Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the conference call of LION E-Mobility AG regarding the Q3 2024 results. This call will be recorded. Currently, all participants are in a listen-only mode. My name is Jens Hecht, and I will be the moderator today. On the call, we have the LION management team, Dr. Joachim Damasky, CEO, Jörg Peter Hahn, CFO, Michael Reich, Global Head of Sales, and Ian Mukherjee, member of the Board of Directors. We will kick off the call with a presentation of the financials and an operational and strategic update. Jörg Peter Hahn will present the Q3 and nine-month results. Afterwards, Joachim Damasky and Michael Reich will give you an update on the business development, with a special focus on the progress with the company's immersion cooling battery technology and the corresponding market potential.
After the presentation, the LION team will be available for any of your questions. You will be able to ask questions via the Q&A chat function, or you can raise your hand virtually, and you will be unmuted to ask your question. Let's start with the presentations first. I would now like to hand over to Jörg Peter Hahn. Please go ahead, Jörg.
Thank you very much, Jens. This is Jörg Peter Hahn. Please switch to the next slide. Thank you. Here's an overview of the year's quarterly results. In the past quarter that we're talking about, we have reached EUR 6.4 million in revenues, even under the high pressure in the mobile and especially the storage battery sector. This gives us a total of EUR 12.4 million in revenues. On the EBITDA side, we could improve the quarterly results to minus EUR 1.2 million, still negative, but it shows that we could improve due to operational changes without neglecting our challenging and very promising development goals, which we are talking later on. We also could see a turn towards a positive operating cash flow, resulting in EUR 1.6 million in the last three reporting months, and this gives a result, an improvement over the nine months, not yet positive operating cash flow.
Please change to the next slide. As already mentioned, this year was very challenging. Nevertheless, Q3 was the strongest quarter so far, and we could also improve our gross profit from 11% in first half year to roughly 13% in the first nine months. Not reaching the 18% of last year, but we haven't had the roughly EUR 13 million in revenues reached yet. On the personnel cost side, we see the slight increase due to our focus on the development, as stated in the last call as well. Development of the new chemistry in the battery packs, and for sure, the immersion cooling battery project with its battery management system. The EUR 3.8 million in operating expenses show an improvement to the first half year due to cost control during this quarter.
In comparison to last year, EUR 3.1 million does not really work since last year there have been expenses which included the start of the production, which is not quite comparable to this year. Then. The finance expenses of minus EUR 1.9 million also include the accruals of our major investor, which are accumulated and not paid out. Next slide, please. As already mentioned, the cash flow in the first nine months improved throughout the year, especially with higher revenues and reduction of inventory, still negative, in total of minus EUR 4 million. But we had a major improvement here in the last quarter. In investment cash flow, we saw a main reduction to EUR 0.1 million in investing activities from, in the first quarter, we had here EUR 1 million of investing activities, mainly in the intangibles, such as software licenses. We reduced it quite significantly in the last quarter.
The cash flow in financing activities saw mainly only the repayment of the RPI loan in the last quarter. The EUR 2 million money market loan, which we talked about in the last investor call, was still in place. Therefore, no changes except, as I said, the repayment of the RPI loan compared to the quarters before. Please change to the next slide. Yes. Thank you. If you compare the two balance sheets, year-end 2023 to this balance sheet end of September 2024, we had last year total assets of EUR 69 million, which were reduced mainly by lowering the current assets, especially our inventories levels and the receivables. The non-current assets remained steady. As you see, EUR 25.5 million to EUR 28.3 million. Only deferred tax assets increased by EUR 2.4 million, which is mainly the big difference on the non-current asset side.
Going over to the passive side, you have the equity ratio, which is reduced from 19.5% to 17.5%. We see, looking at the non-current liabilities reduction, which showed mainly the regrouping to current liabilities due to IFRS. We had to shift non-current liabilities portions to current liabilities. The current liabilities decreased significantly also about, in total, EUR 20 million, mainly due to reducing our trade payables. It also includes a flexible shareholder loan here. And here I come now to an information on the last press releases. The sale of TÜV SÜD Battery Testing gives us space to improve this ratio of current assets versus current liabilities as well. The deal that we made with TÜV SÜD Battery Testing was a non-dilutive capital raise, and I cannot comment on the probable question about the sales price.
