It is now 9:00 A.M. I am pleased to welcome you all to the 2020 annual general meeting of Ceres Power Holdings plc, held at the offices of DAC Beachcroft in London. As a result of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and in line with government advice, the Board has adopted a number of changes to the traditional running of the company's AGM. The company has made arrangements for a quorum to be present to transact the formal business of the meeting as set out in the notice of AGM, with other shareholders attending by webinar. At this time, I call the meeting to order. Let me introduce myself and also my fellow directors. I am Warren Finegold, Chairman of the Board.
This is my first AGM of the company, and I am delighted to have joined the board at such an exciting time in the company's development and during a year of extraordinary achievement. You will hear more about this after the meeting when the chief executive presents his review of the business. With me in the room are Philip Caldwell, Chief Executive Officer, Richard Preston, Chief Financial Officer, and Tim Anderson, Company Secretary. Participating on the webinar are Steve Callaghan, our Senior Independent Director, Caroline Hargrove, Non-Executive Director, Aidan Hughes, Non-Executive Director, Uwe Glock, Non-Executive Director, Paul Hannon, Non-Executive Director. We also have members of our executive team present, together with representatives of our legal and financial advisors. A few words about the agenda for this morning. First, we will address the business of the AGM. I will talk through the format and procedures for this shortly.
After the AGM, we will have a company presentation where we will read out and answer questions related to the general business of the company, submitted in advance or posted live on the webinar. If you would like to ask questions relating to the AGM resolutions or the company presentation, you may submit them now via the Q&A box at the bottom of your screen, and we will address them at the appropriate time in the meeting. Could everybody who's on the webinar go on mute, please? I think one or two people have got their microphones on. Now I shall return to the formal business of the meeting. The notice of this annual general meeting was sent to shareholders on the 13th of November 2020.
I would like to note that in the notice that was sent out, there were two minor cross-referencing errors, which were created on the final publication and print run of the notice. The two minor errors do not impact on the authority sought in the resolutions. However, for completeness, they are in the introductory paragraph and in resolution 8.2. These have been corrected on the notice of AGM made available on the company's website. Unless there are any objections, I will take the notice as read. Thank you. I will now briefly explain the procedures we will follow. I will go through each resolution in turn. After each resolution has been proposed, we will read out and answer questions related to that resolution received in advance and those posted live during the webinar. We will also publish the questions and answers on the company's website after the meeting.
When posting questions on the webinar, please give your name and state whether or not you are a member or a corporate representative of a member. To be fair to everyone who wishes to ask questions, please restrict the number of questions you ask. We will only permit questions from members, corporate representatives of members, and proxies. Due to the current restrictions, the voting for all resolutions at this AGM will be determined by way of a poll of proxy votes received rather than by a show of hands, and you will not be able to vote live on the webinar. When questions about a resolution are finished, I will share with you the proxy votes received, and I will then announce the result of each vote after it is taken. There are eight ordinary resolutions and two special resolutions. We shall go through the ordinary resolutions first.
Resolution one is to reappoint BDO LLP as auditor of the company, to hold office until the conclusion of the next AGM, and to authorize the board, through the audit committee, to fix their remuneration. For the information of the meeting, and because the audit fees aren't available as we are not publishing an annual report yet, I set out BDO's planned fees for the period to 31st December 2020. The company is planning to pay a total of GBP 140,000 in fees to BDO for the audit of the group for the full 18-month period to December 2020 and the reviews of two sets of interim results. For comparison purposes, we paid KPMG a total of GBP 89,000 for the audit and single interim review for the year ended June 2019. Any questions?
There are no questions.
There have been no questions received. We will move to the results of the poll. The numbers of proxies I am holding in relation to this resolution are now shown on the slide you can see. I therefore declare resolution one carried. Pursuant to Article 54 of the company's articles of association, the board is entitled to fill a vacancy or add to the board so that the number of directors does not exceed 10. Any such director so appointed holds the office until the next following annual general meeting when they retire, but are eligible for election. Accordingly, Mr. Warren Finegold, Mr. Uwe Glock, and Mr. Paul Hannon stand for election. Taking each in turn. Resolution two proposes to elect myself, Warren Finegold, to stand for election as a director of the company. I was appointed a director by the board on the 1st of March.
