Good morning, welcome to Betolar's financial statements release. My name is Melina Pinomaa, I'm heading our sustainability and investor relations. This morning, we have Riku Kytömäki, our Group CEO, with me here, and unfortunately, our CFO, Riikka Ylikoski, couldn't join us today. The agenda, we'll go through some key results from last year, look at the business re-review, and also other topics such as people and competencies. As usual, if you have any questions, feel free to send them in the chat box below, even during the presentation, and then in the end, we'll have a Q&A session and go through them. Riku, welcome.
Thank you, Melina. Good morning. I will go through the main events of Betolar 2022. Firstly, I will confirm that we were proceeding along with our targets, so we got quite many commercial agreements signed, in total eight, and also piloting a lot, having 25 pilots done in line with our objectives. Also, we have two important strategic agreements done, one with the Critical Metals, and the other with Consolis Parma. I will come back to those a bit later. R&D activities were carried out as planned. We were hiring quite a bit of people and investigating a lot, side streams, also putting a lot of resources on AI platform development. At the same time, we have been refining our strategy and expanding our patent portfolio.
During 2022, we continued our recruitments, including also the members in the management team. We got four members including myself, Ilkka Iittiläinen, COO, Jarno Poskela as the Chief Technology Officer, Ville Voipio as the Chief Commercial Officer, and Antti Uski as the Chief Human Resources Officer. Everyone has a strong, solid background from bigger industrial companies. Also, in India, we got a Country Manager, Abhishek Bhattacharya, appointed, also with a strong, solid background from concrete industry. In quarter four, we announced investment in our innovation center, expansion of in our innovation center in Kannonkoski, Finland. Talking about the market and operational environment, the mega trends stay where they are, continuously increasing.
The thing is that building raw materials account roughly 40% of a lifetime emissions of a building, and construction industry is becoming continuously more and more committed to sustainability, not only due to consumer regulatory pressure, but also everybody want to reduce the CO2 emissions and the use of virgin materials. Green financing support also is shifting towards the emerging markets, in emerging markets. Just as an example, in Germany, green buildings collected about 25% of the total commercial real estate investment, summing up to something like EUR 12.4 billion in 2021. Besides CO2 emissions, companies are really thinking about circular economy, biodiversity, and by combating waste and pollution.
When the other aspect about the operational environment, the effects of Russia's invasion in Ukraine, of course, the most important thing is that it's a human crisis, what is going on in Ukraine, that everybody wants to support. We hope that the war will end soon. People are really suffering in the country. The thinking the our business perspective, we are not affected much, at least. We don't have any direct customers in Russia, neither in Ukraine. No direct impact on company. Of course, construction material market in Europe is somewhat affected because some major exporters of structural steel and slag come from those areas.
Also rising energy prices is pushing up the cement, which on one hand is helping the competitiveness of a new solution, but also on the other end, it's affecting the chemical prices, also affecting our cost base. In Asia, the side streams are not that much affected. We are locally quite much still available on a pretty much similar prices as earlier. Naturally, we hope the crisis to end as soon as possible. All right. If going to the business review, talking about the markets, in early phases of Betolar, the company has concentrated on paving blocks, sewage pipes, roof tiles, and other infrastructure products.
We have done a lot of piloting, meaning with getting a lot of experience from various industries, also from various markets. Here are a couple of examples listed of our customer names. Gradually, our intention is to start shifting towards construction and mining, and construction meaning bigger elements for buildings. It could be, for example, this hollow core slabs, I think that's the right word, yes, for the buildings. Then of course, the demand is there, as we talked earlier, that there are funds who really want to support on a green buildings, and maybe where the pricing can be higher. That is an area we want to put more effort and speed up during this year.
Also approaching the mining sector, which is also a big, big problem worldwide, with the waste next to the mine. We havea solution how to make, for example, those liquid waste solid and then stopping some environmental hazards to happen. The last part is maybe a little bit longer term, but anyhow, sort of a waste to value type of thinking where currently many of the solutions were based on a steel mill slags. In the longer term, Betolar wants to find side streams that are close to zero value or maybe even negative value, and through that creating value. In that area, there are regulations, for example, that may be slowing down a little bit.
We are tackling the regulation, because sometimes a waste status does not allow to deliver to, for example, to building and construction industry, even though the material itself would be perfect to use, for example, as a mixed cement. Here are some examples of our expansion worldwide. The darker green color tells you the countries we have been piloting, pilots have been conducted. The lighter green is about those countries where we have commercial agreements already done and in implementation. Here are two examples of the strategic partnership agreements. On the left side, we can see the Consolis Group agreement, and you can see example of a hollow core slabs.
