Ilika (LSE:IKA) — Full Year Results

0:00 Good afternoon, and welcome to the ILIKA PLC Investor Presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged and could be submitted at any time via the Q and A tab situated on the right hand corner of your screen. Simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting itself. However, the company can review all questions submitted today and publish responses where it's appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll, and I'd now like to hand you over to Graham Purdy, CEO. Good afternoon, sir. Thank you, Lily, and, welcome to everybody who's chosen to attend this IMC session. This is IKA's annual results for the year that finished at the end of April twenty six.

0:48 And I'm joined here by our CFO, Jason, who despite appearances is actually sitting next to me. He's looking at the screen on his own laptop. So we are both at the same table. Afternoon, everyone. So we will now go into the slides, and we will trot through. And if you have any questions, as Lily said, please submit them into the q and a chat, and we will do our best to answer those for you. So those of you who've been following the company for some time now will know that we've got two product lines. They're both solid state batteries.

1:36 On the one hand, we've got our large format Goliath batteries, which have been designed for EVs and consumer appliances. And on the other hand, we've got our Steriax miniature solid state batteries, which have been designed for active implantable miniature devices. And they are principally for medical applications as well as for Internet of Things or, you know, wireless sensors. So let's have a trough through some of the activities, some of the milestones that we've delivered over the past year. I'll start with Goliath that's shown at the top there. We've secured significant grant funding from the battery innovation program and also the advanced propulsion center here in The UK.

2:31 So we've effectively doubled up on the deployment of shareholder equity for our r and d program by accessing this grant funding. We have been working on prototype development with Jaguar Land Rover and also AgriTAS. We have a technology collaboration agreement with them. We've completed the automation of our megawatt hour pilot line that we use for making these cells and sharing them with customers. We've also sent out batches of these cells to OEMs and tier one companies for them to evaluate and give us feedback.

3:20 And we've had some early feedback actually from a defense agency that advises the Ministry of Defense here in The UK on the safety and suitability of batteries and and that was a very positive validation. And also, we've announced that we're collaborating with that well known folding bike brand, Bronton, for their ebike range and that program has has just started. On Stereax, we have commenced production of our m 300 batteries. We've initiated delivery of those batteries to customers and we've also switched from being an r and d company to a revenue generating company because we've now started recognizing revenue from the sales of electrodes for those batteries.

4:18 We sell those electrodes to Certik. And you'll see actually in our accounts that we've recognized modest amount of a £100,000 in the last financial year. And of course, this is expected to grow in the year that we are now progressing. So just a quick review of our business model for those of you that are not familiar with it. So we have an asset light business model, which means that we license our technology. We've already licensed our Sterex technology through to Certec Medical. And in return for that, we receive a profit share and royalties. That's what shown in green at the bottom of this graphic, as well as revenue from the electrode sales, which we were just talking about.

5:08 And then in blue, for Goliath, we received grant support for the development of this technology. And then in due course, we will be licensing it and also receiving engineering fees. In fact, some of those fees have already started because we sell prototype products, the the 10 power prototypes that we released just before Christmas and also the technology collaboration agreement that we've got. These are fee paying arrangements and then that flips into a royalty bearing license. So we've been successful in securing a top up round of funding just last month. And actually, that's enabled some of the strategic imperatives over the next twelve to eighteen months. First of all, for Sterex, you know, we're continuing to support Sirteq's marketing efforts.

6:09 They are, of course, very active, particularly in The US selling to their customers and we can piggyback off their marketing efforts to actually make sure that the word on Sterex is getting out and of course there's some technical sales support that's required as part of that commercialization. The next thing that you'll see actually is an integration of our batteries into the Certik demonstrator, the Certik technology platform. That's one of the real advantages actually of of working with them is that they not only sell components, but they sell a technology platform that's then integrated into the products that their end customers sell.

6:54 And actually selling those cells as part of solution, as part of their offering will trigger the initial royalty payments because those payments are due on product sales to buy Surtech rather than buy the final commercialization of the product by the end customer. In terms of Goliath, we've got an opportunity to hit some early commercialization which we're very excited about. Because what's happened is that when we sent out those ten amp hour prototypes to a range of evaluation partners, some of them were non automotive. Remember that those prototypes were really sent out not because they were the final product, but because they were an important milestone on our EV roadmap.