As such, I now stand for election by the shareholders. Questions?
There are no questions.
There have been no questions received. We will move to the results of the poll. The numbers of proxies I am holding in relation to this resolution are now shown on the slide you can see. I therefore declare resolution two carried. Resolution three proposes to elect Mr. Uwe Glock, who will stand for election as a director of the company. Mr. Glock was appointed a director by the board on the 18th of June. As such, he now stands for election by the shareholders. Any questions?
There are no questions.
There have been no questions received, we will move to the results of the poll. The numbers of proxies I am holding in relation to this resolution are now shown on the slide you can see. I therefore declare resolution three carried. Resolution four proposes to elect Mr. Paul Hannon, who will stand for election as a director of the company. Mr. Hannon was appointed a director by the board on the 18th of June. He now stands for election by the shareholders. Questions?
There are no questions.
There have been no questions received. We will move to the results of the poll. The numbers of proxies I am holding in relation to this resolution are now shown on the slide you can see. I therefore declare resolution four carried. The articles of association of the company require a third of existing directors to retire and seek re-election at this AGM. Accordingly, Mr. Stephen Callaghan, Ms. Caroline Hargrove, and Mr. Richard Preston stand for re-election. Taking each in turn. Resolution five proposes to re-elect Mr. Stephen Callaghan as a director of the company. As the Senior Independent Director, Mr. Stephen Callaghan has offered himself up for re-election annually. No questions?
There are no questions.
There have been no questions received. We will move to the results of the poll. The numbers of proxies I am holding in relation to this resolution are now shown on the slide you can see. I therefore declare resolution five carried. Resolution six proposes to re-elect Ms. Caroline Hargrove as a director of the company. Questions?
No questions.
There have been no questions received. We will move to the results of the poll. The numbers of proxies I am holding in relation to this resolution are now shown on the slide you can see. I therefore declare resolution six carried. Resolution seven proposes to re-elect Mr. Richard Preston as a director of the company. Questions?
There are no questions.
There have been no questions received, so we will move to the results of the poll. The numbers of proxies I am holding in relation to this resolution are now shown on the slide you can see. I therefore declare resolution seven carried. We now come to the special business of the meeting to resolve as an ordinary resolution. Resolution eight requests authority for the directors to be able to allot shares and securities up to an aggregate nominal amount of GBP 11,314,103, equating to just over 113.1 million shares. This resolution complies with The Investment Association share capital management guidelines and current practice. Questions?
There are no questions.
There have been no questions received, so we will move to the results of the poll. The numbers of proxies I am holding in relation to this resolution are now shown on the slide you can see. I therefore declare resolution eight carried. Approval of resolution nine will enable the directors to issue for cash equity securities up to an aggregate nominal amount of £1,714,258, equating to just over 17.1 million shares, without offering them pro rata to existing shareholders. The resolution is being proposed as a special resolution, and therefore must be passed by a majority of not less than 75% of members present and voting. Any questions? No other questions. There have been no questions received, so we will move to the results of the poll. The numbers of proxies I am holding in relation to this resolution are now shown on the slide you can see.
I therefore declare resolution nine carried. Resolution 10 proposes the new articles to be approved and adopted in substitution for, and to the exclusion of the existing articles of association of the company. The resolution is being proposed as a special resolution, and therefore must be passed by a majority of not less than 75% of members present and voting. I confirm it is the board's intention to comply with best practice for future general meetings, and virtual-only AGMs, which the changes in the articles enables, will only be held in truly exceptional cases. Questions? No other questions. There have been no questions received, so we will move to the results of the poll. The numbers of proxies I am holding in relation to this resolution are now shown on the slide you can see. I therefore declare resolution 10 carried.
