Today, Merrill will provide an overview of the company's financial performance for the year, progress across its life sciences and advanced battery technology businesses, and the continued focus on commercialization and growing the company's commercial pipeline. I will now hand you over to Merrill.
Thank you, Kristin. Well, first of all, I wanted to say how great it is that I have got this opportunity to speak to you all about the milestones for FY 2026. Of course, for those who have been on this journey, you understand that I have been in this role for more than a year now. The very first thing that we did, I did with the board, was the FY 2025 strategy. So setting a strategy which was far more jurisdiction-oriented and portfolio-based. 2026 has really been about building, and I will be showing you those slides around what we have been able to achieve to date. 2027, we are excited about, which is execution and really showing what we have been able to achieve to date.
Now, I do get quite often we have heard it all before, and the thing is, not from me, and I do appreciate the trust that has been put in me by shareholders and by the team to lead them in what is a really significant shift for the business. So we have systems in place now that we have not had before. We have skills and a team that we did not have this time last year, which has been critical to the progress that we have made. We are in a better shape than we were, there is no doubt about that. I hope that the results that I show you will show you that. We are excited about the prospects that are coming towards us, and I will be able to talk a little bit about that, too. We are in highly competitive global markets.
We have done a great job of getting our name out there more, and I will talk about that a bit more, too. But we are competing and there are some essentially mega dynamics around environmental factors that we are facing some headwinds in and have to be very cautious about the way that we move forward. I guess that is frustrating for people, but we are doing everything as diligently and appropriately for shareholders as possible. So let us dive right in, and I look forward to coming back to Kristin to answer some of the questions that we have received as well. Okay, so we have released our annual report. I am very delighted to receive through the investor relations email any questions around that. What is really important is making sure that we are clear about what is our core competency.
Obviously, we are an advanced chemicals and materials company, and being able to put that foot first or put that core concept in front of institutional investors and brokers, which we are doing a much greater job, putting a lot more effort into this year than we did last year to get the word out about AnteoTech and attract investors is really critical. We do have a chemical platform that is unique, that the time is right in both of the markets that we are in, and one of the questions came through about other verticals. Of course, commercialization of the products we currently have is what we are focused on. That is what we are resourced up to do in terms of the sales that we achieve that will then allow us to get into any other highly valuable markets.
It is a focus for us to commercialize the products we have, and that is in our two global markets, in life sciences and batteries. Now, it is just a snapshot that most of you will have seen before about us as a company in terms of the shares on issue and where we stand commercially and about the board. This one is really comprehensively, hopefully more graphically than we have done before. It allows people to see a snapshot of what it is that we do in our life sciences business. It is all about AnteoBind, the chemical that we sell in that business, and how it is applied into different diagnostic, immunoassay diagnostic platforms. So around lateral flow, most people are aware of what we have done in lateral flow and our substantial expertise.
Chemiluminescence or CLIA, as we have talked about in many announcements, is where we are branching out through our large life sciences partnership that we are pursuing, as well as what we can do ourselves. ELISA and activation of ELISA plates is also, I have also talked about that in various announcements. That is again, our AnteoBind activating ELISA plates and making the performance of those plates far higher. Then biosensors, which is part of us being part of MOBIUS and really where we see some significant future growth in terms of new markets. When it comes to our battery business, just by way of background, again, for those of you who have been on this journey, you understand Ultranode X, 70, and 95. What I would say to you is that Ultranode 95 is where it is at for us at this time.
That is where the interest is, that is where the demand is coming from, and we are going as hard as we can in various markets. I will come to that in a minute. Our various end applications around Ultranode 95, getting our ability to scale up, to pilot, to prototype and scale up and potentially supply. It is a long lead time. It is long lead time for us to get Ultranode into batteries. We are an anode, and that battery is complex. In the backup slides I have put where all of our products, including Ultranode, fit within the overall battery design. An anode and all of the other parts that make up the battery are very complex and work together synergistically, and our job is to get in those batteries with a number of battery manufacturers in end applications.
Then, of course, we have made great progress on our core chemical, which started with Anteo X, but across different applications within the battery, Anteo C through to SiMRAX, which I will talk a little bit more about in coming slides. We really are running the battery business as Ultranode and then performance additives as shown on the slide. Just to recap again on the strategy, which really at the highest level is about, let us get very specific with the customers that we are talking to and how they use batteries, and let us make sure we meet their requirements. You can see across the U.S., which has been a big focus for us for batteries as well as life sciences, Europe, and particularly in the life sciences space and South Korea, again for both, but particularly in batteries as well.