In the construction industry, we could fully replace the cement in the concrete, due to certain regulations of you need to have a certain percentage of the cement included in the recipe. The tests done so far were very promising. This is problem area. As soon as possible, we find pilot cases together with customers to make the whole buildings, complete buildings based on these solutions. On the right side, Critical Metals, there is an example of a waste-to-t ype of thinking, where we announced the collaboration with the Critical Metals earlier. The aim is of a cooperation to develop a method, where the vanadium- purified slag could be used to replace cement in concrete.
We are talking about a huge number of slag, about 300,000 tons per annum. If possible, to fully utilize that would correspond to roughly 10% of the need of cement in Finland. These sort of slags we are finding all over the place worldwide. All right, I will give over to Melina for people and competence.
Thank you. Good. Regarding our R&D activities, we have 50% of our employees are currently working in technology development. Here you can see some five development teams we have now. We have more focused areas. Ongoing projects, and we have also, we've run 200+ implemented different customer tests around the customer pilots. People. Our average number of employees for last year was 51 compared to 23. We have had a lot of strong recruitments in supply chain management operations, R&D, and building our commercial competencies. We are also proud to say that we are a very diverse company and organization and culture, not just gender-wise, but also education, backgrounds, and nationalities. Also we had a few new members joining the management team.
Here you can see Riku joined us in November it was. We also had Antti Uski. He started already in last January and or 2022 January. We had Jarno Poskela and Ville Voipio starting as in late fall, in September and October. Also Ilkka Iittiläinen as our Chief Operating Officer started back in March. As Riku mentioned, we had Abhishek Bhattacharya be our was appointed as our Managing Director, Country Manager of Betolar India. Going into financial review.
All right. I think it's not so much to tell about the numbers. I think the main topic to highlight is first of all that we got our sales going with some EUR 300,000 revenue in total 2022 compared to only some EUR 10,000 in 2021. The direction is right. We are in a very early phase of commercial path, anyhow it has started. The other thing, you could say EBIT, I think it's not that relevant at this point of a company development, we have our loss, basically our cost tells about the investments in our growth, what we talked earlier, R&D resources, sales and operations.
All in all, I'm pretty pleased about this start of a commercial phase with some customers, early phase, and looking forward growing the company further. Here, we got a rough picture how about the CapEx and the OpEx. The CapEx was amounted about EUR 3.3 million, and that mainly went into continuous investment in R&D. Some innovation center investments is not including yet the expense of this, more about the equipment, and AI platform and related project management. In the OpEx side, it was mainly personal cost and, for example, traveling and ramping up customers and optimizing our sourcing, increasing...
Currently we are still increasing the cost control for sure. When expanding, we need to put quite some effort for R&D and going out testing, and we will continue doing those pilots with customers. Of course, we also include some costs there in terms of general administration. I think quite some of the cost was related to listing Betolar and putting up some processes, solid processes for Betolar. Also we have investigated quite a lot and put money on IPR. We have a very strong patent portfolio, and that takes also some part of the cost here, the administration of the, for example, the IPR portfolio.
One important area for the company is establishing the proper corporate processes, and of course, our organization is very small still, as you saw earlier, about 60 people at the end of the year, and as an average, about 50 in 2022. During last 12 months, we have put up the QEHS quality system, risk policy and management processes, also processes for IPR, for example, forecasting, and normal business process, for example, as sales and operational planning, sourcing, sales reviews, pipeline reviews, etc. Not to implement in full like a big company process, but you need to have something more solid when as we grow. Also quite important milestone for us was transition to IFRS, and we did it rather fast.
We are ready to go, for example, in case a company would be moved to the main list one day. But there are some smaller items affecting our reporting, how things were reported according to FAS and now according to IFRS. We are coming mainly from leases, share-based payments, and listing costs. All right. Just as a closing slide, giving you the dates of the quarter one report that is 27th of April, when 25th of August we have a half a year result available, and then quarter three results, November third. These are the main events. Of course, the annual general meeting that is coming up at the end of March, I think that was 31st. Yes, 31st March 2023. All right. Thank you very much.
I think the stage would be now open for any questions.
Yes. Go ahead.
Thank you. Anssi Raussi from SEB. I have a few questions, and if I start with the commercial agreements. Firstly, is there some reason we didn't see any new commercial agreements during Q4 at least, or it's just a question of timing?
