Gelion (LSE:GELN) — Investor Presentation

0:00 Good morning, and welcome to the GELLINE PLC Investor Presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged and could be submitted at any time by the Q and A tab situated on the right hand corner of your screen. Simply type in your question and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting itself. However, review all questions submitted today and publish responses where it's appropriate to do so. Before we begin, we'd like to submit the following poll. I'd now like to hand you over to John Wood, CEO. Good morning, sir.

0:28 Good morning, and thank you all for coming to this presentation today for GELION. It's been a remarkable period of time in the last few months, and we thought this would be an opportune time, both to thank the people who participated in our recent round, and to update you on the strategy, for the company and the progress, that we are making.

0:54 I'd like to, start by introducing my panelists, with me today. We're fortunate to have our founder, the remarkable professor Thomas Mashmeier with us. You know, it's almost exactly a year now, since I've been in the company. And, originally, I was attracted to GELION by the opportunity to work with, Thomas. I've not been disappointed. The the man is a genius, and it's a lot of fun working with Thomas and the team that have assembled around him. And, I feel very fortunate to, to have had this chance. Stuart, Rayna, my partner in commercializing, our activities, we work very hard, together, and, it's a a great pleasure to work with Stuart and Amit. The tireless, Amit, our CFO, diligent and, and energetic.

1:46 So, each of us will, take you through, our progress today. Alright. GELION, a battery technology innovation company, and we are working on two technologies. We're working on a lithium sulfur technology, and we're weak we're working on a a zinc based hybrid technology. Now, these are two very important technologies. Lithium, lithium sulfur, and particularly the sulfur and the zinc are two of the most abundant, battery chemicals, around on the planet. We see lithium sulfur as extending the lithium battery industry, being the next stage of of lithium industry.

2:32 And that's a that's a huge industry. It's a an industry that will be at 1.3 terawatt hours by 2030. Now there's another great industry as well. That's the lead acid industry. And the lead acid industry is a little different than lithium. Lithium is a sort of clean room, high technology industry. The lead acid industry is a is a robust, industry, very strong, robust batteries. And that's where we see our zinc based, technologies playing. So we see zinc as being a natural extension, of that, great ecosystem, which is the lead acid ecosystem. Another way of saying that is GELINE is a zig is a battery technology, company that wants it all. We wanna be the next stage of, lithium, and we wanna be the next stage of, of lead acid.

3:18 And we're gonna talk to you today about how we're gonna achieve that. Alright. We, particularly are drawn to talk to you, following our recent raise and acquisition. And we're very pleased with that acquisition. That was the acquisition of Oxford. Now earlier this year, we updated you that, building on, the early stage breakthroughs that GELION had had, in lithium sulfur, particularly in, additives and electrolytes associated with lithium sulfur that we had acquired from Johnson Matthey, an extensive portfolio of IP, around lithium sulfur. That, IP has proven to, to be, you know, even better than we thought, And so we're very happy with what we got from that. Well, that development was done by a group in The UK.

4:11 Originally, that RP was developed by Oxus. And we're very pleased with this acquisition that we're reuniting some of the, some of the brainpower that was associated with OXS. What happened there was that, after Johnson Matthey had, picked up the OXS technology and IP, the UK government had carried things forward, supported development of batteries in The UK with an initiative called, the Faraday Institution. Faraday Institution, had about £500,000,000, if I have it correct, which they've been putting into, keeping The UK at the forefront of advanced technologies. And inside that, there was a group called Lifestyle that was particularly, investing in lithium sulfur. Young man, Adrian Amigas, who had worked for, OXS and been in in charge of IP for OXS, He took on a a role and started a company, called Oxlet.

5:07 While the UK government was supporting, the development of lithium sulfur inside the academic institutions in The UK, Adrian was building a small team, and he put a few licenses in place with some of the universities that were doing that work and and continued that work forward. We're very fortunate, that we were able to reach a meeting in the minds with Adrian and his team and to get them to join team GELION. So there's a little picture of a it's a very small picture there of Adrian up in the top left. And right alongside him is a a gentleman, Gareth. He's, he's leading technologist. And by some, twist of fate, Gareth had actually, spent some time with our own professor, Thomas Mushmeier, earlier in his career. So we knew the quality of the people that we were working with and that we, were managed to secure to our journey.

5:55 So we picked up some very important people and capability in The UK. We picked up a few more patent applications in some important, positions, some facilities, and the ability to to make some some samples up in The UK and at Fraunhofer in in in Germany. We picked up some commercial relationships including with one with Sanyo trading as well and importantly, the relationship with Faraday. And I do draw attention that Faraday institute institution does have on its website at the moment a timeline, that shows you the history and the pedigree of all of this IP and the work that we're doing here. Very importantly for GELNINE, as shareholders, what this does is move us move us forward very fast, jumps us forward on our TRLs, and enables us to move forward with our goal to, towards major strategic relationships.

6:50 Okay. So well, yeah, we were gonna talk to you about, Oxford alone, but, we happen to pull another, major transaction, which was this, relationship and, JDA with, IronBlocks that we just announced in the last few days. This is all towards establishing true global presence and leadership, for GELION. So, OXLED, brings a lot to us. Firstly, we've been working on our lithium sulfur, cathode technology, and, oxalate brings some very special, capabilities in that that moves our our TRL forward, our technical readiness level, sorry to use the terminology there, forward quickly. They also bring access to, some advanced lithium metal anode technology, particularly some important IP, that being licensed, by the company.

