Getech Group (LSE:GTC) — H2 Green Shoreham Agreement

0:02 Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the GETECH GROUP PLC Investor Presentation. Throughout this presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged. They can be submitted any time using the Q and A tab on the right hand corner of your screen. Just please feel free to type in your question at any time and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during today's presentation. However, the company review all questions submitted today and publish responses where it's appropriate to do so. These will be available via your Investor Meet company dashboard and will notify you by email when they are ready for your review. I'd

0:34 also like to remind you that this presentation is being recorded. Before we begin, we would like to submit the following poll. And if you would give that to your kind attention, I'm sure the company will be most grateful. And I'd now like to hand over to Luke Johnson and Jonathan Copas from GETECH. Good afternoon. Thanks very much, and welcome everyone to this afternoon's presentation. And so this afternoon, Luke and I, we should introduce ourselves. So I'm Jonathan Copas, GETECH CEO. Luke Johnson is the MD of our hydrogen subsidiary, h two Green. And today, we'll be giving you a company overview and also an update on our exciting, hydrogen project, which we have recently announced in. So first of all, just some words about, GETECH and what our positioning is. So we are a geoscience and geospatial technology provider, and we're also a data led asset developer.

1:33 And as a company, over the last fifteen plus years, we have built up a really enviable inventory of IP. We've built up some valuable core skills and also some, you know, very impressive customer relationships, I think. And if you look at that IP, it falls into three groups. First of all, we are it's global geoscience data. Secondly, we provide to our customers software, and this is software that helps with site selection and also analytics. And then finally, IP's knowledge products as well, and these are Earth system models. And we've built these for many of the world's biggest global energy companies as well as a number of mining companies as well.

2:20 And we're taking this IP, and we're now deploying it in a way that we are using to drive decarbonization. And in April, we raised £6,250,000, and that fundraise, we are using to translate this data and products into these new markets. And we have four core areas of focus in that decarbonization drive. The first is hydrogen. The second is geothermal. The third is strategic minerals, and the fourth is carbon capture. And with this funding and these focus sectors, we have a strong balance sheet, which, we are using, to drive our growth investment. We are building a very high caliber team. We've made some recent high profile additions to our board as well as our executive team, and we've announced those.

3:14 And with all of this, we are unlocking new sources of revenue. We're building really valuable new strategic partnerships. And I think from a shareholder's point of view, something that's very exciting as well is that we're developing our own net zero asset portfolio. And these assets, investments, they're repeatable and scalable, and they bring to the group and shareholders transformative asset value. So the way to think about this is that we are a trusted technology provider, but we are also a data led asset developer. And it's that combination of skills and opportunities which is opening for our shareholders transformative diversified growth potential. So just say a few words in a bit more detail about what we're doing across these these these these four areas of of focus.

4:03 So our strategy is all about driving diversified growth in these focus areas. And the first one here is really our foundation business, which is petroleum. And here, we're really focused on strengthening the core and extending those customer relationships that we have. Those customers, they wanna be targeting the highest value, lowest carbon impact assets. They are on their own decarbonization journey, and we're also helping them locate the conditions that are needed to deliver safe long term, c o two storage. The second area of work is in strategic minerals, and this is about expanding an existing footprint for GETECH. So in any year, about five to 10% of our revenues comes from the mining industry.

4:50 And in this investment, we are helping these companies locate and rank sites for new mineral deposits, But our focus is very much on the the the metals and minerals that are essential to delivering energy transition. And then the third and fourth areas of focus are all about positioning GETECH within emerging energy markets. So first of all, in geothermal, we can take our geoscience data, and we can take our existing tools, and we combine them with our location and commercial analytics skills. And we're using that to help people deliver heat and base load power. And then finally, in hydrogen, again, it's using our data led location analytics, and it's using it to help people optimize the utilization of excess renewable energy and to create green hydrogen hubs. And we're we're we're gonna be talking a lot about that this afternoon.

