Welcome back, everyone, to ABG Investor Days. My name is Henrik Hintze, and I will be your moderator for the next company here with us. This is a company which I cover, namely I-Tech. And here with us today is CFO and Acting CEO of the company, Magnus Henell. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much, Henrik. It's actually very nice to be here. It's the first time I'm with you guys having a presentation. Hopefully, it's not the first time I have a presentation at all, but you can judge afterwards. In fact, I actually forgot one title on this. I'm not only Acting CEO and CFO, but also Director of Operations, which means I have all the responsibility for our production and supply chain, which we're going to talk about a little bit later on. But first of all, let me introduce you to I-Tech. I think that a lot of you know who we are, but I also have some small slides where we talk a little bit more about what we do. But I-Tech is a growing commercialized company. It's been on the market for close to 10 years, products with our substance in it.
The company as such was formed in around 2000, which means we are 24 years old this year. We now have our product in more than 20 available products. I will come back to what kind of products we're talking about. We have commercial contracts with six of the nine largest paint manufacturers in the world and more than 2,500 ships that are painted with our technology. And you can have a look on the number to the left. It's a huge number. There is a huge market and potential for us to grow in, which we should continue to do. So the company I-Tech, we're listed. We are basing it on a unique technology, which is protected by certain aspects. We do deliver a proven ingredient, biotechnology, i.e., the Selektope product, and come back to that. And then we add it to paint.
Our customers are the large paint manufacturers in the world. Why do we go up from the bed in the morning? It is we want to enhance the power of coatings around the world, and we would like to contribute to lower emissions to air and sea. How we do that, we will continue later on. I need to start because we are on a fantastic journey. We recently showed our best quarter ever, both profit-wise and turnover-wise. We increased the turnover to more than SEK 38 million in the first quarter. We have an EBIT margin of 24%, a little bit lower than last year, but it will hopefully continue to grow over time and with a net result of almost SEK 9 million. Fantastic numbers in our view.
And when we talk about the top line, we also see that there are three major customers. We have one major customer, more than 80% of our turnover, but then there are also other customers coming up. But a great company doesn't start with just the product. It's the people behind it. And one of the main reasons for actually showing you this picture is to show that this is the entire I-Tech. We are not more than 14 people today that are operative in the company. And all of these have their different skills. We're a very specialized company, but we're also very not, what do we say? The diversity is quite good in the company. We are half men, half women, which we're very proud of because everyone contributes.
And we also have multiple nationalities in the company, which brings in different cultures and enhanced the corporate culture of I-Tech. So have a look on these people. These are the guys that are going to perform everything going forward. So just very short, what is the products of I-Tech? And we are one product company today. We are investigating possibilities to broaden our offering, but today we are one product company and we deliver the product Selektope. And Selektope is a molecule that addresses the receptors of the barnacle larvae. And when they address the receptor of the barnacle larvae, it forces them to swim. It forces them to use their small legs and swim away from the ship. And this is a non-lethal and temporary effect, which means that we don't build up any resistance over time.
Since it's not killing an organism, we don't build up resistance, which is a very good aspect when we're coming to these kinds of products. And so this good product can go in a multiple amount of paints. It is very efficient in low concentrations. We just put in approximately two grams per liter of paint. It enables us to lower all the biocides that we are using, which means that we don't put more molecules into the ocean that we need. And you can develop it together with almost every paint on the market. And for these 24 years, we, of course, tested and improved it. As I said, it's on more than 2,500 vessels. It's in more than 20 commercial paints. And this is the effect. You can see here are the paint, Selektope-based paint.
This is a really bad, or in our case, a very good example of how it can be, but of course, if you have like that, you have around 30%-40% extra fuel consumption, and that is the main reason to bring these products into the paints, to reduce the fuel consumption and reduce the carbon footprint. So in fact, there are three different things that actually drive this development. Of course, the entire marine industry is out to reduce emissions. We have around 800 million tons of carbon dioxide put out from the shipping industry today. 100 million tons of those could be reduced just by having a perfect hull, which means that you slide or you glide through the waters more smoothly, so it's a lot of saving potential, which I come back to later on as well.