7:42 We, will be working with, Oxlund, across all of our activities. The team is now part of Team GELION, and so they're across all of our activities. But particularly in The UK, we're gonna be continuing to work on that lithium metal those lithium metal activities. We are super excited to be able to complement that acquisition with this JDA with Suji and his team at Iron Blocks. So this is a really formative and very, very important relationship that has formed here. So GELION has been working towards attaining leadership in lithium sulfur technologies. And one of the pieces of work that our team had been in breakthrough mode on was how to, complement a sulfur cathode with multiple anode technologies.

8:32 That was secured, or our our protection in that area was extended, through the Johnson Matthey IP acquisition. One of the important anodes that we can, connect to is called a, an SIOX or a silicon oxide anode. Now that's where iron blocks excel. They have, SIOX technology. I think that you could almost call these guys dominant in the proliferated SIOX,

8:57 area. Why is that important? Well, it's in an area that, again, leaks us forward because this is an anode technology that when we complement it with, sulfur, gets us way past some of the things that have held us back or held others back on lithium metal approaches. Simply, it's a faster path. We anticipate to being able to make whole cells where those cells have stable performance and high performance, low cost, and high safety. So we're absolutely thrilled to have this opportunity to work with IronBlocks, a major major company in a in a great partnership. And Stuart is and Thomas will talk a little bit more about that as we proceed with our presentation. Get Amit to take you through the transaction.

9:46 Thank you, John. So in in terms of the transaction, the Oxlid transaction, what did we acquire? We acquired 100% of Oxlid, which is a UK based lithium sulfur company, and we valued the deal at £4,200,000. We make sure the structure of the deal is such in a way where the risk and rewards are equally shared between the founder and ourselves. So we paid 1,250,000 in cash on completion. Completion is tomorrow. The payment will be made tomorrow. 4 mill £400,000 is deferred and paid in cash over six, twelve, and eighteen months. This is to ensure the founder is works with the business and is subject to certain performance hurdles as well. 2,500,000 in shares in GELN PLC, and this is a score for eighteen months.

10:31 So, again, making sure the risk and rewards are equally distributed, everyone works together to make GELN a success. We funded the acquisition through the existing cash resources that GELN had and also using some of the non EIS funding that we raised in this round. We acquired entire IP portfolio, as John mentioned, and we complete the transaction tomorrow. The rationale for the transaction, why did we acquire Oxalead? Obviously, it gives us a presence in The UK, which is quite a big market for lithium sulfur. There's a lot of research organizations and the research activities happening in The UK like Faraday and lifestyle program, which John spoke about. It gives us access to potential customers in Europe as well.

11:17 On top of all all of these macro, commercial considerations, Oxlet also has approved grant funding from the Faraday and APC program. So post acquisition, we'll have circa £700,000 of grant funding which is approved but undrawn. So we pay 1,250,000 tomorrow, but we'll get £700,000 in grants back. Obviously, John spoke about the team, the intellectual property, and strategic fit. We can accelerate our LIS sampling. They also have a very good relationship with Sanya Trading, and they generated some revenue in f y twenty two. While there is no confirmation of that revenue continuing, we want to explore the relationship further post acquisition as well. So that's something very interesting for us. And I think this cannot come at a better time for July because the UK government just announced The UK battery strategy yesterday. So multi billion dollar going into the battery strategy. And with presence in The UK, we we are definitely in the right spot to get government help there as well.

12:19 John, back to you. Okay. So looking at, at the position of your company, GELN. Today, the mature industries are lithium ion and and lead acid. You're seeing some incursion, into the market from sodium ion, but very solidly, the next generation technologies are lithium sulfur, zinc based, or multivalent based, in solid states. Now when we look at what we're doing in lithium sulfur, the IP portfolio that we picked up from Johnson Matthey comprised IP from right across the spectrum of liquid electrolyte systems through quasi solid state systems through solid state systems. And so your company, GELION, is solidly positioned in all of the battery all all of these major battery technologies that we're looking, going forward.

13:21 How do we commercialize them? Which is really, the most important question. Well, first, we achieve leadership, then we commercialize. And our intention in both in the case of both of our technologies is to follow the fastest path to commercialization using a capital light approach.

13:40 So when you look at these, tables in front of you, you can see the progress that has been made by, the remarkable team that we have inside of GELINE in the in the, period since the IPO, and particularly, with a lot of momentum, starting to build in the last twelve months. So we advised earlier, this year about the, acquisition of the IP that had been developed at, Sydney University. We quickly moved into accelerating, through expanding our lithium sulfur capabilities in Sydney. And now we've just done the, Oxford acquisition and the IronBlocks, JDA. Well, you can see now, that this next one, which is starting to provide, electrode samples to our our partners, well, well, we're gonna be exchanging electrode materials with, iron blocks, straight away. So we're off to a bit of a head start, on our goals, looking forward. We're doing our safety testing.

14:38 And one of our big goals and the primary KPI that we've set for ourself or myself next year is that we're looking to form some major strategic partnerships. We're not gonna slow down. GELION is, is on a mission to, to get this technology out, into, the global landscape. There's a mention of a advanced commercial prototype facility, and there's a couple of great countries to be involved in batteries right at the moment. One of them is Australia and one of them is The UK. And I guess The US is not too far behind that at the moment, but there's a lot of government sending it out there. And so our plan is to be putting in place a capability and from that capability to be able to provide samples out to our partners around the world or partners that we wanna develop around the world. You then see the company progressing through the demonstration pouches and then in the validation, sells to our partners.