That concludes the formal business, and I now declare the 2020 Annual General Meeting closed. Thank you all for your interest and attendance. This AGM webinar has been recorded and will be made available on the company's website. The results of the meeting will be announced to the markets through our regulatory information service and posted on our website as soon as practicable. We now move on to a business review of the company, including a presentation from our Chief Executive, Phil Caldwell. At the end of this presentation, we will read out and answer questions relating to the business review, which have been posted over the webinar or received in advance. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please do so via the Q&A box at the bottom of your webinar screen. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you, Warren, and thank you everybody for attending today. I'd just like to give you an overview of where the company is in implementing its strategy and also allow some questions. First slide, please, Richard. I think most people attending are familiar with the company, but just to remind ourselves, Ceres Power is a high-growth U.K. technology business, we're very proud of that. We have world-leading solid oxide technology, which came out of Imperial College, that's protected by over 50 patent families and trade secrets. We now have approximately 350 employees, highly skilled scientists and engineers based in the U.K. We have a very healthy financial outlook with over GBP 100 million of cash on balance sheet. Beyond our previously published numbers, we've added to the order book and pipeline with recent contract wins with the likes of Doosan and Bosch and others.
We have a healthy order book and pipeline of over GBP 100 million. We're listed on the AIM market, currently around GBP 1.8 billion market cap. We are aiming to implement a high-margin, capital-light licensing business model, very similar to what was achieved in the chip industry with Arm. We're doing the same thing with clean energy. Next slide. I think people are becoming more and more familiar with different types of fuel cells, and I just want to remind people again of the benefits of the solid oxide technology that we have at Ceres, which we call the SteelCell. Our technology is highly efficient, so over 60% efficiency from fuel into power out. It's fuel flexible, so it can run on natural gas, it can run on hydrogen, it can run on blends of hydrogen and natural gas. It can run on biofuels.
It can potentially run on future fuels like ammonia. It's an ideal technology for addressing this energy transition from the society we have today all the way through to achieving net zero by 2050. What's unique about the Ceres technology is the combination of ceramics on steel that enable us to produce a highly robust and cost-efficient SteelCell. By weight of materials, over 90% of our fuel cell is conventional steel that you will find in automotive supply chains like car exhausts, et cetera. Therefore, it's inherently low cost. We also use the most common of the ceramic materials, cerium, and that only constitutes a small percentage of our bill of materials. Once you have this technology being produced largely on ceramic, printed on steel, we can also utilize manufacturing processes that have come out of the solar and the chip industry.
We have something that's highly scalable and highly mass-manufacturable. Because of the robustness of the technology, we're also one of the few solid oxide technologies that can transition not just for stationary power applications, but into some of the transportation applications that we're starting to see, like heavy duty trucks and commercial vehicles, and potentially into future applications like marine as well. There's a very broad range of applications for our technology. I'm often asked about what's the difference between the Ceres technology and PEM technology. PEM technology is very dynamic, it's very power dense, and is often used for transportation, primarily transportation. Solid oxide is high efficiency and fuel flexible and is used for stationary power. The advantage that we have is that combination of high efficiency, fuel flexibility, and that robustness that allows us to play in both the stationary markets and the transportation markets.
Next slide. We have this unique technology, but also the way that we bring this technology to market is also unique. This slide illustrates the modular approach that we're taking. From a common cell, a material set, we then produce stacks. Here you can see a 1 kW and a 5 kW stack, and you can think of these as building blocks. Then from those stacks, we can produce with our partners, different systems for different applications. Right now, we have four partners at the licensing stage, Miura in Japan, and the top unit you can see there is a 5 kW system for combined heat and power that's on sale in Japan now, targeting office blocks, buildings, et cetera.
The next unit you can see is a 10 kW prime power unit developed by Bosch, one of our key partners, who are also able to mass manufacture the 5 kW stack that you can see in this slide as well. We had the announcement earlier this week, very exciting announcement of Bosch now moving on to scaling up of production in Germany. Weichai Power in China is obviously a very important customer for us as well. Weichai is one of the world's largest commercial vehicle manufacturers, and also produces something like 600,000 engines a year. The application that we're targeting primarily with Weichai is this commercial vehicle market, which is getting a lot of interest now in the fuel cell world.
