Good morning, and welcome once again to Betolar's business review for Q3. My name is Melina Pinomaa. If we haven't met before, I'm heading our sustainability and investor relations. Here today we have Riku Kytömäki, our CEO, and Riikka Ylikoski, our CFO. Today we're gonna go through some main events happened in Q3, and after that, Riikka will go through the numbers. Again, once again, if you have any questions, you can put them into the chat box below, and in the end we'll go through them. You can also send them in Finnish, and we can , n o worries about that. Riku, please.
Thank you. Dear audience on site and online, some highlights from the quarter three. First starting from the concrete products, we got pretty good progress, especially in India. Maybe something to mention about our communication, we typically announce our first customer in a specific country, so we are not announcing all of our customers and pilots in every country. It's repeating country in a way. So in this period, we got some progress also in terms of new pilots, but then especially we got commercial production starting up in India. In the construction elements, we also carried out tests and pilots in Southeast Asia what comes to hollow core slabs.
In waste upcycling, first commercial contract, and that is the one I was referring to, it was opened in Thailand. Also, we got side stream research conducted in North America. A pretty positive news came from Business Finland , and we got a positive decision about EUR 2.7 million funding for our research and development. Also, we got some changes in the Management Team earlier announced. Tuija Kalpala was announced, but she in summertime, but she's starting with Betolar, and now she started in early October. And then, late summer, it was also announced that Janne Rauramo, Strategic Partnership Manager, he's leaving our company, and at latest by end of November.
Also, we launched in autumn time a pretty massive cost saving program, and where we target EUR 5 million annual savings. As part of that, we also conducted change negotiations what comes to our own employees, but that is a minor part of the cost saving program. Then here are some other highlights what comes to the business progress in quarter three. In addition to those customers ramping up in India, our Geoprime product that was shortlisted in MENA Green Building Awards. Also, we reached piloting readiness stage with our updated recipe and dosage system. As we communicated already in quarter two, we are upgrading our recipes and system to better meet local standards in even toughest requirements.
Also in terms of construction elements, we are in addition to hollow core slab product, we're also piloting and developing products for different kind of load-bearing applications, for example, wall elements. In mining segment, we got a lot of good progress there in terms of developing solutions to cemented paste backfill CPB product, shotcrete, and the stabilization of the tailings applications. And also we took part of a coordination group on the circular economy in Finland to enhance innovations in mining segment. In terms of our strategy, as we have communicated, we have put quite a lot of emphasis to bigger building elements, construction elements, mining, and waste upcycling, not to forget the precast product, but especially in this quarter, we got good progress in mining and waste upcycling.
The Thai property developer order from Pruksa Group was example of that progress. Also we have done many other research throughout Europe and also in North America. I think that was in a nutshell the progress in quarter three, so I will hand over to our CFO, Riikka.
Thanks, Riku. So our net sales for the Q3 was EUR 167,000, and cumulatively, we are reaching EUR 300,000. This is, of course, still early-stage revenue numbers on net sales numbers, but we have increased from the comparison period. Our EBITDA was, of course, consisted of a lot of effort to the R&D development and will be now affected going forward with our cost saving activities. Our cash position was still fairly strong, so we have EUR 15 million of reserves in our balance sheet. This is, of course, affected by the Business Finland funding, which will be then withdrawn during the next one and a half years, and we have also Climate Fund loan to be withdrawn, and that's worth of EUR 5 million.
Our personnel remained almost at the same level during the Q3, and our number of new customer pilots was five. As Riku said, we have been piloting in the side stream area, and also in the construction element area. Still returning to our net sales, so that was. That consisted of both the license fee, the chemical fee, but also the research or engineering fee coming from the side stream activities.
Great. Thank you, Riikka and Riku. Regarding our next year, we have our calendar already updated, so you can mark those into your calendar. Also, yeah, I guess that's it. Our annual report will also be launched in March, and our annual general meeting, end of March. Good. Maybe then we can go into the Q&A. This was a bit shorter, this business review this time, but there were some questions coming through the chat box. Also, if there are any questions in the audience, feel free to raise your hand. But the one question to maybe Riku, can you answer this one? What type of customers are in the mining segment, and from which countries?