15:29 On the zinc side, there's been a magnificent job done by our team this year. I've really, have to hand it to, the the group that is working in inside of, GELN. So, we had our gen cell the gen four cells. We produced our gen gen four cells. We learned, quite a lot from those gen four cells, and we realized that, when we had those cells that we wanted to do more. We needed to do more in in order to meet the combination of safety, cost, and performance, all in one cell that we see as being, the sort of compelling proposition to really get behind and start to scale commercially. So our team our team now could lean and got after it and have been doing a great job. So using those gen four cells, first of all, some remarkable progress was made on the, anodes. So we wanted to make this, product fit the market, and we realized that stripping the the cell, taking it down to zero wasn't gonna be convenient for our customers. So we wanted to go beyond that, and, very proud of the team for the work that they did to, to overcome that challenge. We then went lent into the cathode, and Thomas, again, pulled it off for me because he, introduced me to the remarkable professor Yuan Chen, who's one of the world's leading, scientists in the area in the particular area that we wanted to move faster on. We put a particular we put a relationship in place with, the professor at, Sydney University.

16:56 We've been moving forward very quickly on that. So all that work is coming together, and at the end of the first quarter next year, is an important milestone that I've set to update holders on the progress of our zinc performance. This stage, everything is, is going along pretty well, and the team's making great progress on each front. Of what we anticipate, getting to at that point in time, we then start to move forward into our gen five prototype. I mentioned that we wanna work on a a capital light approach, and then to that extent, we have started working relationships already. Now, the lead acid industry, is one where we have a lot of great manufacturers around the world, but a small number of process equipment manufacturers. And so one way for GELION to accelerate

17:40 will will be to work closely with the infrastructure suppliers that work within that industry today. We started to talk to them already preemptive to our technology team bringing the technology along. That brings us to Gen five. So our Gen five is a product on the zinc side. It's something we have high aspiration for in stationary energy storage. And you can see then going forward, we'll be doing our our our manufacturing process equipment, our pre pilot production plants, then moving forward to to scaling up. So you have a a disciplined commercialization and realization program going on inside your company, and you have a a team that is working remarkably hard to achieve those goals and creatively and effectively. Let Stuart tell you about our lithium sulfur technology.

18:29 Great. Thanks, John. Good morning, everyone. The next few slides, we'll really be talking to you about why we're passionate about lithium sulfur technology as the next generation of battery tech to really support the transition to renewables. We'll cover off the key applications, advantages, some of the tech challenges that need to be solved and how GELION is approaching this market to obtain the leadership position for lithium sulfur technology globally. Now, if we think about key applications, in the you know, the whole globe is heading towards zero net emissions. And if you look at the EV market in particular, last year there were 10,000,000 EVs sold. The projection are that 300,000,000 will be sold by 2030. Now in order to make that happen, we need breakthrough battery technology like lithium sulfur that has got lower costs, is much safer, better energy density to support that transition and really make it happen to drive up the amount of EVs that need to get out there to reduce emissions.

19:31 One of the other key applications that we're focusing on is aviation. So if you think about the aviation industry, if the aviation sector was a country, it would be the seventh largest emitter in the world. So pretty significant. So it's very good for us to get about trying to electrify aviation as well and reduce those emissions. If you think about the all the flights that are done around the world, greater than 50% of those flights are less than 500 miles. So, that's within the distance that the energy density of lithium sulfur and the power rating can achieve. So, we can electrify aviation also. Now, in terms of the key advantages of lithium sulfur compared to existing lithium ion technologies, what's your line's about? We're about bringing a better battery to the market, a greener battery, lower cost, safer with higher energy density. So let's look at the energy density side of things advantage.

20:29 The gravimetric energy density is double what current lithium ion technology can deliver. So what that translates to is double the distance that your cars can travel. So reduction in range anxiety between the amount of distance you can travel between charges of the car. One of the other also benefits of our technology is it's much lighter battery. So if you put a lighter battery into an EV, then the EV manufacturers, they can actually put in lower spec brakes and suspension systems because it's not carrying around as much weight. That helps to drive down the overall cost of EVs as well. When you think about the bill of materials, we're estimating a 45% reduction in the cost of these batteries. So if you compare that to lithium NMC, nickel, manganese, cobalt, one of the leading technologies that's out in the market today, all of those metals, we want to replace those metals, which can be high cost and have various supply chain pressures that people have seen over the last couple of years, we replace that with sulfur.

21:35 And what sulfur is, is the fifth most abundant element on planet earth. So from a supply chain perspective, it's a fantastic element to be working with for next generation battery tech. Where do we get the sulfur from? In addition to the fact that it's very abundant, we're actually able to get the sulfur from the oil industry. So at the moment, oil industry, when they get the oil out of the ground, goes through a desulfurization process and they have an incredible amount of waste sulphur that we're able to take, wrap it into the cathode of our batteries and produce these greener, safer, lower cost batteries. And because we're not mining the elements there on the cathode, so we're forming a metal free cathode, we can basically provide a much more sustainable battery out to the market by reducing the carbon life cycle between 30 to 60%.

22:32 So that's fantastic from a sustainability point of view and where we need to be producing millions of these cells in the future. And the other key thing is improved safety. So too often do we see

22:44 EVs with fires or explosions or stationary energy storage systems with fires that burn for six or seven days. Forget about that when it comes to sulfur. Sulfur handles high temperature much better than the current technologies. So we can say goodbye to fire and explosion. So you've got a much safer battery. So that enables more people to want to buy EVs and fly in electric aviation. Now, the key challenges. So I've talked to you about the advantages of lithium sulfur, and they're very well known in the industry and very well accepted. The technology challenges that the industry has been attempting to solve over the last period are two key challenges. And this is what GELION is putting all of our effort into solving. And Thomas will tell you a bit more about our approach, which is helping us to get into that leadership position on a global basis for lithium sulfur. So the key two problems, first one is a lower life cycle.