5:43 And across these areas and particularly in geothermal and hydrogen, we see a lot of opportunity here for asset investment, and that's something which I think, as I've said before, is is is very exciting for our shareholders. So moving on to to hydrogen. I think we all recognize that the hydrogen economy is developing very rapidly, and hydrogen is already a $120,000,000,000 a year global market. And most of that hydrogen, though, is produced from hydrocarbons, and it's used in industrial purposes. But if we look at the growth trajectory for hydrogen, just out to 2028, hydrogen market is forecast to grow at just under 6% a year. And that growth is mostly associated with transport decarbonization.

6:29 And this is an area of opportunity in in this energy transition that really is important to GETECH and where we think we can add a lot of value. And to quantify the scale of that market, just in The UK alone, the commercial fleet fuel market in 2019 was a 12,500,000,000 market, and that is a market that must fully decarbonize in fairly short order. And for commercial transport, hydrogen is a better solution than battery electric. And the vehicles to make this happen are also ready for deployment. So, really, the only thing that is stopping this is about green hydrogen production and distribution. That is where the bottleneck sit sits, and that is where, we have an opportunity to create value here, be disruptive, and and build out this this high value asset portfolio.

7:22 So the way we're doing that is by being data led asset developers. So we are using GETECH's geospatial analytics, and we're using that to identify the optimal supply hub locations. What this means is it means putting into a map based environment the land assets, the locations of the customers, the infrastructure that sits around them, and thinking dynamically about how the the commercial fleets move around. It's also about thinking about things like planning and logistics and and safety. And by integrating all of this information and visualizing it and pulling analytics on it, we are able to locate, rank, and build a portfolio of assets. And in doing that, we are defining workflows and building IP that is allowing us to rapidly identify target sites and also to quantify their value.

8:16 And in The UK, that is meaning that we have a unique national perspective on this emerging green hydrogen market. But it's also something which is very scalable into overseas markets, and we announced recently the establishment of a of a European entity where we will be doing that. And these are also technologies and expertise that we can deploy to other energy value chains as as we move forward. And part of what's attracted us to the commercial transport market, h two green and how we can create value with those geospatial skills, is that we think this is addressing a very practical need of customers, and that defines a clear path to profit.

9:02 So our our intention here is about, you know, about establishing a hub in every major population center in The UK. And in doing that, that path we're following, the first step on it is about securing the hydrogen hub locations. And there are two ways principally that we're doing that. One is through tender participation. There are people out there looking for hydrogen now, and we are in those tender processes. And these projects, would be delivering first gas from, say, 2023 onwards. We're also using our skills, though, to, identify and progress in house developments, and is an example of this. And the sort of time frame we're talking about here is is first gas from 2024, onwards. And as we identify those locations and and secure those assets for our development portfolio, at the same time, we're talking to anchor customers, and we're securing those anchor customers in large markets.

10:00 And these include council vehicles, bus fleets, port operations, and also rail. And we can extend our customer reach by building relationships with pipeline operators, with forecourt operators, and also by having role in in in things like ammonia importation as well. And Luke will talk about this more later. Of course, we're also sitting within a funding landscape in terms of the financing of these assets. We've been very clear that our intention is to put in place asset level finance. We'll be financing these projects at that asset level. And the type of capital providers that that we're engaging with are strategic partners. And when I talk about strategic partners, these could be people like our traditional customers, you know, energy companies, oil and gas companies who are decarbonizing and moving into this space.

10:53 It's also utilities. We have a relationship with SGN, but there are also other utilities who can fall into that strategic partner category. The second group is infrastructure investors. Infrastructure investors are very commonly investing now before the spade goes in the ground. And of course, another area of finance here is government. So when we review projects, we don't build our economics around subsidy, but it'd be very unusual for government not to be putting capital to work in this emerging energy value chain as well. And as we move through these projects, and you'll get a flavor of it today, this is laying out a very rich pipeline of news flow ahead. And that pipeline is gonna be a way of charting our progress on the projects and a way of charting our progress in terms of of the value creation, value we're bringing to shareholders. So what I'll now do is I'll hand over to Luke, and Luke will tell you more about this very exciting asset in Shoreham Court.