I would say it's more just question of timing. There's continuous strong pipeline of new customers. Sometimes, negotiations take longer than the other quarter. No special reason for that.
If continuing on, commercial agreements and thinking about 2023, I know of course that you're not giving any guidance, but, how should we think about the ramp-up, and, do you think that your... Of course, your customers are maybe speeding up their ramp-ups, but, Have we seen just the beginning or how should we think about the revenue potential in 2023?
That's very, very good question. It's subject to how successful our customers will be with their go-to-market plans. I mean, of course, we try to help our customers. Take any of our customers talking to their end customers with how could we help them supporting, you know, the acknowledgement of this green building elements. It's a little bit difficult to say exactly with how it will develop, but what I can say that we are continuously reviewing our next steps. Of course, me as a new CEO to the company, I also want to check with what steps we will take next.
Talking about those four sectors we showed earlier, with precast and the mining and the building and construction and waste to value type of approach, we are assessing which one of those would create fastest the payback in terms of revenues and refining the strategy in that respect. Sorry, I cannot give any more accurate picture for the revenue to come.
Yeah, understand. Maybe if you look at the back into 2022, like, what were the main surprises or challenges? Of course, a bit difficult question for Riku, as you just joined, but, if you try to summarize the year, like, in that way.
Yeah, of course, nobody could expect this war to start in Europe. That was something that nobody could really expect, and that I said, that affected both the cement price and also through the energy price, our chemical prices. That is an event that nobody wished and nobody could, of course forecast. Other than that, I think there's no really big surprises. To me, the surprise is that how much competence the company really has. There's a lot of good knowledge and competence in the company, and also the amount of pilots done, amount of tests done with different kind of slags. I think that was a bit surprising to me at least.
Now, we need to be maybe a little bit more selective, what is the direction, not to spread our resources many places. I think that is one of the topic to go forward, like focus and focus.
Actually if we go back to this energy. Well, let's call it crisis. How should we think about the net effect if we think about. Of course, high energy prices increase cement prices and chemical prices. What kind of discussions you have had with your customers? Like, are they saying that your solution is more competitive or less competitive than the ordinary cement at the moment?
I think we need to take a bit longer view on this one 'cause chemical prices may vary quickly up and down. It seems like we are coming down now quite fast actually. In the longer term, we believe that our solution is competitive, and also it depends on the market, for example, the slag availability. In Europe, slag with kind of a traditional slag from the steel mills is becoming a commodity, meaning that it's less and less available and prices are going up. That's the reason our strategy, we are putting quite a lot of effort on identifying and implementing new side streams that has basically no value. Of course, with the potential is huge.
As you mentioned, as new strategy, can you open it up a bit?
Yeah
are you planning to publish something in the near future?
Yeah. We will come back in the near future with the proper communication package. I'm just telling the areas we are looking into. That is. One is with the, okay, what segment we should focus, and in what order. As we saw, I highlighted already on the slide with building and construction, bigger elements, that is something very interesting. The mining applications, that is the other. That has been in Betolar's plan already at the time of IPO. These things we are now reassessing with what should be the sequence, what is the timing of these events. The other thing we will speed up probably is the identifying the so-called waste to value type of side streams with more or less zero value.
That is a game- changer.
Maybe the last one from me is that when we are now, in 2023, what are the main takes or focus areas investors should be looking at in, during 2023?
I would recommend investors to look at our releases, press releases, stock exchange releases because we don't. As you said, we don't give any guidance as such, but we are quite active communicating what is going on in terms of new agreements and, for example, entering into new market, entering into new segment. I think that is something to follow.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Let's continue here.
Good morning. It's Tommi Saarinen from Inderes. Thank you for the presentation. First of all, you mentioned the Consolis Parma co-project and that some of the hollow core slabs need the cement in it. How do you see the regulation headwind in general? And in this project, do you see these a bit of creative things to go around the regulation?
Yeah. First of all, we have also solutions for sort of a mixed cement applications. For example, if a standard requires minimum 5% of cement to be included in the recipe, it's no problem for us. We can deliver a solution that is according to those regulations. According to our tests, our 100% Geoprime solution without cement actually works even better. In the longer term, we hope we can influence those standards. It might be a rather long path, but we try to influence those standards. Anyhow, we have a solution as we talk today already to cope with the existing standards.
Nice. You had a quite high revenue growth compared to the Q4 or H2 2021, so and a quite high gross margin. Does this include the license sales and the chemical sales?
It comes from both, yes.