23:39 So what happens, you can see there in the center of that slide, that's a high level picture of the cell, battery cell. The cathode there is sulfur. The anode on the far left is lithium metal. And what's happening there in the red, polysulfide shuttle, that paradigm basically corrupts the battery and only enables the battery to last for about 50 to 100 cycles. So what happens is polysulfides, they move from sulfur cathode, are

24:08 absorbed into the electrolyte and shift across to the anode, and then they corrupt the anode, enabling it to only last 50 to a 100 cycles, which isn't long enough to have a full commercial battery. So that's technology issue number one that we're getting about solving. The other one is the power rating. So, sulfur has the benefits we've discussed, energy density, cost, safety, but its power is a little lower than traditional lithium ion. So we need to do some pretty special technology effort into getting that power to the right level for EVs and electric aviation. Now in terms of how we're getting about this, John mentioned earlier and you would have seen in our press releases over this last twelve months.

24:53 We firstly acquired the Johnson Matthey and OXS IP. OXS spent about £100,000,000, ten years developing their lithium sulfur technology to a global best position. And we've now acquired that. We competed against 20 other companies to get our hands on this IP. And we're combining that with the work that Thomas's team have been doing in Australia. So and combining that with the Oxalid people that we've just acquired in terms of the company to put together the best approach to lithium sulfur in the market. We've got a very broad patent portfolio, 65 patent families, which translates to I think around 400 patents covering the full range of battery development. And the other extra bonus in that patent

25:37 portfolio acquisition was about 10 to 12 patents based on battery recycling. And this is a extra bonus, guess, for our business and our shareholders because we've had numerous companies approaching us wanting to commercialize that recycling IP with GELION.

25:56 I'll hand to Thomas who will take you through the next slides. Great. So so what what is it that's special about our approach? So we have a sulfur cathode platform technology, and, it is different to just about everybody else out there. It's, one can go with a, approach which is similar to what is in the battery in the iPhone, where we have a lot of electrolyte inside the battery. The problem with electrolyte, which is the liquid that effectively connects the anode and the cathode and makes the system work, that electrolyte is dead space. It's not able to store energy as such. So the more electrolyte, the lower the energy density. So that is one way in which some companies are designing their lithium sulfur batteries.

26:46 We don't do that. Another way is to go the other extreme and say, well, I will have no liquid whatsoever, and, I need to have these electrodes and and the the electrolyte, which will be solid one, touch very, very well.

27:02 That is not easy to do. If you think about two pieces of paper, and you and you, you know, try to put them together at the atomic level, and even higher than that, you can imagine there will be gaps. Whenever there's a gap and an ion has to pass through that space, there is resistance. Whenever there is resistance, there is resistance to movement, and the energy used up by the battery to overcome that resistance means the battery is less efficient. So our approach lies in between those two extremes in our first sort of manifestation of our lithium sulfur technology, and that is what we call the quasi solid state. So in a sense, we can conceptualize it as putting just a smidgen, a tiny little bit of highly specialized liquid between those two sheets of paper, between those two sheets of plastic, and they then connect very, very well.

28:00 And that allows us to suppress the polysulfide shuttle because that liquid is unable to dissolve the polysulfide, so they can't move across. But we still have great ionic conductivity, great connectivity, and that is effectively where our patent space is. And if anybody wants to go, not to the extremes of full liquid electrolyte or solid state electrolyte, but something in between, we are there. That's our space. And the academic literature, I think, is starting to also show that that is the path to success. If you have a look at the different kind of patent areas we're covering, obviously, we're covering the anode and the cathode. That's what you do early on, of course, to make sure your battery technology actually works. And as one gets further developed, so, of course, we need electrolytes to have the anode and the cathode talk to each other, and then we need to be able to design batteries and be able to manufacture them, so design for manufacturing as well, and manage the batteries as cells and as packs.

29:11 And as you can see, we are covering all of those areas, and those areas are indicating an increasing level of technology readiness. So with our platform

29:30 sulfur cathode, we can tune the battery. We can make different types of batteries. We can make power batteries. We can make really high energy density batteries, all ones which have significantly longer life cycle, but still very high energy density, higher than anything that's out there at the moment. So it's a real platform, and we can tune it to the applications that we need. So we have a multi anode capability, and that means that, you know, some of you may remember the VHS and Betamax discussion. Google's going to win. VHS finally did in videotapes. With lithium anodes, it's a little bit the same. Is it going to be lithium silicon? Is it going to be lithium metal? Is it going to be lithium silicon oxide? We have views of how this is going to go, but there are lots of companies out there trying to make it happen. We can pair to any of those, and our, strategy is to look at partners to pair with. So we are very flexible in that.

30:30 Our IP sits in our cathode formulation that is tuned to go along with these anodes, and we then have tuned electrolytes, very important, that are able to allow our sulfur cathode to talk to the different anodes. So it's an electrolyte sulfur cathode package that is then used to pair with those anodes. So it's very exciting, and it covers high energy and longer life cycles. And the formulation itself is reliant on having some catalytic materials in there as well. Sulfur is a bit sluggish, but our laboratory at Sydney University, our group, and also the people we are now working with at Oxlid are very experienced in catalysis and have a great track record in catalysis, we're very confident to be able to accelerate some of those reactions. And then the battery becomes more and more of a power battery.