What we've done so far is a 30 kW system that you can see there, but we're looking at expanding that into 100 kW or plus applications. Finally on here, we signed a deal last month with Doosan, who are the world leaders in stationary power for fuel cells based in South Korea. That's exciting for us because that takes this technology into hundreds of kilowatt scale up to megawatt scale. Here you can see illustrated all the different applications that we're getting into with partners across the globe. It's no accident that we have this strategy. If you look at all of the recent announcements post-COVID, you can see that most of the major economies in the world are intending to have some kind of green recovery. China has now announced it will be carbon neutral by 2060, which is a big step.
Japan is one of the first countries to commit to adopting a hydrogen strategy. South Korea has a Green New Deal, committing GBP 46 billion of green funding and very significantly targeting 15 gigawatts of fuel cell power generation by 2040. Just to put that into context, that's five Hinkley Points based on fuel cell power systems by 2040. Germany has announced EUR 9 billion in stimulus packages for hydrogen and fuel cells, obviously we have our partnership with Bosch. The EU as a whole has announced something like EUR 550 billion for green projects. Recently, the U.K. unveiled a 10-point plan with up to GBP 12 billion supporting green jobs and technology jobs in the U.K.
We're waiting to see what Joe Biden's recent presidential win, we believe should start to move towards the U.S., hopefully coming back into the Paris Agreement and therefore a green stimulus as well. Now with our licensing model, we're able to play in most of these economies at the same time. We're working, as you know, Weichai in China, Bosch in Germany, Doosan in South Korea, and Miura and Honda in Japan. Next slide. We see beyond where we are today, a huge opportunity for our technology. If you think about Ceres Power as now one of the leaders in electrochemical technology, probably in Europe, if not globally, and you see the potential of our technology, we've significantly grown the business from our heritage of power systems starting at single kilowatt level.
As you can see from the previous slides, scaling into hundreds of kilowatts to megawatts scale. If you think about our purpose as a company, we're all about clean energy to hit decarbonization and to achieve carbon neutral by 2050, then we have to decarbonize all aspects of society. That's the buildings that we work and live in, that's transportation, and that's industry. As a company, we're investing now for growth. What that means is we're going up in power, as you can see, from tens of kilowatts to hundreds of kilowatts to megawatt scale. We're starting to also scale up applications on the transportation side from an initial 30 kW to potentially over 100 kW and starting to explore future applications like marine.
Very excitingly, we are also starting to look at the application of this technology for electrolysis, where you run the technology in reverse, you can produce green hydrogen. The advantages that we see of the Ceres technology in being high efficiency and robust and low cost also applies when you run the technology in electrolysis mode. We see a huge opportunity for green hydrogen for industrial applications such as green steel, ammonia, and petrochemicals in the future. We see Ceres Power as growing, not just in the stationary power side, but into these other markets and applications as well. Next slide. The way that we do this is through licensing agreements, and most of our license agreements follow the same path, where we work with our partners to do joint product development.
At this stage, we charge about 50% margin based on engineering man hours and time and materials. We're acting very much like a consultancy at that stage. We also give people access to our background IP, and we license. For that, we charge a license fee, which is 100% margin. When our customers go to market, we receive a royalty per kilowatt. Now, what that means is we can achieve very high margins to a licensing model, and also we're able to play in different markets, in different applications simultaneously whilst leveraging the balance sheets of some of the world's leading companies. Next slide. Just want to say a little bit more about progress with key commercial partners. First of all, we'll talk about Bosch. Next slide, Richard.
We've been working with Bosch for over two years, and what's exciting that we've been able to announce this week is the successful conclusion of the technology transfer and the pilot scale over the past two years with Bosch in Germany, has now led to Bosch announcing plans to scale up production to 200 MW by 2024 and invest hundreds of millions of EUR in the process of actually establishing these products at a manufacturing scale. What's important for us is this is a commitment to scale, which then provides future recurring revenues through royalties for the company. In the near term, the value of the deal is worth EUR 23 million to us over the next few years. Bosch believes that the market for stationary power fuel cells could be worth EUR 20 billion by 2030.