India is a slower market for us to bring on, as well as Japan, but we are obviously constantly pushing for further opportunities when we are talking to the right people who are battery manufacturers or in the supply chain into batteries where our products can be used. A little bit about this map, which has been updated about, and some of the questions that I have received. What I wanted to talk about is a couple of things. First of all, about Wyon. Wyon is something that was initiated before I got here. The relationship is good. What we will get, and the team is working on it, they have a meeting with Wyon today, European time. They do have regular meetings, and they do get regular updates. The feedback on the, and yes, there is trialing in Wyon's commercial cell format of Ultranode 70.
It is their plastic casings, not metal. They do have both, but that is what was decided. That trialing is still underway. I know that, and it is still being finished. There has been a number of delays there because the reality is that, this is not for a specific customer. If I have not said that before, this trialing was to put it in the portfolio for Wyon, so that if a customer came and said they wanted high silicon anodes, it would be available. What we will get out of this work, and we do plan to have those results out obviously as soon as possible, is we will have commercial cell format validation for Ultranode 70 in Wyon cells. That would be the outcome. We are all looking for customers that would want our Ultranode technology in the consumer product space.
As opposed to military drones, which I will come to shortly, we actually have an initiative around far more actively working ourselves, AnteoTech, on finding parties that are looking for Ultranode as we can supply it in terms of the duties in consumer batteries. I think it is quite important to understand that, we will have some news out very shortly. I am hoping for the quarterly report. As soon as it is available is the answer. That is what we will have. In terms of what that means commercially, obviously, we are working on that. The other one I would like to talk about is around the JDAs. Let us move over again. This is still batteries and is around, first of all, the JDAs. We are going to The Battery Show North America, in about 10 days' time. Nearly 10 or 11 days, the team gets on the plane and goes.
We will meet with the two parties that have Ultranode 95 and are doing in-house trials. We are in their system, and we are waiting in the queue for our materials to be trialed so that we can get into the detailed negotiations of the JDAs, which they have. We are patiently waiting, constantly following up and in front of parties that we are seeking to do JDAs with within 10, 11, 12 days. That does not mean that we will be able to deliver signed JDAs out of that, but I can assure all shareholders that we are working very hard on working in with those parties so that we get into their batteries. That is a critical KPI for the team and for myself. In terms of Black Diamond Structures and SiMRAX, that is also a matter that gets raised to me many times.
SiMRAX is managed out of Black Diamond Structures in the U.S. What I would say is it is with multiple parties and trialing of it is underway. What that then means in terms of subsequent commercial steps is again, something we will be in with BDS talking about at The Battery Show North America. We will be specifically talking to them about what might be happening or what potential for commercial sales out of the trialing there is with whom we are talking to. I can say to you that it has taken some time to get moving, and I understand the frustration with that, but we are in front. We do have samples with well-qualified, well-known parties. So, it is moving forward. Beyond that within this map, you can see that there have been a number of business development and facilitation partners, if you like, added during the year.
Because we understand that having on the ground presence, we manage those very tightly around KPIs and the cost and specific targets that we want people to talk to for us and get us into meetings with. So we do a lot of work in the background around sales qualified leads and making sure that who we are talking to is the right party to be engaging, who does have demand for our product and is interested, and I will come a bit more to that about how we have grown the pipeline. This takes me into the actual financials for 2026 and just essentially presenting them, in a three-year trend fashion. So this is sales revenue and, as you can see, our sales were down on last year.
A couple of things, factors in there, which is around receipt of a purchase order and an actual supply to Serum Institute, which we missed the end of the financial year. It will be booked this year, and then some other timing matters. Look, this is a critical KPI for us and we are looking forward to sales execution in FY 2026. We made an announcement yesterday about our R&D tax rebate coming in, which is in financial year 2027, of AUD 1.9 million. Here you can see total revenue for the business, which includes what was booked for FY 2026, which is AUD 2.6 million. This is our operating expenses and how they have reduced over time. Obviously, our focus is on cost effectiveness, cost reduction, continuous improvement, and cost effectiveness.