31:31 Enables these catalytic materials enable the energy to be released quickly and also to be taken up quickly. So that is a lot of the work that's going on at Sydney University. If I compare what I just talked about, the lithium metal sulfur combination and the lithium silicon sulfur combination, the gravimetric energy density, so the weight for the amount of energy in the battery, is more than two times that what it is in your iPhone right now. And if you look at Chinese electric vehicles, which are using lithium iron phosphate batteries, are low in energy density, we are significantly more than twice, maybe three times as energy dense if we look at lithium metal sulfur combinations.

32:21 The penalty is the cycle life is a bit less than for LFP, but they're still comparable to the batteries that you have in your iPhone. These cycle lives are on a cell level. On the system level, that can be managed many more cycles. In terms of safety, we also, of course, are safer than lithium NMC or lithium NCA, the batteries that you see blow up all the time. Sulfur, if something goes wrong, extinguishes the battery. Given that we are in the lithium metal sulfur battery using lithium metal, we don't get the full marks, but there are ways of handling passivation of lithium metal as well to make it safe, and we do have an exclusive license to that from the University of Oxford.

33:14 Material supplies, we are, of course, fantastic. Sulfur is a waste of the petrochemical industry, and there's a huge amount already there at battery grade purity because it is made from hydrodesulfurization in the refineries taking out sulfur from gas and sulfur from crude oil. Then the most recent development, as John was saying, we have now a joint development agreement with IronBlocks, who are the world leaders in lithium silicon anodes, and we can pair with those. And we still get a very good gravimetric energy density there first up, but a much, much longer cycle life and incredible safety as well. And, potentially, we can come up with PACS which combine these two, these two technologies as well, the lithium metal and the lithium silicon, to give very, very long range batteries for cars, etcetera.

34:11 So as I was already saying, our two approaches are to partner with iron blocks for the lithium silicon oxide anode. And, well, we were partnering, but then we liked them so much. We bought them. I think that's the guy with the Remington, said the same. He liked the company so much he bought them. They're now part of the family, and we're going together, forward to accelerate our path to market. Oxtlet not only supplies great technology for the formulation of the sulfur cathode, but also is making great progress in connecting that to a lithium metal anode. And IonBlox, of course, is the leader in lithium silicon oxide anodes. So overall, we are pretty excited, about our path, our optionality, and our partners and the quality of our partners.

35:08 Okay.

35:10 Looking forward to the commercialization. So we we're building the great technology. Now we wanna go to market. When the technology is going to market, we want to use a capital light approach and to work within, the existing supply chains. And so to that extent, we see that our best path forward is to, first of all, implement what we call our advanced commercial prototyping center, and that facility, is the interface between us, and the large manufacturers, of the lithium batteries and the large customers for the lithium batteries. So that advanced commercialization, prototyping center, becomes, you know, really central, to our commercialization efforts.

35:58 Now we go to pilot scale. In a pilot scale, we'll be, we see ourselves maintaining leadership in performance. So we wanna surf the edge of performance and maintain the edge of performance. But then as we scale beyond, we wanna be part of the existing global community and the global supply chain. And to that end, the most logical approach that we see is to be commercializing high value materials. And so our intent is to, implement our materials, utilizing our IP and our technologies, and then to work with partners who can facilitate the, provision of those materials into the global supply chain at chains and into the the gigafactories. To the very biggest customers, we will, also, entail licensing, of our technologies. So leading edge cells, high value materials, and, and, ultimately, licensing, of our technologies, to maximize the return, on our leadership and our technology work for our shareholders.

37:05 Turning to the zinc Thanks, John. So switching gears, zinc is very much focused on the stationary energy storage market. The key applications that we're targeting to begin with will be lead acid replacement applications. So the lead acid market is US45 billion per annum, and we'll be focusing on providing stationary energy storage solutions for remote power supply off grid for miners, telco tower battery systems, and also for data centers, uninterruptible power supply batteries for data centers. Data centers going through another massive growth phase at the advent of AI, so a whole heap more information being stored. So they're needing much many more batteries to keep their environments in place. Sync's a great battery for that. And then we'll be moving more toward the traditional solar farm wind farms scaling up of battery tech for those applications.

38:08 One of the awesome things about zinc technology from GELN is it can operate at very high temperature ranges without requiring air conditioning systems. So air conditioning systems end up becoming a very, very large OpEx over the sort of the five to ten year lifespan of batteries. So if you can remove that, it really helps the competitive advantage of our zinc batteries. So why do we love zinc? For a battery input, zinc's very, very cheap. So it's a low cost input into the battery. And if you're competing against lead acid, which had been around for a hundred and thirty years and at low cost, you need to make sure that you can compete on that price perspective as well from a CapEx point of view and then have an OpEx advantage also. It's very, very sustainable and scalable.

38:56 Last year, we proved that we could make 1,200 cells, zinc related cells in lead acid format. And that means that when it comes time for us to scale up our zinc batteries, we'll be able to partner with global lead acid batteries and our batteries will be able to be made in their ecosystem. So that's a real advantage for GELION on our zinc tech. And it's also very, very safe and water based technology. Thomas? Yeah. So, so, of course, you've heard me talk a lot about zinc bromide, and we've made, 3,000 zinc bromide cells, and and and have about a thousand or so of them, being used, around, around our various programs. And Asciono currently is underway, and the cells are performing very, very well.