11:57 Thank you, Jonathan. And, yeah, I think this is an absolutely tremendous opportunity. I'm very pleased to be able to share this, you know, with our shareholders. A little bit of context to put some some positional information around it. So Shoreham is is just to the West of Brighton on the South Of England, and and it's one of several trust ports in The UK. So it's community owned and has a very community focused, a 260 year old port with quite a diverse history of operations there. The port itself operates a significant component of the of of port infrastructure. So off offers the logistics services for bringing ships into the port as well as holding and moving some of the cargo that comes through.

12:47 There's a gas fired power station onshore on board. It it used to be a coal fired power station, but it's it currently works as as what we call a peaker, providing peak power to the network during points of high electricity demand. And adjacent to that, there is a water treatment works there that's owned by Southern Water, and that water treatment works deals with the wastewater that comes from the local community before disposing of the treated fluids offshore. There's an oil terminal operated there by local fuels. They bring in petroleum products, distribute that around the Sussex area. The port also has quite a lot of aggregate businesses. These businesses that bring dredged material into the port for building and road purposes.

13:36 Very large timber operations. If you look at a satellite map, you'll see a lot of timber laid up in the in the port area. And and there's also quite a substantial operation in steel reforming businesses that bring in steel products, reshape them, and distribute them to the market. The port itself has over 800 vehicles moving through it each day, heavy goods vehicles, about 2,000 odd cars that come through that area. It's a very active and vibrant port in the in the in the local community. So what I'd like to share with you is is some of the news on on the agreement that we've just signed with the shore and port, and that is that our first hydrogen hub, we're able to announce that we've just secured a multiyear agreement as a developer for all green hydrogen production as well as green hydrogen storing and dispensing on the port sites there.

14:34 And that is targeting those those HGV operators that are bringing goods out of the port

14:40 as well as the off road vehicles, the the the fleets of heavy diesel forklift trucks of which the port itself operates thirty nine thirty nine of those diesel vehicles plus there's probably at least double that from the other tenants. We are bringing together as part of our strategic alignment, a lot of multi partner collaborations. So the agreement that we discussed is a legally binding commercial agreement with Shoreham Port, and so that is an agreement directly between X2 Green and Shoreham. And then beyond that, we have now brought Ricardo, a a very prominent engineering firm that's also based in port in Shoreham into a steering committee along with local fuels, the operator of the oil terminal here.

15:29 And we're working together in a very collaborative sense to try to optimize the value that we can derive from from this opportunity. And most importantly, we are getting offtake commitment through here. The port itself is committed to take off offtake of our hydrogen for all of the suitable and viable vehicles that they'll be operating inside the port. And just to put it in context, we have there is some information made available kindly by SendCost to give you an idea of the value of the opportunity. They issued an updated note there on the November 15 that gives you an idea of the value of the assets. So for a 20% interest in an asset of this scale, it's giving us an NPV of around, £12,000,000, and an EBITDA of, 3,000,000.

16:20 Sorry. 2,000,002 million. 2,000,000. Apologies.

16:25 But moving beyond that oops. I'm drawing on that now. Moving beyond that, the the other exciting development within Chorroon Port has been as as part of this hub development, it's not just hydrogen. We are moving into, you know, the addition of renewables into our project work here. So we have secured the exclusive rights for development of all new renewable assets on the port land, which includes 15,000 square meters of solar ready roof space for some of the new sheds that have been built by the port authority and are ready to go for being converted into solar producing assets as soon as there is an offtake available. And in addition to that, we are discussing the port in the local community, the development and expansion of the wind turbines onshore.

17:18 There are currently two turbines at the port that help operate the pumps that maintain the the port's water levels and potentially expanding those to provide additional renewable capacity on the on the port itself. And we'll be entering into some of that preplanning approvals early next year.

17:39 The exciting component for us, obviously, is that electricity makes up about 80% of the cost of a kilogram of hydrogen, green hydrogen produced through electrolysis. And that's a component that really hasn't been presented clearly to the market at this point in time. All of the models developed by some same cost have assumed that we'd be purchasing that power over the grid. And so this we're excited about the additional potential value this offers, the development of this asset, and could potentially continue extending that across suite of others. And finally, I think the, you know, the scale that we are bringing to the table here, is really highlighted by the discussion of what we can do by securing the exclusive rights for ammonia importation into the port.

