's obviously there's an art in that, we're analyzing which markets we could bring the most value to. On the lithium-silicon-sulfur side, it's the balance of getting the prestige and presence and reputation for our work and aligning that with some very powerful players in the industry in the right way that leads to a commercial advantage to all of the stakeholders in Gelion. That's what we'll be doing.
Great. Thank you. When will the company be cash positive?
Cash positive is gonna come out of a function of what I just explained in the previous answer. I'm sorry, I'm not really trying to be direct here and not trying to duck. If you look at those two things, you would understand two different commercial progressions. Through the course of this year, you'll see us as a board wrestling with this from a strategic standpoint to come back to you and inform you as shareholders. There are many different ways that we could capitalize on both sides of the technology in our business. The different ways that we capitalize on those technologies lead to different results for shareholders and also have different cash impacts.
The work that I'll be doing in the first three months of my tenure will be towards clarifying that so that I can inform the board, and we can make the strategic considerations ourselves and to make the most effective decisions. The next three months will really be executing that. You as shareholders, you know, what I said with the transparency I'm trying to get, basically we'll be updating you progressively as we go along. That question about when will we be cash positive, that's one that we'll have to share with you as we progress.
It would be inappropriate for me to try and make a projection, today because it would constrain the strategic options that the board and the company would have to achieve the best result for the assets that we're stewarding for you.
Maybe I'll add to that, John. In technology growth companies, you can get unpleasant and pleasant surprises, and we've had a pleasant surprise. Lithium-silicon-sulfur was something at IPO we thought was three to five years out, and within a year we've made that progress. You have to be dynamic and look at where's the best opportunity to deploy the company's resources. This is exactly what John's saying. Give him three months to understand how we best deploy our resources and, you know, it would be. For us, we think we've actually got a, you know, we've accelerated one of the most exciting technologies that we see in the battery space, so it's incumbent on us to capture that value for our shareholders' benefit.
I think, you know, John will come back to the board, as he said, and advise us on what he thinks is the right way to maximize shareholder value here. I wholeheartedly agree with what you said, John.
Sorry for ducking today.
Thank you, guys. Next question I think we've covered off. Will the marketing process improve with more frequent press releases and publicity generally, which I think you've covered off pretty much in the last two questions. The next question we've got here, again, you have touched on. The share price is more than half since IPO. Trading liquidity in the shares is very low, often under 5,000 shares per day. The company has issued only a handful of RNS announcements since listing. There would appear to be a minimal effort to engage with investors, both new and existing. Is that because there's nothing worthwhile to say, or will investor relations efforts pick up when the company needs to raise money from the market? I know you've touched on some of these points there.
I may be unfair to John because he's only been here a week and asked for us really the last year. I think our focus has really been ensuring that we have the right technology, that we're making the right developments, and we've got the right team in place. We absolutely recognize we wanna be better at the investor relations and comms. I think what John has repeatedly said today is that we will be better. We will update the market more frequently, so you'll be better informed. What we hope is that gives people more reasons to buy, because we know silence tends to be interpreted negatively. It shouldn't be in this case because what's been happening is we've been focused on getting the technology development, but we recognize it and we will improve on that topic.
Thank you very much indeed. Next question here, one probably for Amit. What is the current cash position? How much cash runway does the company have until further fundraising is required?
Yeah. The cash position at 30th of June was GBP 17 million. We have around GBP 15 million, as at 30th of November. We are very well capitalized, as I mentioned earlier. However, aligning with John's messages, we are working on both the technologies. We have to identify what the right priorities are for the business, and we'll come back to all of you in terms of when we have an update on what the cash balance may look like in the near future.
Yeah. I mean, we're well-funded. This is a, you know, good place to be in an uncertain market, is that we have cash through 2023 and into 2024. The only time we're going to raise capital really is if there's a good reason to do so, if it's going to create shareholder value. At the moment, we don't need capital. We're very well funded. If there's a very good reason that we can enhance shareholder value, then we'll look at it. This is back to John's point again, is once he's had a chance to review the right commercialization path, we'll see what that path means. Really, the message to us is we do not need to go and raise capital at the moment.