39:45 And we've learned a lot about how to make these cells, how to manufacture, etcetera. But you will remember when John came in as CEO as an expert in lead acid batteries and the whole ecosystem, he felt that it wasn't the right time for us to go into megawatt hour production at that moment and pulled it back and said, really, what we need to be able to do is get away from having to strip. So everything else was working quite well, but to to to strip was still something that needed to be done, well. And and and the reason for that is that that we need to have cells that can cycle at partial states of charge without growing dendrites. And so we did. We put a pause on going to the megawatt hours and developed the anode further, and that was a very quick progress such that we are able to now switch the battery chemistry because we are much better at plating the zinc than we were before.

40:51 Now that allows us to be more flexible on the cathode side, so on the bromine side. Bromine is a great battery chemical, but it's also somewhat problematic in terms of manufacturing, etcetera. One needs to have some pieces of equipment which can handle the material constraints around bromine. Lots of other reasons. At the end of the day, what we've been able to do is switch the cathode into a material which is much more benign and still delivers the performance of the zinc bromide and a little bit more. So if we go to the next slide, we have the zinc bromide, which is our generation four. As you can see, under these various parameters, it is outperforming largely lead acid, as we've always said.

41:43 But then the zinc generation five is even better. And we are looking at much better cycle life, much better behavior around irregular charging and discharging and so and a higher energy density as well. We're keeping that robustness in terms of operating temperature. We're actually improving it still. And so at the end of the day, it's a cheaper and better performing zinc battery. So we've learned a lot, and we're taking about two thirds or so of the designs across from the zinc bromide and put that into this, battery approach. Thank you, Thomas. So I'll quickly summarize the financials for f y twenty three.

42:35 Just as a reminder, f y twenty two is audited. F y twenty three is unaudited results, but we are pretty much done with the audit. So the numbers are not gonna change. On pretty pleased to report that on all the three measures, total income, adjusted EBITDA loss, as well as the cash position, the actual performance is much better than what was expected. And these expectations were set at the time of IPO. Think everyone is aware how the world has changed since the IPO. You talk about continuing COVID impact, Ukraine war, inflation, interest rate rises, employee tension, and everything, but we have come out on the right side. So very, pleased with the efforts. So on a total income, it was approximately 20% higher than what we anticipated whilst ensuring EBITDA loss is lower as well.

43:25 The cash is largely as expected, but this is after the £3,000,000 that we spent on the Johnson Matthey IP acquisition. This wasn't part of the plan when we did the IPO. So if we didn't acquire the Johnson Matthey IP, we would have been around £10,000,000, which is significantly higher than expectation. So the underlying message here is the team at GELN is taking really good care of the cash that we raised at the time of IPO, and we are making sure the cash is deployed in the most efficient manner and used for the right purposes. The result that I just summarized wasn't a fluke. Since John has arrived, we have before John, there was a big focus on cost. But since John has arrived, we have actively reduced cost across the business and across all categories being staff, contractors, marketing, and other.

44:16 And the estimated savings is around a million pounds on an annualized basis. So this is fantastic result, and this just shows how much we value shareholders' funds. You, John. Back to you. Okay. So what I'd like to do is summarize for you all. Our goal is to, first of establish leadership for our technologies. That's essential. Batteries are a global industry. To to be successful in batteries, you must establish leadership. Secondly, having established leadership, we want to move fast by integrating into the global supply chain using capital light approaches as I've explained. So we're gonna we're gonna attain that in lithium sulfur by leveraging the IP that we acquired and the the great start that we've been given by our own team, integrating the, Oxladec acquisition, working with, the alliance we've put in place with iron blocks into, lithium silicon sulfur, continuing our development towards safe, lithium metal sulfur, and then moving quickly, towards the high performance cells, the high value materials, and to licensing.

45:30 On the zinc side, we're gonna keep moving our our progress forward, with the work we've done and progress made on anode. The work that we're doing, in partnership with, professor Yuan Chen on the on the cathode at Sydney University. And then, again, moving as fast as we can to commercial integration into the supply chain, working with the supply chain participants, around the world today. Looking at this, in a summary diagram form, what we've what we've done, on the zinc side of our business is to target a target in such a way as we can move to a lower cost of production, a higher performance cell, something that meets the match to market even while increasing the pace of our scale up readiness. And that's the period of time that that we're in at the moment. I mean, there's risk with, all battery technologies, but in this case, we're taking the steps, towards being successful.

46:30 So, by designing a cell that meets, and sits within existing regulation, we can move, much faster. Looking at the lithium sulfur, and I'm I've done it in this form. It's got some of the same points as we had up higher in the presentation, but I I hope people, can see in this, representation some of the momentum, that, we're gathering. And we don't intend to slow down. Now, it doesn't look like a share price graph. Our share price graph is a shareholder. I recognize, the pain that it it has declined in the last year, and I've been CEO in that in that period of time. What I am very confident in representing to the shareholders is there's been a lot of, value, that's been achieved in that period of time. And so we get a a difference between price and value that does mean that it does mean opportunity.

47:18 And I do believe that we are developing a significant opportunity inside GELION. We don't intend to slow down. We intend to continue this momentum, and we will be working very hard on all aspects of our business, the technology, on the match to market, on the work to prepare for commercialization, and to put those relationships in place as we go forward into 2024, which I see being a very, very, strong year, for July. Thank you. I think we can pass Fantastic. Back Thank you indeed, John. Thank you to the rest of the team for today's presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions just using the Q and A tab situated on the right hand corner of the screen. Just while the team take a few moments to review those questions submitted today, I'd like to remind you that recording of the presentation, with a copy of the slides and the published Q and A, can be accessed via your investor dashboard.