7:46 But some of those organizations actually viewed a 10 amp cell as being adequate for their applications, in particular in the defense sector and for e bikes too. Actually, the Brompton's another example of where this 10 amp hour cell format is directly relevant to their product line. And so based on the feedback that we've got from those evaluations, we have decided that we're going to take that prototype and turn it into a product. And of course, you need a larger amount of testing and validation certification in order to do that, and and that's part of this MVP delivery. And hand in hand with that, we've got a series of commercialization agreements that we're talking about with non automotive organizations.

8:41 So we expect to be able to put letters of intent and, of course, full commercial agreements in place on the back of those discussions. And that will enable us to generate some early revenue, close that gap to profitability, and give added commercial momentum to the company. But we haven't totally forgotten the EV commercialization opportunity. We still got a series of 10 amp validations of those cells that are in progress. It does take a while to complete those tests because cycle life is part of that validation and actually understanding how resilient, those batteries are is, is part of a full spectrum of testing of those cells.

9:29 We are likely to secure some additional grant support for pack integration and other scale up activities. And then that will lead into the first option to license. So, you know, before we get to a full license, it's likely to be an option phase where a partner takes the technology, validates it, goes through the b, c, d sample routes that people talk about for automotive before integrating it into a vehicle design. Right. So that's the overview. Let's talk a bit about Sterex in some more detail. There you see the Sterex m 300 product beside some pharmaceuticals in the central picture. And on the right hand side, that's actually part of the Surtech clean room where we've got some of our equipment installed as part of the microfabrication that Surtech carry out there.

10:34 So that partnership is really designed for growth. There are five end users that we'll talk about in a couple of slides time. A nice portfolio of of 16 customers that we're dealing with and we've actually got more orders than we've got customers because some of those customers are big organizations and they have issued us with multiple orders. So that's why we've got 19 as opposed to 16. We've commenced m 300 deliveries to those customers and we started generating those commercial revenues. The the actual electrodes are made on wafers and that's why we say it's wafer processing income and that's what we've started to recognize. And that really will lead into the the profit share and then ultimately revenue share once commercialization volumes have been achieved.

11:30 So we believe that this relationship continues to give us industry validation. And one of the questions we we often got from end customers, well, you know, this is great technology guys, but, you know, we're a multi billion dollar company and we expect to sell millions of this product. Can you really scale up? And of course, with Certik, we've got a a convincing scale up partner. They've got significant multi million revenues in The US and have been a trusted commercialization partner for many of these OEMs for many years. So there's a lot of credibility associated with that partnership. And also, you know, they've got a a business development scale. So they've got a a commercial team that has access to the customers that we're dealing with now and, of course, a portfolio of others too.

12:26 And a strategic alignment and that they're also very keen on commercializing products for active implantable medical devices. And this will, we believe, enable faster adoption of steroids than if we were trying to do it on our own. So for the end customer, this has got many benefits, reduced surgery time, which actually is the biggest cost driver, in getting a medical device. You can implant these tiny little devices close to the point of therapy so you don't have to manage leads that run through the body. They have a long life. You can charge the batteries at home inductively and they are powerful enough to be able to power a Bluetooth radio.

13:17 And there you see on the bottom right an example of the m 300 integrated into an orthopedic application. So this is a knee replacement. In this example, the implant would measure movement in terms of amplitude and frequency of use and send that data out of the joint through to a physiotherapist, which would then coach the patient, for the optimum recovery after, the surgical intervention. So effectively securing better outcomes for the patients. So there you see a summary of some of the milestones that we've achieved in 2025 and stuff to look forward to in the future. We've talked about integration in the Certech customer platform and also commencement of royalty payments.

14:21 And these are the key applications really for Steriacs. There are many potential applications, but these are the ones that we believe are the closest fit with what that technology can offer. So orthopedic implants like we've just seen, that's actually the biggest market. Lots of knee, hip, and shoulder replacements that would benefit from this technology. Neuro stimulation, so this is a way you put a very small electrical current into the peripheral nervous system. So that's the nervous system outside of the spinal column and the brain. And this can help with pain relief. This is one of the the principal applications where you can help with chronic back pain, for instance.