18:31 For those unfamiliar with it, ammonia, n h three nitrogen and three hydrogens, is a low cost and well proven carrier for hydrogen, as opposed to compressing or liquefying the gas. There is a lot of movement in the world internationally to develop very large scale, what they're calling mega projects, particularly in equatorial type countries where they have a high solar capacity.

18:58 They will be producing a surplus of hydrogen, pure green hydrogen. And by converting that into ammonia, it can be easily transported across in what is essentially the same as an LPG tanker to bring that into countries like The UK to help us detach some of the cost of hydrogen from other factors like the local energy prices that we are seeing today.

19:26 The scale is tremendous. Each shipment capable of delivering over 500 tons of hydrogen once converted from the nitrogen no. Sorry. The ammonia setup. And to put it in some context, we're talking about what would be equivalent of a gigawatt worth of electrolysis for each shipment that is that is delivered. And that's in the order of about 3,000,000 worth of hydrogen that you'd be bringing into the port with each one of those

19:57 The other part that makes ports sure, I mean, particular, but others are are are are going to follow a similar pattern, particularly interesting to us, is their essential role in The UK around some of the critical infrastructure that we see in our communities. At Shoreham Port, there is the Southern Water water treatment works that are on the site there and have been operating since Victorian times. These these sites benefit from, one of the byproducts of green hydrogen production, and that is when we split water and take the hydrogen off, we're left with oxygen. And that oxygen could be safely vented, obviously, into the atmosphere for breathing. However, we can monetize it, and the oxygen can be used to help other things breathe more effectively.

20:44 And in the aerobic digestion of that, of that untreated wastewater, we can accelerate that and make the process much more efficient. It's a very pertinent topic at the moment as you're I'm sure you're probably aware. We are seeing a lot of challenges around The UK on being able to maintain that water treatment rates that are required. In addition, the port, much like most of The UK, is a customer for heat. There have been quite a lot of efforts in shore and port as part of their ecoport status to decarbonize their heat in the buildings adjacent. And that has been, at the moment, in the form of electric powered heat pumps, but we are now in discussions with numerous on-site customers for the option opportunity to capture the the waste heat for production and compression from our hydrogen facilities and provide that again as another value stream back to the project.

21:43 But I think the the thing that we need to pay attention to here is is what the shore import represents for us and The UK at a more broad level. Shoreham is an early an early mover. The Shoreham Port itself as an eco port and as a trust port have an interesting objective commercially. They are a commercial enterprise, but they've existed for 260. Their purpose is to exist for another two hundred and sixty years. So they are leaning forward and really getting after developing a economy for themselves that make them viable for, that future future decarbonized world. That provides for us a very aligned partner, for us to develop at the blueprints, for how we will deploy hydrogen hub and a green hydrogen green energy hub in general around The UK.

22:37 So this test bed for us, for the fleets of vehicles that operate with imports, both as road and off road vehicles and then future marine

22:45 applications as well, can be replicated around The UK, you know, plug and play concept. And from our perspective, particularly from a geospatial point of view, we can't help ourselves but look at it in that context. The UK, as an island nation, will be unlocked through the movements, of these HGVs that are coming largely in and out from ports. We see a lot of our goods in the country being brought into those port locations and moved out in a hub and spoke type behavior with most of those fleets back to base. That provides a very strategically interesting hub for the development of the first movement in in the hydrogen ecosystem. And from there, allows us to reach out to some of the largest populous areas in the country and and provide hydrogen in a very cost effective basis all around The UK.

23:39 And I'll just hand back to Jonathan to to wrap up. Great. Thanks very much, Luke. So this afternoon, hope we've given you a flavor of the Port Of Shoreham and what that potential could be. You know, we view this and our our our partners in the port view this as an an innovative plan. It's a plan which delivers scale, and it's a plan which this hub will be, you know, single sure about. It's not only an innovative leader within the context of, say, the South Of England and The UK, but it's something that, you know, across Europe, it's gonna be an important test bed for these kind of opportunities. I think that what really underpins all of this, though, is that it's a well thought through plan, and it's a deliverable plan.