The applications that they're looking at, you saw on the previous slide, is power systems that could provide decentralized power for buildings, factories, data centers, EV charging, et cetera. They see multiple applications for this technology. We're very proud of our relationship with Bosch, and we've built on the initial agreement that we signed in 2018, to develop the five kW manufacturing in Germany. This milestone shows the strength of the relationship and also the quality of the service technology and of our people to be able to work at such a high level. Next slide. Our next very important partner is Weichai. We've been working hard with Weichai this year. Obviously, with COVID-19, we've not been able to work on site as much as we would have liked to have done.
Both teams are working remotely but very effectively, and we have achieved the first prototype of a 30 kW bus to demonstrate the technology. Now the joint teams are working on a small fleet of five buses with a 30 kW range extender in China. We're due to complete that around the end of Q1 next year. With the successful completion of that, we intend to move forward with a joint venture to produce those systems in China later in this first half of 2021. We're still making good progress with Weichai, and that commercial vehicle market is a very exciting and very large market potentially for sales. Next slide. We signed a relationship with Doosan last year worth GBP 8 million, which was to develop a first system together.
As with lots of our partners, we've progressed to this next stage where Doosan have taken a license to also manufacture the core stack technology. Again, it's a big step to scale up to 50 MW initial capacity by 2024. The deal to the company in the near term is worth up to GBP 43 million, of which GBP 7 million is contingent on performance. Again, what excites us is the scale of the opportunity. Doosan may be less familiar to you, but as I mentioned, South Korea has very ambitious targets to be world leaders in fuel cells, and Doosan currently have 70% market share of the Korean market. With Doosan, we intend to jointly work together to scale our technology into the 100 kW plus power modules, which can then target this power utility scale market.
We're very excited about this opportunity with Doosan, and we see that as adding significant value to Ceres over the coming years. Next slide. This partnership, we've only announced this morning, so it's been an incredibly busy end of year for the company. What we wanted to do, if you think about Ceres, is we are starting to establish ourselves as the technology of choice or the world leader in solid oxide. We see the market opportunity for solid oxide as we've only just begun. If you think about everywhere today that you're using conventional combustion engines or thermal power systems, there's potentially an opportunity to use the solid oxide technology. Therefore, we're very pleased to have signed a strategic partnership with AVL in Austria. They are one of the leaders in powertrain and system engineering globally with over 11,500 people in 26 countries.
The intention behind this is by partnering with AVL, we can significantly accelerate the markets and the partnerships that we can originate for the Ceres Power technology, and therefore providing greater pull and greater demand for manufacturing of our core cells and stacks. Together, the companies have significant intellectual property portfolios. AVL already have extensive knowledge of SOFC systems, and obviously Ceres Power has a very strong portfolio as well. Together, we're combining forces on system engineering, not on core cell and stack, but on system, and that should generate significant benefits in customer acquisition for Ceres Power going forwards and helps us scale the business. Next slide. Just to illustrate the business strategy here. If you think about what we've done this year, on the left-hand side, we've started to have commitment from partners like Bosch, like Doosan, to scaling manufacturing of cell and stack.
On the right-hand side, we've also starting to broaden out the system level partnerships and the applications that we can get into for the solid oxide technology from Ceres, going up in power from CHP into higher power data centers, heavy-duty vehicles, distributed power generation going to utility scale. We also announced the first development into marine on the back of our relationship with Doosan. You can see the map on the right is broadening out in terms of more people wanting to use the Ceres technology, and we think that the partnership with AVL will help accelerate this and also accelerate demand for the licensing of our core manufacturing. Next slide. Just to give you a picture of what that means for the company. We're really in this middle stage here as you look at this graph.
Over the past four or five years, we've significantly grown top-line revenue, moving from this engineering services into this licensing phase. We can expect that to continue in the next few years as illustrated by some of the deals we've recently signed. What we have now is the commitment to scale from partners, and that gives us confidence of achieving royalties from 2024 onwards, and that's really where we get the recurring revenues and the scale of the business. In the next few years, we expect to announce more applications for the technology and also more scale-up of the business in general through this licensing model. Next slide. I think we've been a couple of things worth saying.