Although the market situation is changing, the management has decided not to adjust the guidance. We will hopefully achieve slightly negative to slightly positive profitability this year. Hopefully, slightly positive. I will hand over now to Joachim Damasky and to Michael Reich. Thank you.
Yes. I will start first. Good morning. This is Michael Reich speaking. I'm VP for Sales and Marketing. I would like to start with a quick overview how we are perceived in the market from our partners and customers. We are having, at the moment, two pillars, which we are progressing. Number one is our running business. This is the business which we were taking over from BMW. It's the BMW i3 pack, which we are now developing to next levels. This is what we call the running business. We are an audited automotive-grade battery pack production maker. We are a pack maker, and this is what our customers see in us, and they are realizing that we are improving our quality house with new certifications. We are improving our mobility and stationary products, which we get very positive feedback at the moment from our customers.
Also the running business in the last year was very promising. As already several times mentioned, this year was difficult, but this is what we will see on the next page. The other pillar is our innovation business, which we are driving forward. We have done a lot of very promising steps forward to an industrialization. This is what our CEO, Dr. Joachim Damasky, will talk about the progress we have done. We are seen at the moment with state-of-the-art, best-in-class cooling. We have a single-cell BMS, which is very good in terms of performance. We have our own algorithm, which is very promising in the market and people are very interested in, and now we are ready for nomination in industrialization. I would like to talk a little bit now about our running business.
The battery pack market in general in 2024 was very challenging, not only for us, also for our partners, for our customers, and also for our competitors. Several battery makers have delayed or reduced or even stopped the investments. We have seen, especially in North America, several waves of layoffs, and also some competitors have been spinning out. They are now not available for the broad market anymore. The EV market was very slow, which then was leading to an oversupply in our target markets. This is also why the storage market collapsed quite heavily in Europe and also in North America. We have seen the OEM products at very low prices and also container solutions coming from Asia, especially from China, directly here at very low prices, which was giving a very difficult situation for our storage customers.
In the mobility market, we have seen in U.S., a relatively slow market. This was because of the election which was done this year, also because of a delayed reduction in key interest rates. In Europe, the market was more or less as expected in the mobility market. Overall, what we have to say, we are still there, and we are still supplying, and our customers appreciate it that we are a reliable supplier. This is why I am optimistic about the midterm. The mobility business is picking up. The European business is quite strong. Our customers are having a lot of tenders. They are participating. They are winning business. Also in the U.S., now that we have stability in the government, again, there was a clear result in the election. We expect that in H2 next year, the U.S. business will come back.
The overstock in the OEM market, in the storage market, is still having impact on our storage business. The market stays difficult. We are focusing on power niches. This means power is more needed than energy. You need out of a relatively small battery, a lot of power, and this is where we have a right to play, and we will focus on winning business in this niche. The overall outlook from the customer activities, I can report that we are having increasing interaction with customers again, and our customers are giving us a positive outlook. The big question is, after the election in North America, what does that mean for our business? I would like to comment on two topics, the IRA, so the Inflation Reduction Act.
We are very constructive with the U.S. when it comes to the electrification, and we see that, in North America, there is a very strong influencer in the American government, which is Elon Musk, where we think electrification will be a topic also under the new administration. The IRA supports the red and the purple states, and therefore, we assume that the IRA itself will stay. Maybe there are some adjustments in the IRA. For us, what is important is the IPC 45W, and here we assume that this will stay valid because, as said, the factories are more, most of the time, in the Rust Belt, which are now red states. When it comes to tariffs, which is also a topic, this is a complicated and complex situation, and I think the Trump administration needs to negotiate with Europe.
I think it is not in the interest, or LION Smart thinks it's not in the interest of the North American government to push Europe towards China. I think also North America is interested in making a deal with Europe, and we think that there will be solutions for European suppliers of batteries in the North American market. Besides that, also, if you're moving to America and you're establishing a factory there, an assembly, then usually these tariffs are not applying to you. The two promising topics I would like to highlight here is we are in discussions in North America with new e-truck and e-bus makers. This is because the competition landscape in North America is difficult at the moment for them. Our customers are looking into new suppliers, and that's why we are getting new RFIs and RFQs.