24:30 And so we're now on a journey. We as a company and also you as shareholders as we move through this asset. But as Lucas just pointed out, the scalability of these opportunities as well. So in summary, I mean, we view the offering we have as a business is unique, it's scalable, it's offering diversified growth focus for for for our business. We have assets and capabilities, which we're deploying across the energy transition, and these are gonna bring value to you as shareholders. We are well financed. We have increasing revenue from our core business, and our focus is on building a multi asset portfolio portfolio with transformative potential.

25:18 And part of being on that journey together is that we are defining this rich pipeline of news flow. And so it's great to present this to you today, but we're already looking forward to coming back and presenting to you how this project evolves, but not just this project, how this whole portfolio of opportunities, evolves as well. So, that concludes our our presentation,

25:43 and we're now very, pleased to take some questions. That's great. Jonathan, Luke, thank you so much for updating investors this afternoon. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions using the Q and A tab situated on the right hand corner of your screen. But just while Luke and Jonathan take a few moments to review those investor questions submitted already, I'd like to remind you that recording of this presentation along with a copy of the slides and the published Q and A will be available via your Investor Meet company dashboard, and we'll notify you when that's ready for your review. I'd also like to remind you that your feedback is important to the company. And immediately after this presentation's ended, you'll be redirected for the opportunity to provide feedback in order the company can really better understand your thoughts, views and expectations.

26:22 Luke, Jonathan, I know I haven't given you a lot of time to review those live questions, but we did receive a number of questions ahead of today's event. And thank you firstly to those investors who have taken the time to submit questions. But I wonder perhaps if I could start off with the first question that received, which is what capital investment is expected from GETECH on each product?

26:43 Okay. Thanks very much. And, well, I think the first thing to say is that the path from here is about finalizing the development detail and scheduling each element of the hub that we've been describing today. And that is gonna build out into a series of final investment decisions. In our recent r n s, we indicated that we expect those to begin in the second half of of next year. And with these final investment decisions, we will be using more detail on CapEx. Now ahead of that, Luke referenced the same cost note. And within that, in terms of evaluation, they also give some detail about CapEx and and and timeline. So those details should be helpful as well. I think around CapEx, there is another point that's really important to make though, which is that the CapEx that we spend will be scaled with customer demand. And what I mean by that is we don't need to build the full capacity of the hub on day one. So the components for development are modular.

27:46 And so what you do is is you build the capacity to match and perhaps run a little ahead of the demand that you are seeing at any one point in time. This is a really important point because it gives us a lot of ability to optimize our capital spending profile, and we're spending money in line with the contractual commitments that we're putting in place as as well. And that makes it a a very attractive investment proposition for us as a business.

28:16 That's great. Thank you very much indeed. Turning to the next question we received. Is this the first agreement of many to come?

28:26 Well, I I think we have to we have to point to to some of our earlier discussions that we've released to the market about some of the agreements that we have in place already, which would give you a pretty strong indication that the answer to that is is yes. We we view Shoreham as as a blueprint that we expect to expand that across other locations, other ports. But we're also we have we have important strategic partnerships with infrastructure companies like SGN. We have a a host of assets that we've identified with SGN that were potential for hydrogen developments, and that was released, you know, in discussion to the market earlier this year. And, and we're also very, you know, engaged and and connected with the rail sector as as would be evident with the announcement of our, our relationship with with Evershalt.

29:18 And perhaps you could you could look at, Evershalt's recent announcements that they're bringing in some of the Alstom hydrogen trains into The UK. 10 of them will appear in the in the next coming years. And I think we're extremely well positioned to, to service that market as it develops. It's great. Thank you very much indeed. Couple of questions around the pipeline of hydrogen hubs. How big is your advanced pipeline of hydrogen hubs, and how many pubs are there in the pipe hubs are there in the pipeline? Well, we operate in a in a decision or or a decision orientated business. We we operate through a a funnel effect of of of opportunities. At the top of that hopper. We're feeding that with our geospatial techniques, and and that that encompasses at the outset. We we were looking at all across the The UK.