Yeah, first of all, Finland is one of leading countries when it comes to mining industry, especially now, thinking with geopolitical situation where rare earth metals are of importance, and most of those can be found actually in Finland. So from, from that perspective, piloting in Finland is also very good for the global progress. But then we have contacts, of course, not only in Finland, but Nordic countries for sure. In Central Europe, amount of opening mines is, is rather limited, but also we are present there, and also in Asia. And what kind of customers? Yeah, they are mining companies. We have these three type of solution: with paste backfill solution, it can be the shotcrete and also stabilization of the tailings. So we are progressing all of this.
Good. Thank you. Then there was one more question regarding the side stream service that we are offering. Could you maybe talk more about that? What, what is it what Betolar sells in the side stream side?
Yeah, that's a very good question. Yeah, first of all, typically, is the big mine, for example, it starts with a feasibility study, that, for example, what materials we can use on site, side streams that are available mostly as a waste at that specific mine. So it starts from the feasibility study, and when we study what is the side stream, how that can be utilized there in the mine, and that we call like a non-recurring engineering fee, NRE. But then the next stage would be that, the pilot customer would start using it in a, in a, kind of a production scale, ramping up, in local, probably reasonably big volumes, typically.
So it's a little bit digital business in terms of that it can take some time, even years sometimes, to develop, get the environmental approvals, et cetera. But when it goes and starts, it can be massive volume.
Mm. Thank you.
Sorry, maybe one more thing-
Yeah.
I could add. T here is the AI, our artificial intelligence platform, where actually the side stream service actually is probably the first commercial service where we can utilize the accumulated knowledge what we have received from the pilots already. And then, as soon as we get the sample from a customer, we rather soon start to know that what kind of a recipe can be utilized in that specific site.
Mm. Yeah. Thank you. Then there is a question from, y eah, this is in Finnish, actually. "Kysymys muutosneuvotteluista: millaisiin henkilöstövähennyksiin päädyttiin?" So regarding the change negotiation, c hange, what is the word in English?
Change negotiations.
Change negotiations.
Yeah.
What were the impacts regarding the personnel?
Yeah, we first of all we communicated the cost-saving program, and that is worth EUR 5 million, and majority of that comes from other services, external services, and so forth. And the minority from that cost saving comes from the employee-related actions. And when our negotiation was concerning max nine employees, own employees, and outcome was in that range, so it was affected finally for seven people, close to what we announced, and that's the reason we didn't specifically come out with another announcement, since the majority of the cost saving come from our services and external costs.
Continuing with the cost-cutting program, how does the program affect your growth opportunities? What has been the trigger that you have noticed that you don't need some of these resources to be cut as much as earlier?
Yeah. Maybe in my short summary of the quarter three progress, I already tried to highlight that we have shifted our focus more towards side stream analysis, side stream services, mining, and bigger building and construction elements. Still, of course, continuing with good big customers in terms of precast products, but when there is certain need for like this mining and side stream-related services and employees, whereas we don't need so much of this, probably this kind of a piloting with like hundreds of different kind of smaller customers.
Yeah, thank you. Then, question to Riikka. How much interest-bearing debt do you have? How long do you estimate you can operate with the current cash, cash position and funding?
Of course, the funding, funding questions are on the table all the time. We have the only loan what we have is the Climate Fund loan. That's the only interest-bearing loan that we have currently, and we will now in the coming future withdraw the another EUR 5 million of that. But the financing-related questions are always on the table, and of course, when we are looking at the different possibilities to increase our portion in the, in the value chain, so there are opportunities in that area.
Thank you. Then there's one more, maybe back to Riku. Majority of the sales came from pilots. What has been the main reason why clients have not progressed forward from pilot phase?
Probably we address the same topic in the earlier interim report, but very certain delay from our customers' piloting and when testing in a factory scale to when market acceptance that we need to go and market the product in the marketplace and when there is a certain, probably longer time needed what we maybe earlier estimated. But, of course, the green transition, those mega trends are where currently maybe some customers looking more at about the cost, but these mega trends, they will not go away. They are just getting stronger, and probably in a short term might affect also this market circumstances, but in a longer term, medium term, mega trends will drive the demand and also the speed, how fast those products are introduced to the market.
Mm. Good. Hey, thank you, Riikka and Riku. These were all the questions from here. Thank you for joining, and hopefully see you back in February.