The second part is, of course, also protect the ecosystems of the world. Now, it's been after we solved the problem with the ballast tanks who shipped a lot of different organisms around the world and released them where they shouldn't be. We have the crabs on the West Coast here in Sweden from far in Asia, for example. But now they also consider the outside of the hull as a very important vector for actually transporting invasive species around the world. And if you have a hull without any growth on it, then of course you don't transport any invasive species. And the third part is to optimize the material that we're using. For example, we are using a lot of copper today in the paints, which are released into the oceans and stay there. We could use this copper.
We can reduce the amount of copper or replace it with Selektope. But by doing that, we also optimize how we use the materials around the world. There are a lot of driving forces behind this, but one major driving force is actually IMO, which is the International Maritime Organization. It's a UN organ that actually sets the rules for shipping around the globe. That's the only global rules that are put into this. They have set out that by 2050, we should be net zero greenhouse gases or close to net zero. Today, it's not net zero. It's a lot of greenhouse gases put out. Until 2030, it should be reduced by 40% compared to 2008. In 2008, we had roughly 1 billion tons of carbon dioxide put out. Now we're down to roughly 800. We still have quite a long way to go.
To further enhance the development of energy efficiency in the shipping, we have different indexes that are implemented, the Carbon Intensity Index, which is an operational index measuring how well you operate your ships. You have the EU Emissions Trading System, which will be put in place towards shipping as well, where you actually pay for the carbons you use, and then you have the Energy Efficiency Design Index, which is more about how you design, what kind of fuel do you run the company on, what kind of shape do you have on the hull, what kind of paint do you have on it, what kind of auxiliary systems do you put on, do you put on sails, for example. I've been in some other discussions, and there is no holy grail to get to this. Everyone needs to work together.
Our part might be a small part, but it will also be important in all aspects because if you go into using alternative fuels, the only thing we know today, if you use renewable fuels to shipping, it's going to be a hell of a lot more expensive than it is today. And if you then save the fuel you are using, regardless of if it's bunker fuel that we are using today or if it's methanol or if it's hydrogen, if you are visionary, the importance of having a clean hull will only grow over time. And these slides show a little bit more, maybe a little bit too detailed, but here is the status that I was talking about, 2008. Here we are today with a carbon footprint. And over there, 2050 we should be down to zero.
The great part of this is made possible by slow steaming, which means that you run the ships much slower than you did before, which means that the efficiency goes up, but the reason why we show this is that we are in a supercycle on the ships. And both when it comes to new building, because there's a lot of new ships that are built, that a lot of them are using Selektope-based products. The order books for the shipyards are full for the next three years on a new building. We have an older shipping fleet, which means it's going to be a lot of more special service and repairs done, which is also a good timing to introduce Selektope-based paints, and we actually never talked about that too much, but just to give you a very good idea on where is the market in the shipping.
As you see on the top right-hand corner, you see that more than 96% of all the new ship-class vessels in the world are built in China, Korea, and Japan. You have a few also in other parts of Asia and Turkey. What you actually see is that none of the other areas are important for new building. It is very focused on Asia, which is of course then also where we sell the largest part of our product. We have more than 80% towards that market because we are today quite heavily skewed towards new building.
Then when it comes to maintenance, which is the larger part of our total market, then also the other part of Asia, including Turkey and the Middle East, is a little bit more significant, where two-thirds are on the three countries I discussed before, and roughly 24% or 23% are done there. So how do we perform? I was talking before. We have six of the nine largest paint manufacturers. They stand for roughly 90%-95% of all the antifouling paints, which is our potential market, that are produced in the world. It's a lot, a great deal of the market that they are going for. We recently announced that PPG, which is the Pittsburgh Paint Group, just launched a new product, a new global product, both for new building and dry docking, which have a good potential. They are one of the larger ones.