30:12 And now that we have started a a branch of GETECH in Europe, We're expanding our our reach across in into into Europe. But in terms of maturity, there are a host of different assets. We spoke earlier around having a with the h one report out, we we spoke about having five assets getting, you know, very mature in that pipeline. But, you know, the the total number of them depends at what point of the pipeline we're looking at. But the hopper is extremely full, and the opportunities are are very, very big. It's great. Thank you very much indeed. Turning on to the next question. When can we expect to hear more about your previously announced agreements with SGN and Evershell? The yes.

31:01 Well, obviously, there's, you know, there's there's a lot of, a lot of work in the background that goes into those agreements, and those discussions. We're working very hard on those, and, you know, we expect to be able to make those announcements in due course. Thank you very much indeed. We've got just a few final questions. Will your projects receive government funding stroke grants? Well, okay. I think this is this is a really relevant and important question. Jonathan addressed part of that, you know, in reference to the the opening of the slides. You know, in an emerging economy, there is quite a lot of government stimulus available. And you can certainly see, you know, that evident from what's been announced by The UK and by some of the developed governments in, around as well, including in, you know, across the world.

31:50 So we will certainly be making sure we take advantage of those opportunities. But from our perspective, we look at each of these as an investable isolated project that by itself, are commercially viable. And the way I would view those government grants is, is really what they're intended to do, which is to be a stimulus that allows us to accelerate, and really capture a larger part of that market in a in a quicker basis. But in terms of capital ground to support operations or developments, then I think that's it's probably inevitable for all hydrogen projects that are out there. And there are market mechanisms that that connect with our consumption of of fossil fuels that help support the development of new renewable fuels. And that will be there'll be value that gets passed on as a form of lower cost lower cost of hydrogen, which again accelerates its adoption.

32:44 That's great. And I think what I might do is just merge these two questions. Why green hydrogen, not blue? Why ammonia rather than more on-site green hydrogen? Right. These are both good questions. You know, the green and blue debate, let's just let's address that at the outset. Green green hydrogen is produced by the same process or the reverse of the process that we are aiming to service, which is the fuel cell market. Fuel cells requiring a purity of hydrogen that's called five nines, meaning 99.999% purity, which is extremely high from a chemical level. So to take blue hydrogen and convert that or purify that down to the level of fuel grade hydrogen is very difficult and very expensive to do so. By the time you've done that, you are basically at the cost of green hydrogen.

33:38 So for fuel cell applications, for the use of of transport, we are seeing by and far that green hydrogen is the most effective way of achieving that. So that's why we target that that transport sector. I would though see Blue Hydrogen playing an important role in decarbonizing the heat the heat market, which doesn't require the same level of purity. And so we don't see these as competitors necessarily, but different twins within, you know, within with an important journey to to lower our carbon intensity. With regards to ammonia, you know, this is something that I think we we can look to today's energy markets. We can look to the fact that in The UK right now, a large number of the people on this call will have recently had a new energy provider.

34:27 And that's because power prices in The UK have skyrocketed due to a, a period, where we haven't been able to produce, enough wind power, and we haven't been able to back that with, with with gas generation. That's driven us into a position where we have really the last course of of or last recourse open to us is by trying to import more gas through the the pipelines to the East. And and that that dependency is then linked into electricity prices, which has driven electricity prices through the roof. So both gas and electricity have gone up. And that's because we don't have a lot of room to move in The UK energy markets to to offer much diversity in our energy sources. We are beholden at the moment to to a relatively few amounts of of levers that the the grid can pull.

35:20 Ammonia provides an ability for us to access the global market, and that's something that's never been available for electricity in the past. You can't you can't connect our our electrical infrastructure to, you know, production of electricity from solar in Australia. But we can now with the importation of green ammonia. And what that does is create additional commercial pressure to lower costs and make The UK drive towards the most cost competitive, clean market that is possible. And for us, we see that as an enormous growth potential, and one that we're very well positioned to, to take a big role in. That's great. Thank you very much indeed. Well, look, that takes care of the pre submitted questions. Perhaps I could just draw your attention to the q and a that's coming during the live event. And if I may hand back to you to read out the questions and give a response where it's appropriate to do so. A number of the questions, I think, have got multiple questions within them. So perhaps good luck on dealing with which ones you wanna take from within which question. But if I may, I'll hand back to you now.