The second topic what I would like to highlight is that we have a large logistics company here in Germany, which is showing interest in working together with us. It's based on our technology. The RFQ is under preparation at the potential customer or our customer. We expect that the nomination then will be done in the next year. I would like to hand over to the Immersion part, and here Dr. Joachim Damasky will take over.
Yeah. Good morning also from my side. Joachim Damasky speaking. I would like to come back now to a topic that you have been listening to for several years, but I think it's worth to mention it where we are now because we have achieved a huge progress in the last quarter. I would like to come back first, why are we still doing immersion cooling? Immersion cooling is especially for high-performance vehicles, the only way how they can run the vehicle without the so-called derating. What means the battery heats up to the internal resistance, especially when you drive a little faster. This heat reduces the performance and also is increasing the risk of fires. There is an absolutely urgent need for a sufficient cooling system in these kinds of batteries.
This is the good thing with the modules that we have been testing in an OEM car and also on the OEM tracks. Their test tracks they have approved also and confirmed that our battery cooling technology is best in class, and also the only way how they can solve their problem. Therefore, we have really best-in-class cooling by this coolant, where we are currently switching the coolant from the Novec that we have been using, to an oil that is now demanded by our customer. You know that we also have been working on a single-cell BMS, especially with electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, EIS calls. This is a big topic now because we can detect problems in the cells and even the temperature of the cells before you can measure the temperature increase on the outside of the cell.
We do this electronically in the cells, and this is also something that gives us a big advantage on the rating of the battery, what kinds of C-rates we can run. That means how much power we can get out of the battery. This is also then supported by the best-in-class, we call it SOX. That means state of charge, state of health, calculations that they are available in the market. We can not only detect thermal runaways in a very early state so that we can switch off battery, but also we can detect the very dangerous lithium plating detection on the electrodes, what helps us to make sure that we do not overcharge, and we do not also get too much power out of the battery because this will also disturb the battery. Next slide, please.
What we do have now is a very high discharge and charge rate. This is confirmed on the test benches of an OEM, but also in the cars. We have really high power density. We can get out of a 32 kilowatt-hour battery, running on 800 volts, 520 kilowatts. We have also continuous power output, so no derating, and I will come to this, what we have achieved now in the vehicle. This has been also tested under racetrack conditions. You see also in the background the kind of vehicles we are looking for. These are all the high-performance cars, and this is a clear niche. You know that for the bigger series, like a Volkswagen Golf, for example, or a BMW 2 or 3 Series, the OEMs will make the batteries on their own.
This kind of specialized immersion-cooled batteries is something that they also buy from outside. Next slide, please. I would like to come to the different graphs that you can see here. The first upper left graph is showing a repeated acceleration from 80k an hour to 200k an hour. The speed is shown by the light blue color accelerating, braking, accelerating, braking. The red graph shows the current serial battery solution. You see that the temperature is going upwards higher and higher, and from beginning on, that means from the first high acceleration shown in the black graph, there you see there is a derating. The power output of the battery is coming from 200 down to roughly at the end, 50 kilowatts.
Not more anymore available because the battery, unfortunately, is not able to handle this high current, both in acceleration but also in recuperation. That means for the braking, where the power is going back into the battery. The lower left graph shows where we are. We have been running this car, or the OEM has been running this car with 340 kilowatts. You see also the same acceleration and braking line, the blue line, and the red line shows the temperature of our battery, the internal temperature. By this high demand of power, the increase of the temperature was less than 10 degrees all over the time. There was no thermal derating for this battery test drive, even under high temperature conditions, what has been carried out by the OEM on Southern European test track.
This is something where we can show the performance of our batteries. The original comment of a manager of this OEM was, "This is the only technology we can solve our battery problem." The right graphs show a similar situation. That means a continuous speed of 140 kilometers per hour. The upper graph shows the original series solution that they have in the field now. You can see a temperature increase in the battery, a huge thermal derating, and they even had to stop driving after a time of about 850 seconds because the battery was getting too hot. When you see in the lower graph our battery, we have been starting on a much higher level, not 200 kilowatts, but 340 kilowatts.