We also consider that we were maybe a little bit over-optimistic on the next customer that we believe is going to launch a product, the customer G, but on the other hand, we shifted and we believe now 10-18 months instead of 6-12 months. But there have also been one of the other ones that have recently come up as a new potential product, and within not so long time period, we will have eight of the nine largest paint manufacturers with products on the market, so we have captured the paint producers. Now we should continue to work with this to make sure that they actually propose our products or the progress where we are included, and to give you a little bit view on how our customers work, Chugoku Marine Paints, which is our largest customer, they're roughly 80% of our total turnover.
This is from their stand in the Sea Japan Fair, which they recently held. As you can see on the right-hand side, Selektope is everywhere in their commercial. They are really focused on pushing out products with Selektope, which is also why they gain market shares and they also increase their volumes. Oh, time flies. Just to give you a little bit of flavor on what's happening on the financial side as well. We are, as I said, our best quarter ever. We have a nice growth path. We have a good operating result. We are turning the percentage of our operating cost downwards. We have, due to some extra cost that we need to take now, increased it a little bit. I'll come back to that later on. But as you see on this slide, all the numbers point in the right direction.
We have 24% growth in the turnover, is the highest turnover ever. We have 9% growth in the EBITDA. Then I come to the other external cost, which is roughly SEK 1.5 million more than that we should have had, and that is because I don't know if you're into it, but we are in a process with the EU about the renewal of our approval there, which has some hurdles. I'll come back to that later on as well, and most important, our biggest customer, they grow with 30% compared to last year, and we have customers launching new products. So this is a slide we never showed before this quarter. I just want to show it because we're quite proud, actually, to say that we have a very stable balance sheet compared to a lot of companies on the market today. Almost SEK 100 million in cash.
Then, of course, you as an investor would say, why don't you use this cash? And we'll come back to that. But we also have some deferred tax assets, which are, of course, declining and should decline until we actually start to pay tax. So then some of the cash will actually go to tax in the not too long future. But on the other hand, we have today a very good cash conversion. We only have 7% of working capital, which I'm also very proud to be that we have set up a business model that doesn't take so much cash in place. We're debt-free. So what we're going to do is we are going to increase the working capital a little bit now when we introduce new producers. We are going to pay dividends, actually tomorrow, I think we'll pay SEK 1.50 to each share.
We are also looking into new plans. What can we do more? Are there any other products that are similar to our product that we can maybe invest in or acquire, etc.? We will make sure that we put the money in use. Unless we don't do that, we will continue also with on the dividend stream and maybe extra dividends if we consider that we don't need cash in the company. Just very short, a little bit on focus because we are continuously working on our producers. We have soon three different producers in India in place with different setups, but they are very efficient. They are good quality. All of them are sort of also producing towards the medicine industry, which means it's a quality stamp on them. Why do we have three? Of course, we're going to secure the supplier redundancy.
We would like to work with everyone to increase the process yield. We're always going to work with that because you can always be better. Then, of course, we want to secure the most efficient production setup. One part of that is actually to have different producers competing with each other to make sure that we don't have a monopoly on our production and they increase the prices. Perfect. Outlook. As I said before, we're going towards commercial relationship with eight of the largest paint manufacturers in the world. We have operational improvements, which then by the end of this year and coming periods should be shown also on the gross margin. We have technical milestones, which our R&D department, which is a very important department of I-Tech, are conducting that will help us to drive volumes in dry dockings.
As I said, if you compare the potential, I would say that the ratio between dry docking and new building is 10 to one. If we have a potential of one in the new building, then we have a tenfold volume potential in the dry docking. Maybe it's bad to sort of conclude with the challenges, but we are in a process with the EU, as I said. There will be some meetings coming up in the coming time, but it's a very long process. Regardless of what kind of recommendation they come with, if they are recommending still that we should be regarded as an endocrine disruptor or not, it will take a lot of time. We are still very hopeful that we will come out on the positive side on this. We shouldn't forget where the market is.
More than 80% today is in three different countries in Asia. More than 90% of our total market is in Asia. And we are increasing the cost a little bit due to the strategic search, development in manufacturing, etc. So the last part is nothing we can do about. We are in significant delays towards the US and EPA, mainly the leisure boat market, which is not the largest one, but also towards the ninth paint manufacturer on the screen over here, which are very focused on the US Thank you very much, Henrik, and all of you here and all of you out there.