15:12 Implanted sensors to measure blood pressure and, also oxygen concentration in blood for patients with COPD. Ophthalmic applications, where you can measure, the chemical composition of tears and help manage different conditions like, diabetes. And, finally, orthodontic applications where, again, it can be a compliance thing to make sure that people are wearing aligners, but also monitoring of biomarkers in saliva. And this is how we build up the financial projections for each of these applications.

16:03 The that hashed areas are the the prototype volumes, and then we get through to mass manufactured product volumes. So when we build up our financial forecast to assure ourselves of an attractive return on investment, we do that from the bottom up. So rather than just saying that we're gonna capture a percent of the market, we work out what's the volume of production that each of our customers are likely to be able to deliver. And this is just one of eight prospects actually for orthodontics. Orthodontics is the most represented application in our customer base. And it is also actually the application where we'll probably get a product to market first because it's relatively easy to get FDA approval for this application.

16:57 This is class two medical device, and there are some drop in replacements that are particularly a good fit with this particular technology offering. So you you get this for biomarkers, but also things like monitoring sports activities, in particular, where you might get concussion risk in contact sports like rugby, American football, or soccer. Not only for professional athletes, I mean, those of you that follow the Six Nations rugby competition will have seen that you get collision monitoring, in that event right now, but also more broadly, in amateur sports and and for school kids where you may want to to monitor that more closely. And clearly, the the smaller the battery, the more comfortable it is for people to wear these particular aligners.

18:04 Right. Let's talk about Goliath. There you see a picture of our 10 amp hour prototype held by one of our engineers in the middle. And then on the right hand side, you see actually some of our coating equipment. If you look closely, you can see a web or and that's what the industry calls these foils that you put the electrode onto. That's in fact a web with some some anode coated on it. So why are people interested in solid state batteries? Why bother with them? Well, people are actually interested in better batteries, and we did some modeling together with balanced batteries, which is a well known consultancy to the automotive industry.

18:56 And they worked out by taking a Goliath battery and putting it into a Hyundai IONIQ five that they could get a weight saving of 20%. And, of course, if you do that, that correlates to a range improvement of 20% if you actually keep the the weight of the battery the same, or you can have a more compact battery. There's also a cost saving. We know that EVs are more expensive relative to their traditional counterparts. So anything you can do to reduce the cost has got a significant benefit in terms of encouraging customer uptake. And also, you can charge batteries more rapidly that are Goliath solid state batteries. Here, we've taken about a third of the charge time reducing it from eighteen minutes down to twelve minutes. So some very compelling reasons to adopt solid state batteries.

19:58 And this is what the the path to commercialization looks like when we look at some of these milestones with the green boxes around it. We are expecting some more prototype validation back from the the companies who have received those 10 amp hour cells. Of course, we've built on some of that positive feedback by entering into discussions regarding letters of intent for non automotive applications. And that will, of course, turn into commercial relationships in short order. Further grant support to support the automotive road map that we've got. And and then early revenue actually from those 10 ampere m v p sales. So that's really important really, I think, to demonstrate the commercial traction of this technology. And then, of course, at the end of this, the first option to license with an OEM or a tier one counterparty.

21:05 So what does the deal structure look like? Well, look, we've we've already ticked off the foothills of this particular commercialization model where we've already sold prototypes to companies who are interested in evaluating the batteries. The reason that we don't give these batteries away is that we want to make sure that the people who are taking them for testing have some skin in the game. So by charging small amount towards the cost of making them, we make sure that people value the prototypes when they receive them. Sometimes that results in an engineering collaboration. We have such a collaboration in place with AgriTAS, which is the sister company to JLR, of course, both owned by Tata Sons.

21:54 And AgroTAS is, of course, is the company that's building the The UK's largest or will be The UK's largest gigafactory in Bridgewater in Somerset, not too far away from where IKA is based. And we expect that relationships like that will then lead to an option to license through the scale up process. And then when that goes well, an upfront license payment and ultimately royalties on the revenue from the sale of those cells. So I probably don't need to convince you as an audience that EVs are here to stay. But, of if you read the media, sometimes you might doubt that. Here's a bit of data from the International Energy Agency.