For this test drive, this is even more impressive that our battery was increasing temperature by not more than 2.6 degrees Celsius or Kelvin, like shown here. There was absolutely no thermal derating. Even the OEM was impressed very much because the calculations on the car showed higher temperature increases, but in real life, that means on the vehicle, we have been even lower. This is something where even we are really happy that our battery is performing in that way. We have also got now an RFQ for the next testing samples with given batteries, a given coolant, to show that our technology will run also under the conditions that the OEM demands from us. Now I would like to hand it back to Michael Reich to talk a little bit about the market potential of this technology. Thank you very much.
Thanks. Yeah. Now talking a little about voice of customer again and about why are we doing the whole thing with immersion cooled, what is the rationale from a commercial point of view. If you look at the recent high performance plug-in hybrids, for example, Lamborghini Revuelto, they're using pouch cells as a booster, we are talking to experts in the market, and they have doubts when it comes to safety. We are also talking to experts in the market, which tell us there might be coming more strict regulation when it comes to propagation stop. This means if a cell in a battery starts, for what reason ever, burning, you need to be able to stop the burning. You need to stop the propagation.
With the actual solutions in the market, especially for these high performance batteries, which are used like in these cars which I just mentioned, this is not possible. If you are then looking into the actual cars in the market, here again, I would like to talk a little bit about what we received as a market feedback from Ferrari was that the lifetime is quite limited with the solution they are having at the moment. Out of this, consequently, is that the story for these cars doesn't work anymore. They are dropping in prices over lifetime, which is a clear problem, which is an issue for these high performance and premium makers of these cars. The pouch cells usually are good in energy density, they are good in power density. Our immersion cooled battery is also good in power and energy density.
We can increase the lifetime, we can manage the lifetime, and we clearly have a way better safety strategy. Based on this, I would like to now shortly explain the picture you see here. On the left side, we have written down again potential target customers we are talking to. These are the premium sports vehicles makers in Europe, some also in the U.S., and usually that's prices of more than EUR 100,000, and it's plug-in hybrid cars, and it's complete battery electric vehicles. In 2030, we see this market roughly around 900,000 cars, which worldwide, but mainly also now in our model in Europe and also in North America. This is a global database which we are creating at the moment. The plug-in hybrid applications, we see 3 categories there. There's this race car-like cars. This is really where you go on a track race.
You want to run one or two very fast runs. If you accelerate, the battery is empty after this one-time acceleration, so it's really optimized only for racing. You have the sports cars. These are the sports cars where you would like to run several times in a racetrack, where you also need a recuperation, where you need a long term. For a longer time, you need the high performance. We have the high-performance models, which are series cars on the road, where you want to have 80 or 100 kilometers of full electric range, but you still want to have the possibility to go on the racetrack if you want. These plug-in hybrid applications are divided in a way that the race car-like. Of course, this is the smallest market, it could be an entry project here.
If you look at the sports cars and the high-performance models, that's where the higher volumes are, which are needed then also to ramp up a production with higher volumes. What we also see is for the full electric vehicles, that there can be a similar approach like we have today with the plug-in hybrids. In plug-in hybrid, you have a combustion engine, and then you have an electric drive for pushing and also for giving an extra performance. The same could be in the full electric vehicles. You have a battery, which is for driving, and then you have a performance battery for accelerating and for fast accelerations and braking. You have the megawatt full electric vehicles. They usually have big batteries, and they are having megawatt power, like 1.5 we have seen already. For this, you need a 50 to 100 kWh battery.
What we have not in our database so far are heavy-duty vehicles, for example, or other applications where you need for short term, really high power densities for short term. On the next slide, I now would like to show how we see the market, how this market could develop. You remember the 900,000 cars which can be addressed, how we defined the market in 2030. If we are now just checking the plug-in hybrids cars, and some of them are converted to an immersion cooled battery, then we think in 2030, 40,000 of these cars can be equipped with an immersion cooled battery. If we are also including the full battery vehicles, which is the full case, so the full case is plug-in hybrids plus full electric, then this can even go up to 100,000.
In revenue terms of view, that would mean that we are at, in the base case, at a rough EUR 200 million in 2030. If the market really picks up and this immersion cooled technology really is transforming this performance car market in depth, then we even see that the market can be more than EUR 1 billion in 2030. This is what I wanted to explain about immersion cooled, the market, and thank you very much from my side.