I think we've been very fortunate at Ceres to be in such a growth area at a time where lots of parts of society are struggling. We don't take that for granted. I think also, it's been a fantastic year for the company. What's really made that possible is our people. If you think about the resilience of the Ceres people to continue working both remotely and on-site in production and test, to deliver to these major partnership programs with some of the world's leading companies, it's a fantastic achievement. We're very proud to say that we've actually grown as a company during COVID. We've actually onboarded about 90 people into Ceres, which is no small achievement. We're now 350 people. As I mentioned at the beginning, I think we're one of the world's most best and largest electrochemical technology teams anywhere.
We grew revenue again to GBP 20 million. We've grown order book to over GBP 100 million. We had direct strategic investment from Bosch and Weichai about GBP 88 million. We have over GBP 100 million of cash on balance sheet. We now have a valuation that starts to be reflected in the market of GBP 1.8 billion. It's been a fantastic year for us, and I think the recent developments and deals that we've just announced literally this week and in the past month really sets us up for a very strong 2021. Next slide. Just in terms of the outlook for the company, we've never seen so much demand for technology that addresses climate change. You've seen from the previous slides, every developed country in the world, post-COVID, is targeting an acceleration of technologies that can address climate change. The market for this is only growing.
We now have two commercial partners as significant investors, which gives the company strength and stability in Bosch and Weichai. We've had strong momentum with partners this year, and particularly with recent announcements of Doosan and Bosch moving into mass production. I think it's fair to say that we are now establishing ourselves as the world leader in solid oxide technology. If you look at the partnerships that we're signing now, we're definitely becoming the technology of choice. We are highly differentiated and able to practice this licensing business model very well, giving us a very high margin business. We do see a big opportunity, so we are investing for growth. We are expanding into higher power and other applications, as I mentioned. We have a new engineering partnership, which we announced today with AVL, which will help us to access new customers.
We are developing electrolysis technology, having already invested over the past year in the initial stages of that. We're very confident with this technology in the solid oxide electrolysis application, and we're looking to invest and accelerate in that going into 2021. Just to leave you, we have a high margin, clean energy technology licensing business, which is at a very exciting stage for the company and well-positioned for future growth. I'll take any questions.
Thank you, Phil. The first question comes from Nick Roberts, who asks, "Please can you provide details of the status of the Ceres Weichai joint venture in China, including a rough time frame for implementation of manufacturing capabilities?
I think we covered that question in the presentation. As I mentioned, we are now producing the small fleet of trial buses in China, and we are due to complete that by the end of Q1 next year. We're also in discussions with Weichai on the business plan for the joint venture, and we hope that those two things will come together, and later in the first half of 2021, we're working towards forming the joint venture.
Thank you. James Barstow asks, "Has the relationship with Cummins Diesel died completely following its takeover of Hydrogenics?
I think it's a good question. I wouldn't say it's died completely, but what we have pointed out before is where we have current joint developments. We're just completing the program with Cummins in the U.S. Department of Energy, which was to develop a 10 kW system, and that's coming to a natural end. We don't currently have a future contract with Cummins. I think Cummins have made the acquisition of Hydrogenics, so I think a lot of their attention is on making that work at this stage. I think the relationship and the door is open for the future.
Thank you. Simon Ray asks, "When do you think Ceres will make a profit?" He adds, "I appreciate there's been massive investment in SOFC to date, but we've yet to see the license profits like Arm that you mention regularly.
Yeah. I think the slide that I showed, I think, probably illustrates what our expectation is there. If you look at Ceres, probably versus any of our North American quoted peers, we are currently generating gross margins of around 70%, whereas most of the industry operates at margins of around 20%. We are growing revenue significantly, and we have a healthy order book. On the power system side, if we keep on growing revenue at a significant rate, then I think you can see a path towards profitability in the next few years, based on further licensing as we get towards royalties. Now, real profitability comes once we have market launch post 2024, and that's where you really get the model of Arm type license royalty revenues kicking in.