22:45 And, actually, this is global electric vehicle sales. That's historical data up to last year and for this year, it is a forecast. Of course, we're halfway through this year already, so plenty of evidence. You see that China remains the country that has adopted the largest number of electric vehicles and continues to buy new EVs. But Europe has also shown significant growth. Actually, in Europe, in 2025, we got 27% growth of EV sales. The US has shown a drop actually in the number of new EV sales. That's a bit of an outlier globally largely due to the removal of incentives that are still in place in many other jurisdictions around the world. Although, of course, in China, they've been removed and there's still strong growth there.

23:49 The UK is very much in line with the rest of Europe with the larger economies here in Europe and is also showing strong growth. And in fact, if you look at this chart on the right, this is from the OBR, so the Office of Budget Responsibility here in The UK. And at the end of twenty twenty five, they were still expecting that by 2035, that the total car stock on the road, so not just new purchases, but all of the cars, all of the vehicles that are on the road, the majority of them would be electric. In the first half of twenty twenty six, we've actually seen a bit of an acceleration of new vehicle registrations as EVs as a result of higher oil prices. So so petrol and diesel prices at the pump through the the the war in Iran.

24:49 That's impacted fuel prices here, but let let's see if that's sustained through the rest of the year. Most analysts think that actually that demand will continue to grow very strongly this year. So part of the feedback, part of the validation that we got as as our 10 amp hour batteries were tested was a piece of testing that we haven't done before. And this probably wouldn't surprise you, but it was actually a a Ministry of Defense advisory agency that took our cells and shot them to bits on a firing range. And, of course, that's not part of the standard test that you would put an automotive battery through, so we hadn't done that before. And we actually saw that there was a series of results that were very positive. Batteries, as you know, are used increasingly on the battlefield because of the large amount of of electronics that soldiers carry for communication and location, determination, and intelligence gathering.

26:05 And you can see actually in that picture a battery pack that soldiers got there, a conformal battery pack really that the soldiers wearing on the vest. And these have become a bit of a target because normal lithium ion batteries, when they're hits, tend to go up with a small explosion so they can cause more injury than even being shot by a bullet. So having ones that are safer and improved in their resistance to being penetrated is a real advantage. So this is the type of early commercialization opportunity that we're looking at. And also, there's a sovereignty angle here where a lot of, you know, defense spending is being accelerated, particularly here in Europe.

26:53 And countries are wanting to use it to stimulate their own economies and not be reliant on long supply chains from other jurisdictions. And I also wanted to mention the e bike opportunity with Brompton. So this is a piece of grant funding that we've just recently received from the battery innovation program. And this is really supporting integration of those 10 amp hour cells onto Brompton e bikes, Brompton being the biggest bike manufacturer in The UK, the biggest e bike manufacturer as well, and the biggest exporter of e bikes from The UK. And there is some real advantages to using Goliath batteries, increased energy density, and and enhanced safety.

27:43 So we're very excited about this application. And, yeah, there's obviously a lot of demand really for improved e bike safety. You do read about incidents where people have got e bikes on charge, at home, and, perhaps it's a poor quality battery, that ends up, causing a fire. So there's a lot of scrutiny of e bikes. And also, of course, you're not allowed to currently put them on aircraft. So if you can come up with a safer battery that gives the regulator, more comfort that, it wouldn't trigger an incident, then there are commercial advantages to that.

28:34 So these are our annual results. At this point, I'm going to let Jason talk you through the financials. Thanks, Graham. So just picking up the highlights from the financial reports that we've published out this morning. Revenue was flat year on year against numbers published last year at £1,100,000. Although it's important to note from within that, as Graham has already touched on, we've got, a 100,000 of the first revenue starting to come through from Sterex. And if those eagle eyed of you that have been watching the RNS announcements that have come out would have noticed that that came at the end of February, beginning of March. So, really, in the year to the end of April, we only just managed to get a couple of months of that in at the end of this financial period. So we would expect that to build through this financial financial year, as we go forward. That's really the start of revenue coming, and it's a great inflection point for the company. So, really, we're starting to get revenue from the wafers.

29:37 Now, as Graham has said, we'll look to see the actual batteries being delivered into that, development activity at the customer end. Grant income continued on, so 1,000,000, from grant income, and we would expect to see that continue into future years. As Grant already said, we've got the Brompton activity, there are other applications we have in process. Grants are not just a great way for us to get nondilutive funding, but they're also a fantastic opportunity for us to work with people in the commercial sector. So, as a battery developer, you want to have access to people who are either further up the supply chain and closer to the end use product or the end use product themselves. So prompt Brompton is a prime example of doing that. And the previous, grant funded projects, primes being the main one that we had in this financial year, was a great opportunity to work within the automotive industry with, both partners and oversight from people in that industry.