So for all the things that we are working on and the span of which has expanded across the team, the number of contacts and sales leads that are being followed up, and evaluations that are underway, it needs to be done systematically and efficiently. That is what we are focused on. Then by way of wrap up around sales and expenses, here are our losses and a trend, again, over the last three years. This is a really critical slide for me to share with everybody, which pretty much chronologically takes you through what we have done in FY 2026. So really spent a lot of time on our product and technology value proposition, again, with our strategy to make sure that we are in the right place at the right time with the right messaging to have the greatest success of engaging with our customers.
All of the collateral for both life sciences as well as batteries has been updated. First of all, we have collateral for everything. We are clear on our messaging, and we are using that in marketing campaigns in a way that we have never used it before. We have a structured marketing program. We have also done validation. Now it is fine to have in-house validation, but what we have really done here is looked at independent third-party validation. For life sciences, we have done white papers and they have been in demand because it is very much the gatekeepers there are technical parties within the organization, very much B2B at a very technical level. We are engaging on third party independent validation, which we look forward to being able to release information around in the coming months. That is exciting.
Then for batteries, as everybody who has been on the journey understands, is we have been working with BIC. We have had validation around how Ultranode 95 could behave in a high-powered battery. Now you will see a picture on the side here of Airspeeder, and that is a recent announcement we made about just leading a consortium around piloting and prototyping entire batteries. So what I am looking to do with the team is to bring other parties into this, because the critical piece for us is for Ultranode to get into batteries and for what our high silicon formulation can do with matching high-powered cathodes is what this is all about. Of course, there is more to it, which is electrolytes, separators, us being able to use Anteo S in those thin high-performance separators that we are doing with Xerabrid, and the battery management systems and the whole kit and caboodle.
It is pretty exciting. Again, when we go to the U.S., we will be talking to a number of parties around this. I have already talked about the JDAs. They are the types of partners we want to bring into this. So it was all about making sure that we have good quality information that people can access. It is accessible for them to understand about what we can do with our products. We have also understood the market more on our journey, and we understand we have been able to expand our products. Now, this is not about research and new products. It is about our product and applications in the market. So that is all market led. So that comes down to SiMRAX, which as everyone knows, is a blend of dispersion, carbon nanotube dispersion, and Anteo X, which has potential cost reduction opportunities for our customers.
Anteo S, which again is all about cross-linking in ceramic-coated separators. Anteo C, which is an additive which provides adherence in primer coatings on collector foils. We are closer to the customer. We can express what our products can do and value those for our customers than we have ever been able to do before. There is demand. Converting that is our focus. From a life sciences perspective, that business has also really understood around how AnteoBind and AnteoBind NXT can be used in different platforms, whether it be chemiluminescence, in terms of magnetic particles and activating those and making them perform better. It is the same with ELISA plates. There is very strong demand in multiplex and lateral flow, which came out of ADLM, which is our bread and butter, and it is about really engaging with customers.
What I can say is we have had a program there which is around large life sciences companies, and many of them have had some experience with AnteoTech in the past and are re-engaging. That is very exciting for the team, and we are looking forward to what comes from that. What that has done overall, is it has created a portfolio and an expanding total addressable market. That is all about our options and our potential to convert. Creating more options with the potential to convert. As I have already said, it is about being on the ground and with our customer interactions, because we do have a team that is now been brought entirely into Brisbane working globally, which is why we have links into people in different jurisdictions, whether it is through our facilitators, our business development facilitators, distributors. Creating partnerships is really critical to us. We are small.
We want to be capital-light, infrastructure-light. What we want to do is work with partners who already have sales. They are already established, where we can buddy up and everyone benefits. We have made a very conscious choice around that, and that is where BDS, Xerabrid, and what we see coming into the future is all about to give us the best chance of being in as many products as possible. Conferences are critical from a face-to-face and customer engagements. It is very technical selling. It is B2B, and technician to technician, whether it be life sciences or batteries. Of course, we have done a lot more on our digital marketing campaigns and how we prepare for everything, and you will see the evidence of that through our LinkedIn posts. The CRM and the sales team. We have brought new skills into the business who have specific sales and marketing expertise.
As a result, we have record samples under evaluation. As Kristin said at the beginning, sales execution FY 2027, it is in all of our KPIs and is moving as fast as we possibly can. This is actually of the 7th of September, and we have had further samples dispatched since then. What you can see is that we have very solid sales qualified leads and samples out under evaluation. We are constantly adding to that, particularly through face-to-face conferences. We have grown a, what I would consider a curated, well-qualified. We have people on the ground who are very experienced and very knowledgeable, and they are assisting us to who comes into our pipeline and starts to engage with us around samples to make sure that they have demand, are genuine buyers, potential buyers of our product, which is a big difference to where we have been.