I think as a business, we are continuing to grow commercially, and we are choosing to reinvest most of that margin into growth in the company. I think it's an interesting point because I think this is a growth opportunity, probably the likes we've never seen before. I think Ceres is one of only a handful of companies that can really exploit this opportunity. I think we as a board see this is the opportunity now to invest in this company to make sure that we remain as a world leader and grow significantly. I think the model is working. I think that's illustrated with our financial track record, which I'm very proud of and I think is second to none in the industry.
I think it's only a matter of time before we do actually see the realization of the model coming forwards as our partners go to scale.
Thank you. David Cronan asks, could SteelCell work well in combination with heat pumps for space heating?
That's a good question. Probably one better for Mark, my CTO. We have looked at this before. The one thing about heat pumps you have to appreciate is they will require power demand, but you do get a coefficient of performance. The idea of combining fuel cells with heat pumps is not a new one. It could be actually quite complementary.
Thank you. Chris Hardstaff asks, under what circumstances would you consider moving from AIM onto the main market, and what difference would that make?
I think it's a question of maturity and timing. I imagine there's pros and cons of both, but I think the main advantage of moving to the Main Market would be higher liquidity, higher profile, particularly for international investment. It might make sense at the appropriate stage to consider that, but that all depends on where we are as a company.
Thank you, Phil. There are no more questions. There's one on the Q&A. There's one more question that's just come in from Michael Burton. Can I ask on your strategy versus others such as Plug Power, which is more pushing the vertical integration strategy, which is the right approach or would the vertical integration model spread you too thin at a time with such a steep growth trajectory?
I think that we have a very unique and highly differentiated technology, and I think there's very few companies that can actually pursue a licensing model. When you look at the PEM technology that most of our peers have, it's a lot more established, it's a lot less differentiated, it's a lot more commoditized. A vertical integration strategy obviously makes sense, but when you have something that's unique and well-protected such as the SteelCell, it does lend itself to the licensing model. As we've discussed in this presentation, that enables us to scale the business in multiple verticals and multiple geographies simultaneously. I think also, in sales we talk about scale and speed, and we believe that the licensing model is the best way for us to achieve scale and speed of adoption of our technology so that we are recognized as the industry standard.
There's pros and cons of both models, but we believe that this is the right model for our technology.
Thank you. Steven Chapman would like to ask, do you see any future collaboration with ITM or similar green hydrogen opportunities?
Our role in the value chain, we believe, is the technology provider. In the same way that we have licensed this technology to a number of power system companies, some of which have moved from technology to technology. If you look at Doosan, they've gone from a lower efficiency technology with phosphoric acid and now selecting Ceres for higher efficiency solid oxide. That's a natural progression. Our aim with the electrolysis side would be to have an offering that we could also license to partners. We're not at that stage yet, but it might make sense for people who already have electrolyzer technology to look at moving towards a higher efficiency technology in the future.
John Eustace would like to ask, what are your intentions to address the opportunities in the United States?
I think that when you look at our partnerships, people sometimes may overlook the scale of some of our partners. For example, Doosan Fuel Cell also operate Doosan Fuel Cell America and are already a significant player in the stationary power market in the U.S. Similarly, Bosch has significant global scale and operations in the U.S. I think already with some of the partnerships that we have, we are already starting to address the U.S. market. I think that maybe with the Biden administration, you'll start to see more and more interest in these kind of technologies coming forwards in the U.S. as well. It's obviously a key market for us, and I think there's one where there's future opportunities, but already we can access part of that market through the partnerships that we've already established.
I have only one more question which is more of a comment, which is from Roger Freeman who says, as a shareholder from the class of 2006, can I congratulate all 350 of you for everything this year.
Thank you. We very much appreciate that.
Well, thank you very much, Phil. Thank you to everybody who's participated in this meeting and presentation. I know the circumstances are less than ideal for the way this is working this year, and I hope next year we will all be able to physically get together in the same room and revert to a more traditional style of the AGM where we can all talk to each other in person. I look forward to seeing you next year. Thank you.