48:23 John and team, as you can see, we've had a number of questions, both pre submitted throughout today's presentations. So if I could just hand over to you, John, just where appropriate to do so, read the question, give your response, and we'll pick up from you at the end. Okay. Thank you very much. Nope. The first one is, when will you get the share price back to £1.45? My answer to that is as soon as we possibly can, and I'm looking forward to it. We just completed a a raise, and I will say that, 10% of that was contributed by board members. All board members participated, and it was led by our founder, Thomas Marshmire, who who contributed, our our chairman, your CEO, your CFO, and both of the nonexecutive directors.

49:13 Everybody contributed to that round. So I guess we're stakeholders alongside the shareholders, and I understand that some of the earlier shareholders have still got a gap to be made up to, but I I I certainly hope that what we can do is is restore that, that value for those, initial shareholders and, make new value for those that are are coming in more recently. Second question is, is the company selling many of the batteries produced in the Sydney plant, and are they marketing them to solar in solars for domestic household battery systems? And how much does this battery, system cost? No. We are not selling, the cells at the moment. The, gen four cells informed us in our r and d and our development work for Gen five. They're not products that we have been, commercializing yet.

50:01 The next question says, does the zinc flow battery, when will it be available for domestic use in Australia? There is a need for personal storage of excess PV to be released to the grid in peak demand times, which will reduce the need for building of grid batteries and transmission lines. It would also help to stop the formation of new powerful electricity cartels. Cells are actually on the zinc side, a prismatic cell, and on the lithium sulfide pouch cells. So they are not flow flow battery cells, but I certainly appreciate the sentiment towards the need for masses of energy storage. That is indeed a primary reason that I am involved with GELION because I do see both of that technology, zinc and sulfur, as being technologies that can make a a major contribution to the massive scale of energy storage needed around the world today.

50:50 So we'll get on with that one as fast as we can. I've been trying to find out about what next question. I've been trying to find out what the results were from the AC owner solar trial in Spain, and how did the batteries perform. It's promising to hear the new developments, but is there a reason why the Enduro battery is not being produced and sold, especially in the light of new solar projects seemingly coming online on a weekly basis? Okay. So first of all, the Asiana project, We transfer the Asiana project from a physical pros project to a remote project. We're working very closely with Asiana. They are very good, very good partners. I I think the world of that company, amazing amazing organization. So, actually, in Sydney, we have a facility where the, gen four cells are being, used today, and they they're running through a test plan.

51:44 That test plan was provided by Asiana, and the results from that test plan are visible to Asiana. There is a second stage to that where we intend to set that facility that we have up where the where where Asiana can see the performance of the cells and to connect them to a operating energy plan. We've discussed with Asiana at every stage as we've progressed, and they're very aware of what we're doing with the transition to our gen five technology. We are in the course of adjusting the timing of our program and the relationships and everything that goes with it towards that gen five, and Asiana has indicated to us that they will accommodate, our shift to the gen five product and look forward to testing it. So the outcome, again, proud very proud of the, GELION team.

52:36 They do a remarkable job. There's, so many people that, have been achieved have been involved in achieving this. And so if any of them are listening, and I guess probably some of them are, thank you very much again, for doing it. They've delivered, pure quality, through the through the course of that, that work. And so the facility that we've set up will be, capable, of being utilized as we bring on the new cell generations. And the BMS work and all the other pieces of the technology will, put us in great stead to be bringing through our our new technologies. Next question. Could you please give an update on the Enduro battery test? Well, I'm sorry. I just gave that one. It's, repeated the question about Asiana. So I hope my, my, original answer might be sufficient for that one. Next question. As he has iron blocks collaboration has initial focus on the transport market, what is GELION's current grid storage technology? If any that's a great question.

53:29 Well, we see our battery technologies being used in grid technologies and being used in the, transportation. We do see the, the lithium sulfur being a high energy density, technology. It's great for great for transport. We see the zinc technology has been a really important extension of the lead acid, and you might have heard me carefully use the word there extension. We see that the the our zinc technologies can perform in certain areas where the ecosystem that surrounds lead acid can use it to great purpose, and that's what we wanna do. We wanna actually work with inside that ecosystem. We'll be targeting applications such as remote power systems. Stuart mentioned earlier, our objectives of, being able to have a high temperature battery. And if we can achieve our goals with that and have a battery that can be used in a robust way in, harsh conditions, that's gonna be a great gift to the, energy storage program and lead to a a lot of sales, because that, removal of the air conditioning is a very important goal.

54:30 Next question is, will it be possible for third parties to license the technology? The answer to that, yes. But only on strongly valuable commercial go, basis for our shareholders. So we do see that licensing can be a, important source of reward to our company, but, obviously, licensing would be, on appropriate, on an appropriate basis. The next question is with the, agreement with IronBlocks, could you please discuss the IP ownership and commercial rights of the parties? That is actually, set out in the RNS, that we put with the announcement. But, basically, both parties, look after their preexisting IP and, all improvements on their preexisting IP.

55:19 IronBlocks, obviously, is bringing primarily the skills on their anode technology. We're bringing primarily the skills on our sulfur technology, and to the extent, we're both bringing certain skills on on the electrolyte. Where there is new IP that's developed that is not built on the preexisting IP of the parties, then that will be commercialized on mutual agreement between parties. And then the commercialization itself will also be by mutual mutual agreement. Next question is sorry. Just give me a moment, to get to the next one. I'm seeing, what would the predicted cost of the lithium sulfur battery be compared to sodium ion? Wow.