36:27 Okay. Thanks very much. I think just turning to the questions, there are a number where we've touched on some of the points about partnerships or about financings and and things like that. One question I can see here, which is about how much crossover is there across the different pillars of GETECH's business in terms of end clients? And at the start, you know, I talked about this portfolio approach where we're working in in in hydrogen and geothermal strategic minerals and carbon capture. And, you know, very often when we're working in these areas, we can be working with existing customers, but just in a new context. So many of our energy our sort of traditional foundation energy customers are growing in hydrogen. Many of them are exploring geothermal.

37:14 Many of our foundation customers in mining are also looking at not just finding strategic metals, but thinking about how to decarbonize their mining operations and their their needs for heat as as as well as fuel. And I think that we're very excited about the individual opportunities in each vertical, but in a way, I'm even more excited about the crossover opportunities that are here. And so many of our mining customers, for instance, are almost by definition off grid. And so they need to decarbonize their activities. And so the opportunity here to, say, co locate hydrogen or geothermal with a mine that is producing metals that are essential to the the energy transition is a tremendous multiplier.

38:07 And so, you know, we're building a wide range of alliances and strategic partnerships, And many of these cross the different verticals that we're talking about, and also quite a few of the sort of revenue generative customers across those verticals as well. So I think there's a great strength in the portfolio approach, but there's also a great strength in having that core foundation business, which we've built over so many years and where we're leveraging those relationships and leveraging the products we've built into these new exciting, decarbonized, markets as well. Yeah. Absolutely. It's I mean, just to follow on with Jonathan's question because I can't help but do so. That's what attracted us at HD Green to become part of the GETECH family. You know, we've been employing that that geospatial approach in in identifying our opportunities, and it's the same type approach that is needed for for all of this.

39:03 So it's you know, it is it is an asset opportunity that, you know, that we can we can cookie cutter and and deliver across, you know, on all of it. So the crossover is is is extremely, is extremely useful. I just wanted to cherry pick if it's okay. A question here that I can see because I think this is a really good one. And sorry, David. I'm just gonna jump into, one of the parts of your question, and it is that, you're challenging whether we have a a DVD versus Betamax. I hope that should have been VHS versus Betamax situation between hydrogen and electric vehicles and how we see that developing. And this this, I think, is an important point that is surprising when you're in my position when we're talking about hydrogen on a daily basis for transport is that it's not as obvious to everyone that hydrogen is for electric vehicles in almost all applications.

39:59 Now, obviously, hydrogen is a combustion gas combustible gas, and it can be used in combustion engines. And there are conversions going on today, particularly of diesel engines to take hydrogen, to help them, lower their carbon footprint. But the primary driver is to use the hydrogen in a fuel cell to generate electricity, which actually powers a lithium battery that then is used to drive the electric motor that turns the wheels. So both the battery electric and the fuel cell electric vehicle are both doing the same thing. They're turning the wheels using electric motor. So we don't see these as competitors. What they are, probably the better way of thinking of hydrogen is as a range extender. You will use battery electric lithium based solutions that are heavy, where you have relatively low utilization vehicles, vehicles where you can afford to stop and wait and charge.

40:54 So your household vehicle, for example, sitting in the driveway or on the street today, perfectly suited towards battery electric application. But if you have a high utilization commercial vehicle where you make money by turning those wheels and and delivering goods or people, you can't afford to wait for that to, to be, recharged. And you also can't afford, particularly in the freight business, to have important weight allocated to the the energy storage device where lithium batteries are extremely heavy. So the hydrogen offers a lightweight, reliable way of providing an energy source to that battery system and extend that that vehicle. The other little advantage that perhaps is going to become more evident, we're certainly seeing more of this, is battery electric, if you took the world as a whole, basically works better in a hot country than hydrogen does, and hydrogen works better in a cold country than batteries do. In a cold country, your battery uses about loses about 30% of its energy on a cold day.