This is one of the most important slides here, which is around sales conversion for 2027. We have very specific initiatives underway in India for life sciences, India, the U.S., Europe, Japan, and South Korea. In particular, there's a big push for us into the U.S. I was heartened by the trip to ADLM, where there were a number of Australian companies who have been successful. They've been careful about how they've entered that market, but they've grown, and about how we were received by people who know about our technology, know that it's great technology, may have tried it in the past and are willing to reengage to try it again. I was very impressed with the team and the way that they engage with customers, and we are working critically through how to convert those conversations.
We are going to MEDICA in six weeks' time, and we will be talking to ADLM parties we met at ADLM, again, to make sure that they are confident that we are an ongoing, capable business of delivering into their demands. When it comes to new expansion in terms of immunoassay diagnostic platforms, of course, CLIA has been a massive focus in FY 2026, working with a large life sciences company, working out how we understand magnetic particles. Very deep understanding in the business and some very exciting things there as well. But how to bring this into commercial reality and go as fast as possible is what we constantly look at. We look forward to keeping everybody updated. The ELISA plate activation and market entry. We've started talking about that, and that was in the last update that I did, there's demand there.
We're pretty excited about that too. Watch this space on all of the things that we expect to be able to deliver in the coming 12 months or coming financial year. In terms of batteries, I've already talked about the fact that we made a concerted effort, and we continue to expand that around U.S. military drones, getting into Ultranode 95 into high-powered batteries. We've validated that we can do that. We're talking to the right people who sell batteries into that. We're constantly expanding that. We have a clear sales and marketing lead in the battery team, and we're following everything up. It's a focus for us, a really top focus for us. Converting Anteo S and Anteo C, our performance additive products essentially into sales is also a key focus for us. There are a number of opportunities.
We need to manage how we deliver those around how we supply in volume, if that's what they're looking for, and how we manage the risks in different jurisdictions. These are all and moving chemicals around the place. All of those things are constructed in the way that we are looking to commercialize and execute sales. I've talked about Ultranode 70 and Wyon in the consumer battery market and trying to build out opportunities there, and then Airspeeder and what that brings. Corporately, of course, we're looking to maintain financial discipline, and everything we do is around AnteoTech's success, and that's around sales and strategic partnerships, which they are emerging as part of what we're talking to. They are part baked into our sales and how we want to work things by our products getting bundled up with other people's products.
What I hope we will get into is momentum, which will attract other strategic partners on a slightly different basis. The R&D tax rebate. Just very quickly, tomorrow, this is the first sneak peek, but tomorrow we will put out our information about a webinar, which is with a world expert, and how AnteoBind NXT has been used in India with NIPER. All of that information will be available through our website and through our LinkedIn posts. We've already started posting about us going to The Battery Show North America, and MEDICA is still to come. We have a very active period coming up until Christmas. I really look forward to keeping everybody informed. I thank you very much again for attending and look forward to getting good news to all of our shareholders when it is available.
Thanks, Merrill. I hope that overview has addressed some of the questions investors had coming in to today's webinar. We've now got some time to move through a few additional questions that have come through. The first question is around BIC specifically and the cylindrical cell trials. Can you provide an update on the cylindrical cell trials at BIC, including the progress made to date and current focus of the program?
Yes. We are very pleased that we have trialed. It is not a lot. A few. We are doing in a very staged fashion, cylindricals at BIC. The way we see that is, there has been initial builds and functional testing has taken place on 18650 cylindricals at BIC. Essentially, every time we do that, we get greater information, particularly around electrolyte volume and how to maximize energy density and stability. We are taking a very staged approach. We are very positive about where we might be able to get to in the near future. We are basically taking the insights as we step through this with the BIC team.
The plan is for us to essentially optimize a format that we could potentially, that we can get basic performance data on, and that we could potentially look to do what we would call a prototyping run of 50 - 100 and be able to give them as samples to parties. Now, that is a way down the track because we're still at the very early stage of making sure it functions, then we need to optimize for performance. We've also already started work on a scale-up or a prototyping plan and who we could work with who are able to do that. We're very conscious of, obviously, the plan is to partner with battery manufacturers. That's the ideal because they have all that expertise. For us to do it, working with BIC, who has expertise, we are going down that path as well, right?