56:09 That is a thoughtful question. That's a really good one. It's a hard one. Sodium ion is a low cost technology and has a lot of promise. On the other hand, if you look at a lithium cell, I think two thirds to three quarters, and I probably should be out to be more accurate on this question. I apologize to it, but I think it's between two thirds and three quarters of the price is the cathode over the anode. Now that's changing a little with people makes more sophisticated anodes. But when we put sulfur into the cathode, we dramatically cost reduce the cost of the of the cathode. So, putting it out there, I guess lithium, iron is trying to get to somewhere around a 110. Like to get down to a 100.

56:56 Sodium ion is trying to this is, in dollars per kilowatt hour. Sodium ion is trying to get down to that sort of 50 to 80 range, and I would have thought lithium sulfur is gonna be somewhere in the same range. So I think we can be competitive, but they're both great technologies. Next question. Will the institutional investors start buying GELN shares, so increasing shareholder value? I have to say thank you to a number of institutions who bought shares as part of our recent raise. And I will say that I do understand that the institutions that were part of the early financing of or the early funding of GELLINE had stuck in all the way through. So the institutions are very aware of of GELLINE, have been very loyal to GELLINE, and we're very grateful for the institutional support we have.

57:49 And we wanna be building support both on the institutional side and on the retail side. Next question. I am new to GELN. I can see that GELN has been involved in a lot of research. What products has GELN already been and is currently manufacturing selling? So, obviously, we're still in the development stage of our products. The still developing at the moment. So the tech the revenue that you see, on our books is primarily being associated with the, research programs, inside of, of the company rather than rather than product sales. I've got a question here. With the acquisition of Oxford and the signed JDA with Ironbox, when do GELION expect to be cash positive?

58:35 Now that's a really good, question to be posing, and I'm gonna give it to you that, you know, if I'm talking just in a pure organic sense, if I'm saying here, just if GELN were just to, take the two technologies forward and just do the research on the technologies and follow an ordinary course to commercialization, you're gonna be looking at least, I think we have to say at least three years on that course, if if not longer. However, as I demonstrated or showed earlier in this presentation, there's a lot of momentum in this company, and there's a lot of commercial activity in what we're doing. I believe we've been developing a lot of value, and I intend to keep that process of the board and I and everybody involved wanna keep developing process and progress and momentum on value inside of GELION. So there's a few strategic things in that. I think that we're gonna keep keep improving that value, and that that's gonna have an impact on the performance of the company as we go forward.

59:33 So leave that one with me, and we'll be updating people progressively as we go. There are research reports out, and I can put point people to, Cavendish research, paper that's actually on the on the website. Does the fact the iron blocks anode has no graphite get rid of the electrolyte compatibility issues? Does it have any benefits for for the PSS issue? Well, actually, one of the good things about the work that we've been doing is that we've actually managed to, develop electrolytes that, seem to be, supportive of graphitic approaches, as well as silicon approaches, as well as lithium metal. So, good news there. As Thomas said, we we have, flexibility. Next question. With 7,000,000 cash and revenue is expected to be early as 2026, how would you sustain the business in interim given the current burn rate? Will you be looking to raise more funds in 2024?

1:00:30 Yes. In terms of we have, positioned the company very strongly in the strategic landscape. So I'm gonna I gotta answer this question very carefully for you. I think at the moment, there are a there a is possibly a, discontinuity between the value of our company and and where we are in share price terms. So do we wanna be raising more money where we are? The answer to that is would be, no. We don't. We want a charter course where we can, increase value in the company, increase the value perception, of the company. Where we need to, raise more money, before we get to the end of our journey and get cash flow, positive, I would anticipate that is the case.

1:01:21 Now I guess if you read between the lines, what I'm saying is that if we get to that point, I'd like to be doing it on much better terms, and getting it on much better terms would entail, you know, getting proper recognition for the value that I believe is developing in your company, in our company, GELN, and, moving it forward in that way. So one of our goals, that we have set, we believe that we've developed the value inside GELN. We believe that we're developing leadership in some of our market segments. One of the greatest signals that we think, could be sent to our shareholders if we can get, external parties to recognize that as well, and that's one of our, strategic goals, going forward. So I am answering the question, as completely as I can for you. And I hope that that is satisfactory. John, I was gonna say, every let me answer a question.

1:02:12 We get another one come through. So we have gone just through the hour. So we can cover off all the questions. Any further questions do come through from investors post the meeting. But thank you for answering so many as we've come along. Perhaps, John, just before redirecting investors to give you their feedback, which I know is important to you and the team, we could just ask you for a few closing comments. Look. Thank you for the opportunity to present. It's been a a real honor to be be be the CEO of GELN throughout the the last twelve months. I think we have a wonderful company. I wish I could throw a go pro on my head and walk you through a typical day that that we have in July and to take you to some of the meetings, to meet some of the the wonderful team members that we have. Next week, we've got a a a purely wonderful week. We've got, the guys from Oxford, coming down for the first time to join us in Sydney.

1:03:05 We've got a program of work going. We're gonna be calling in with Sujit and his team over in San Francisco to advance the work that we're going on there. So if you're a shareholder, we're we're looking after your your investment. If you're a prospective shareholder, love to have you along. Thanks for, the honor of being the the CEO of of of your and our company. Thank you. Fantastic, John. Thank you and the team for updating investors today. Can I please ask investors not to close the session? You'll be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order the team can better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a few moments to complete and then it's greatly valued by the company. On behalf of management team, GELN PLC, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good morning to you all.