41:59 And that's that's problematic. That drops your range tremendously. In a hot climate, hydrogen becomes essentially harder to compress, so it's it's a bit more of a challenge. But The UK will be more suited towards hydrogen, particularly in those areas where there's more topography, where you need to have, you know, a significant amount of energy to get up and down the mountain ranges and also where it's particularly cold. So I think in our view, it's not gonna be an h a VHS versus Betamax. I think what we're seeing here two essential solutions to providing electric vehicles on the road. And then may maybe we'll just conclude one last question, which sort of pulls us back to shore and port.

42:46 And Luke, I think this is probably one for you. So Thomas is asking, do the SUVs leaving the port operate locally, or do they travel long distances from the port? And then it goes some to say, I'm wondering to what degree are you reliant upon a wider hydrogen supply network to support the switch to hydrogen fuel trucks at the port? And I think this is a great question Yeah. Because it talks about our fundamental business model. And Luke touched on this, which is that Shoreham is super exciting, but our strategy is not to own one hub. It's to build a portfolio of assets and to scale the value of that for shareholders. So, Luke, maybe if you answer that, and that would be a good concluding point. Yeah. Absolutely. Thanks, Jonathan. And and, Thomas, that is a great question.

43:33 So I think one you you may have seen there's been some recent reports talking about which countries are the most likely to adopt hydrogen early. The UK, Netherlands, and Germany have been put forward as as as three of those countries. And, obviously, we're starting in The UK. The the ports and The UK in particular have a a really high intensity to having vehicles that are moving back to base. So for example, we are a geospatial company. So understanding the the movement logistics and and the the telemetrics of the of the vehicles is front and center to the way that we approach trying to understand the value of each of these opportunities.

44:18 So as a couple of facts and figures for you, about 64% of all HGVs in The UK are back to base HGVs. So these are vehicles that don't travel more than 60 miles from their base location, and they always return to to their home location. Why is that? Well, The UK is a relatively small landmass with a lot of ports. So most goods move into The UK, into that port or or the port close to where the population center is, and the HDBs relocate those goods from the port to the customer. So the Shoreham Port is no different to this. We have we have, vehicle movement data inside the port that shows 834 vehicles moving in and out on average, just to be slightly precise, in there, and they're mostly coming back to base.

45:13 And that's that's an enormous captive audience, which is particularly attractive. And there happens to be no HDB refueling options nearby, which is a particular advantage for that location as well. But to Jonathan's point, this is a, a blueprint that can be simply replicated. It's good to find locations where back to base is dominant, because that means you can start a project, you can get, a fleet decarbonized, and they don't need, an end to end solution at the other end of the, of the journey to provide hydrogen. But we wanna build that anyway, and that's the truth of it. And we have the capability. We have the team, and we have the investment appetite to deploy that hub, across The UK.

46:01 And and, it's only a matter of time, but we see this as an opportunity to secure a huge part of that landscape going forward, which is why we're so excited about Shoreham as as an example of a of a hub and and what that means if we replicate that all the way across The UK and beyond. That's great. Thank you very much indeed, and thank you once again to the investors for submitting questions today. And of course, if any further come in, we'll make those available to you post today's meeting. I know investor feedback is important to you guys, and I'll shortly redirect investors to give you their thoughts, expectations and their views. But perhaps before doing so, I could hand back to you, Jonathan, just for a few closing comments just to wrap up with. Yeah. Thanks. You know, it's a pleasure to be talking to our investors, new potential, etcetera.

46:53 You know, very much view this, as I said, as a as a journey. We've talked today about hydrogen. We will keep you updated about our progress in hydrogen, and it's really exciting path. I think this is also a great template, this meeting, for further meetings about other aspects of our business and how these things integrate together into the GETECH, you know, group strategy and that that growth path. But certainly, from today's point of view, I hope you've learned some more about our projects. You've seen more of us talking about it, and we look forward to talking to you all again in the very near future. That's great, Luke. Jonathan, thank you once again for updating investors this afternoon. Can I please ask investors not to close this session as we'll now automatically redirect you for the opportunity to provide your feedback in order the company can better understand your views, expectations?

47:44 It's only take a few moments to complete, but I'm sure we'll be welcomed and greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team at GETECH GROUP PLC, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation. That now concludes today's session, so good afternoon to you all.