I would really like to just say to the shareholders that the likes of Amprius and Molicel, who are extremely well-known in terms of cylindricals, they've spent tens of millions of dollars on optimizing their products. Those products are available. Of course, anyone can buy their products. I just want to be real clear about we're spending a certain amount of money in a judicious way to move through getting cylindricals that we would be able to announce the performance around. So, it's a very positive thing. Of course, multi-layer power cells for drones is a format that is used. Of course, Airspeeder fits into all of this. Some other parties we've talked to who would be interested. They have said they would be interested in trialing cylindricals in their products when we have got a certain performance level. So overall, progressing.
Progressing well, under the budget and the strict structure that we're using there. Thank you, Kristin.
Thanks, Merrill. The next question is around multiple Anteo technologies in a battery. The question is, are there any opportunities to see multiple AnteoTech technologies together within a battery, and is this part of the company's commercialization strategy?
Yes and yes are the answers to that. Yes, there are opportunities for multiple products. This is the thing, right? To be used in one battery, and this is why it is so critical for us to get in with battery manufacturers and in that supply chain going in there and really embed ourselves in there. We do have companies that have got Anteo X as well as SiMRAX. It is a bit different for Anteo S, for example, and Anteo C because when it comes to large commercial scale manufacture for collector foils, whether they be aluminum or copper, the coating of those and then the shipment of that large scale anode active material or cathode active material for assembly is a whole another ballgame in terms of scale.
You are tending to be with a different manufacturer there when you are at scale, and that is obviously who we are targeting to get volume. But the answer is, yes, it is part of our commercialization strategy, but does require us to be in with the battery manufacturer and say, "Hey, have you tried this? Hey, have you tried that?" But we are using multiple channels to get into the overall battery, and we already have examples of parties that are trying more than one product. It is also a way for us to get in, for us to start with one product and build a relationship and trust associated with that, and then suggest other parts of the battery that we can work with them. The Xerabrid relationship, I would just like to say, is really critical there.
We are just about to have an article published, which is leading up to The Battery Show North America, which talks about ultra, well, essentially very thin separators. Anteo S is part of that in terms of providing cross-linking and how it works with these separators. We will be posting that. We will be putting that article onto our website. It really is cutting edge, and there is demand for that. Xerabrid was another question. If I could just float to another question that I saw come through was, they are responsible for the samples that we have committed to getting out by the end of October. They will be at The Battery Show North America. They have their own booth, and we will be featured in that booth. We will know that they are on track.
It really, we got a lot of interest around a specific thickness and format, and Xerabrid is manufacturing those samples or producing those samples for release by October. That is happening. They are a big part of what we are doing because they give us another channel into the battery. There is a slide at the end of this, which actually I might be able to get to. There you go. Which shows where all of our products go into batteries. Thank you.
Thanks, Merrill. This question is around toll manufacturing. How does toll manufacturing fit within AnteoTech's commercialization strategy as customer demand and production requirements increase?
Toll manufacturing is very much on our radar. Why? Because it's been interesting for the team. Interesting and challenging for us even to get samples into some countries. I would like to really congratulate the team on getting up to speed on multiple regulations and for us to be able to get our samples wherever we need to get them in the world. I really think they've done a great job of working with experts. Obviously, on grounding or in-country toll manufacture is, especially if we get to scale, is a good way of us. We still have to meet, obviously, the equivalent of EPA in whatever jurisdiction we're in, but it does eliminate that requirement of cross-border movement and also cost reduction around ability to work with people who are already in the chemical manufacturing business at a larger scale and who can work with us.
The answer is yes. That is something we are working on. Getting financial models together, getting information around how we would do that. Obviously, our quality systems as well about how we would manufacture and constantly improve to again improve cost of manufacture and potential profitability of our products and markets. It could be a very important part of how we move as fast as possible to supply. There's no doubt some of the parties that we are talking to, if they like our products, they could, particularly in Asia, I would say the Asian markets really move a lot faster. We've made announcements about that. They move a lot faster than, say, the U.S., which it's frustrating, but it does take a while.
We are there, and we are pushing, but there are some stark contrasts between what is going on in batteries between the U.S. and Asia and me saying that it is not something new. Toll manufacture is definitely part of what we are looking at to move forward as fast as possible.
Thank you, Merrill, and thank you to everyone who has joined us today. That is all we have time for. A recording of this webinar will be made available on AnteoTech's website and social media platforms later today or first thing tomorrow morning. We thank everyone for joining us, and we will see you next time. Thank you.
Thank you.