Yeah.
We're fortunate in that we're very well financed.
You have to reflect that in terms of what's happening globally as well. COVID, Ukraine war, inflation across the world. Hard to find employees. You have to pay more to employees to get them to join the businesses. We have managed the business really well in terms of where we are at from a cash flow perspective. We are under what we expected our cost to be. I think what I'm trying to align here is part of the message is, we are very, very closely monitoring our cash balance and cash use.
If I just say so in terms of the board, you know, and the talent on the board, we've got Joycelyn Morton here, and she has been very, very effective in steering us towards not overspending, conserving cash, being very, very diligent, treating every dollar as if it's very much our own dollar. That has been reflected really in the strong cash position we have here. So I'd like to thank Joycelyn for that.
Jo is the chair of our audit committee for people who haven't met Joycelyn before.
Fantastic. Thank you. I know we are coming up towards the hour, and we do wanna get a few closing comments from you, John. Perhaps we've got time for one more question, if I may. The question reads, "When can we expect the commercial production cells of the Endure battery to commence?
Well, look, that's a very good question. Please let me answer that one this way. With the work that we're doing on match to market, my approach can be summarized as don't shoot till you see the whites of their eyes. Meaning that it's important that when I don't wanna do loss leader type manufacturing approaches. I want to, you know, sometimes you will take small losses or take concessions on the basis that can take a product to market. I don't wanna be using lots of shareholder capital by going to market with generations of the cell that might be too early or going to market into market segments that I haven't properly qualified. I'm pretty happy.
I can say I'm very happy already with the way that the Gelion team has responded on what I'm trying to do with match to market. It's been remarkable right across the company. We've got one of our people, Jess, who's the focus of that effort, but we've got impact from every employee really making their contribution into it. We wanna get it right. When we do that launch into commercial manufacture of Endure products, we wanna make sure that we're making the right cell. Out of that work, we're gonna inform our technical team of what we need to do in terms of evolution of the cell that you've seen that's been made so far before we have a commercial cell, a fully commercial cell manufactured and what we need to, w hat our process engineering groups need to do on the process engineering side.
So, I will be updating you on our progression to that with our next update. I don't want to give you a specific date today because, again, on that point I'd be putting my team's head in a noose that I'm not prepared to do yet. When we do it'll be informed by the outcomes of our match to market, the outcomes of our technology plan and our process development plan and our marketing plan to enter the particular segment and the partnership relationships that I need to put in place to support that marketing push when we do it.
I know this sort of abducted a couple of questions today from specific, you know, quantitative answers, and I apologize for that, but I'm gonna continue to progress the story and keep you informed as we go. I know that question about when we'll be going into mass production of a product is important to shareholders. What you wanna know is that when we do it, we're gonna be on a successful path towards successful adoption of whatever it is that we're manufacturing, and we're not gonna be, you know, heading somewhere that we have to resolve from later. Stay with me on that one, and we'll keep you informed as we progress.
Fantastic, John. Thank you very much indeed. Thank you to the whole team for the presentation today. You have covered off a lot of questions. There are a few more in there, and of course, the company will review all questions submitted to them. We will publish responses where appropriate to do so. John, I think you have just concluded, but if there are any further words you wanna add just before redirecting the attendees to give you some feedback.
No. Look.
I think you're good.
I know the Gelion team, a lot of them are listening. Thank you to the Gelion team. Thank you to my board. Thank you to the shareholders. We are a team together. It's gonna be the support of that team that hopefully makes Gelion successful and, you know, the impact of what Thomas and the science team can do. When I put up that graph about where energy storage goes, if you can, you know, substantially increase the energy density of lithium cells, you can achieve a lot of the goals, in fact, a lot of the goals that we need for energy sustainability around the planet. This is a great impact investment to be involved in, and hopefully we'll make it into a great commercial investment for you as well. Thank you.
That's fantastic. Thank you all very much for updating investors today. Can I please ask investors not to close the session, as you'll be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order the team can better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a few moments to complete and is greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team at Gelion plc, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation. That concludes today's session, and good morning to you all.