And thank you. Let's move on to some questions. So first of all, you painted a nice picture of the market. It's a big market. And essentially all ships today use some kind of antifouling, right?
What I'm wondering is if you could expand a bit on why start using Selektope instead of the copper-based paints that are the most popular today, and if there are any other alternatives that are your competitors in the market or why you are so sure that you will continue to take share here.
Yeah, I can answer that. We should remember that it's a very conservative market, the shipping industry. Even if you can prove that you are better or cheaper or regardless, it's hard to change. We should have that in consideration. It took some time to get Chugoku on the boat, and it took some time to take the other customers on the boat and the shippers, of course.
But the reason for changing, I would say, is that actually the end paint is better when you formulate it together with Selektope, either together with copper and maybe a little bit less copper or totally copper-free. The product will be more efficient towards barnacles. That is the main reason. And of course, we have time to prove that. But we have, as you saw on the screen earlier, we have quite a lot of proof. The comparison was a premium paint with copper in it, with all the barnacles. So over time, we will prove that we are more efficient.
All right. So with this product then, you talked about the different customers on the market. It's a very consolidated market with nine big paint manufacturers, basically. So you sell Selektope to them, and then they sell paint to shipbuilders, basically.
So could you just paint us a picture of how your relationship looks with the paint manufacturers and the shipbuilders and what the hurdles are to growing faster here?
Yep. First of all, when I-Tech started to be commercialized back in, actually when our previous CEO, Philip, started in 2012, and we should start the commercialization of I-Tech, we needed to create a pull effect from the shippers. So then there was a lot of focus on marketing towards the end market, sort of to create a pull effect on the paint manufacturers to make sure that they put a paint product on the market. Today, we have a very good relationship still with the shippers, but on the other hand, we have so many customers out there with products on the market.
So our main relationship is with the paint companies and working together with their head office and their R&D department to actually make sure that, well, our ambition is, of course, that every new paint should be included with Selektope in it. And a large part of the new paints that come out is Selektope-based. So that is our main focus. And talking about hurdles, I would say still conservatism in the market. But once in, I wouldn't say it's hard because if you fail, you will be thrown out. But as long as you continue to prove your product, you will still be in the market. So the main hurdle is to get in, get the recurring paints, etc.
All right. And finally, on the financial side of things, in the past years, you've grown your revenues faster than costs by quite a bit.
And I'm just wondering if you could comment on how we should view this going forward. What are your needs to invest to grow further, and how will that affect your margins?
Yeah, our ambition is to continue that path. Of course, it can, well, it could go on for eternity, actually, but on a lower level. But that is the ambition. Then, of course, we come to, from time to time, you need to stepwise increase your costs. When we discussed earlier, I had an example that the persons handling the order can only handle as many orders. If you double them, of course, you will need some more personnel. But in fact, we have a quite good base now to significantly increase the revenues.
But on the other hand, we also have taken strategic decisions to actually strengthen the organization within the business development side to make sure that we continue to push out the Selektope in as many formulations as possible, but also look into other areas where we can do a difference.
All right. Thank you very much for that. That's all we have time for today.
Thank you.
Yeah, I mean. One first one. Go ahead.
Thank you. Just if you can elaborate a little bit on IMO, are there the targets they have, are they binding? I mean, we have a ghost fleet flying around the world with these ships. Are they covered with any of these products?
I don't know, I would say, because we don't know which specific ships that are covered with our products.
But of course, IMO is as binding as you ever can get in the shipping industry. And when they set the standard, then all need to abide by them, the global shipping industry. But we should also remember its targets. It's not a legal rule, so to speak, that there should be net zero. It's targets. But it also drives the entire business because the entire marine industry is working towards getting as close to net zero as they can. They are looking into new technologies. They are looking into the premium antifoulings. They are looking into, well, as I said, slow steaming on ships to reduce fuel, etc. So the marine market is committed to continue the path downwards in the carbon footprint. Thank you very much.