All right. Last, you recruited a new guy in India. How has the market been in India, and how is it compared to, I guess, more advanced economies to Europe and such?
If thinking Asian market as such is the biggest demand for concrete and concrete products. As such, the demand is there. Maybe in terms of pricing, I think any Asian country is more in a way price sensitive, so maybe it's a little bit more difficult to get the bigger price premiums, but that is our intention anyhow to get some premium to our products. On the other hand, slag prices are much less, for example, in India, and big piles of slags available in many places. It's a little bit sort of mixed feelings with that, with the Asian market. At least the demand is there. It's a great opportunity, and when we are fine-tuning our recipes to be competitive on that marketplace.
No new surprises over there?
No, no.
Thanks. No further questions.
Thank you.
Thanks. One more question. Are you charging your customers in your pilot projects, or are you taking any money in this?
That is our intention in the future at least. But Betolar has said, we are in a very early phase of a development of a company. So when in the beginning, every company needs to have some references locally and globally, and when with very small sort of a size of a company with almost no name in the beginning, so it's very difficult to go out and charge big fees for the engineering. That is our target now, start commercializing that part as well, and as a service, providing the ramp-up and the piloting, and our related material research, and start charging for that.
That is a real value add to those customers, so it's a real service, and that is our intention, to commercialize that package properly. In last year numbers, we didn't have so much of this, piloting fees yet, but there were some.
Okay, thanks.
Thank you.
Good. Moving on, not forgetting our online viewers, there were a few questions. You can also send them by the way in Finnish. I'll do the translation or try my best. There was a good question about the pilot customer, or the pilots then, the 25 versus 200. Maybe just as a clarification, as a KPI, we had last year 25 new pilot customers, and the 200 relates to different factory tests, either with these customers or others. Maybe that's a good clarification. I think in the slides we had, that mentioned differently. Maybe, Riku, you wanna comment? There was a question, how many pilots or factory tests have been run with one customer? Yeah, and yeah. Can you answer that?
I think it roughly tells the picture. You have, as you say, like 200 tests and 25 new pilots, so it's not equally distributed. Sometimes it is several tests per customer. It's also sometimes several products per customer, so it's not only like testing the same thing many times, but, there are often several product lines.
Yeah. Good. There was also a similar question to India, regarding that, are there any other geographies you are targeting now and in the coming years?
Yeah. If you think about it, now I'm talking about this slag or side stream, sometimes it's actually waste, and it's a liability to many companies. We try to recognize those waste streams and slag streams worldwide, meaning that, for example in, this is just an example, but, for example, in North China, there's a lot of metal industry and not so much of slag users. You can go down to, say, Mexico or other markets. It's a similar thing that the market is not yet mature for this sort of solutions where other companies would be requiring a lot of side stream. There are opportunities, these sort of sweet spots available worldwide where we are looking into the value and the price basically of a side stream and when the customer base.
For example, take the North China example. There are several hundred million people living just in northern part of China, as such, that kind of market could be interesting. North America in a similar way with last year we got already one pilot up and running in North America. Also there is a great transition, big demand of green solutions, depending a little bit on the state we are talking about. Take for example California, where we're very advanced with the requirements.
Good. A question on AI. AI has been the focus for Betolar since going public. How does that fit into our materials business?
Yeah. AI is in the really core of our business. AI typically, that takes a bit longer time to develop than any, say, just, you know, making a concrete product, assembling something, for example. AI, we started with collecting the data from our own recipes and from customer environment. Our recipes are now under optimization using the AI. In the later stages we can start using our AI for more commercial use. For example, identifying those side streams worldwide and getting some kind of fee based on our knowledge. It can be, for example, a place to trade things, connecting investors, real estate companies, building and construction companies and so forth. That is probably a little bit in a longer- term.
Currently we are concentrating on collecting the data, optimizing the data, using it on laboratory and optimizing our customers' processes.
Good. Thank you. There was one more question. Do you still see it is realistic goal to reach EUR 200 million turnover 2026? What are the main enablers for that?
Yeah. That will seem possible, and the concrete steps in practice with how it goes over these years may vary. Like, we try to be agile and set prioritize opportunities that will create revenue fast. Yeah, it's very much doable, and it's coming from those listed four areas. What is the weight in each area, waste to value versus mining, for example, or concrete elements for building and construction? That's a little bit more difficult to say at this point, but we are advancing those in parallel partly and see that what is the winning horse.
Good. I think it's our time is up, but, thank you for joining and, yeah. The next release will be in April, our business review. Thank you and have a nice day.
Thank you so much.