30:32 The EBITDA loss was £6,200,000 versus 5.2, and that's excluding the share based payments. The reason for that increase was really a ramp up of materials. So as we move from two amp power batteries that we were making a year ago up to 10 amp power batteries on the Goliath side, really, we're consuming, a significant increase in material as we're feeding into the large batteries and producing more batteries that are then going into the test and evaluation program both for us and for those customer partners that we've provided those batteries to. So that really takes an increase in material coming through to be able to do that. And also for anyone who's eagle eyed and looked through the, accounts, you will have seen that, up until this year, we have been capitalizing some of the development costs of the STEREx activity. So that's the final stages of development as we move from an a sample through to a b sample.

31:27 We were capitalizing that to create an intangible asset. Once we started generating that revenue, we brought that asset into its useful life. So that means that we no longer capitalize cost to that. So any of those costs from February onwards that we were experiencing anyway, so no difference in cash, now falls onto the p and l or the income statement. So, no impact from a cash flow perspective, but you would see that on the income statement rather than the, balance sheet, and therefore, that makes that EBITDA loss a little bit larger. That reflects down into that loss per share of 4.02p versus 3.5 for the previous year. And the year end cash balance was 5,300,000 at the end of the year versus eight year before. But that doesn't reflect the fact that we've had, the recent cash raise, done in July, which was very well supported by both institutions and retail supporters. So we are very thankful, and I'd like to take this opportunity again to thank those people who had the opportunity and chose to participate and continue to support us. So thank you very much.

32:32 Thanks, Jason. So the final slide to wrap up with before we go and take a look at some of the questions that might have come in. So we have a really strong patented portfolio across multiple jurisdictions. In fact, we've got 88 granted patents now. We are diversified across multiple markets that we've been talking about during this presentation with some near term opportunities for commercialization. So I believe that the company now has a reduced execution risk. We have got in house fabrication facilities which allow us really to supply batteries through to our partners and validate any scale up plans that we have in place. We've already got a licensing and royalty agreement in place with the Certech, which is set to deliver the economy of scale that we are chasing, and it provides us with the ability to rapidly ramp production of the batteries.

33:36 And the Goliath prototypes have already been shipped to a series of OEMs and tier ones, very positive feedback on that in commercially sponsored evaluation trials. Thank you very much. We'll just hand back to Lily for moment. That's great. Thank you very much for your presentation this afternoon. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions just those in the q and a tab situated on the right hand corner of your screen. Just while the company take a few moments to review those questions submitted today, I'd like to remind you the recording of this presentation along with a copy of the slides and the published q and a can be accessed via investor dashboard. As you can see, we have received a number of questions throughout today's presentation. Can I please ask you to read out the questions and give response to where appropriate to do so? And I'll pick up from you at the end.

34:27 Very good. Thank you, Lily. So, yeah, we've received actually quite a few questions in advance of this session, which we have answered, and they'll be published shortly once we've wrapped up this presentation. But we've seen some more come in, actually, as we've been speaking. So we will do our best to review and answer these, and let's see what we've got. So the first one is what is the status of the AgroTest development? So the status of that is that we have a technology collaboration agreement.

35:13 And within that, we have a series of workshops and products deliveries. We have already delivered a number of prototypes as part of that relationship, and actually, we expect to deliver some further ones. And that's a close interaction, and we value the opportunity to work together with the AgroTAS team and exchange views on the competitiveness of our batteries as well as their needs in order to ensure that they have a a battery production that is going to be compelling for their end customers. Got another question here. Can you inform us as the reason why the 50 watt hour cell is sidelined for the moment?

36:08 Actually, it's a a 50 amp hour cell. It hasn't been sidelined, but what we have decided to do is optimize the performance at the 10 amp power prototype level. And actually, because we have limited resources, focus some of those resources on commercialization of that 10 amp hour cell rather than have a full allocation of resource on further r and d. We realized that we want to make a a strong and convincing return on investment. And when we've run the numbers, actually, we've convinced ourselves that it's better to deploy resources to commercialize what we have in hand rather than continue to develop a a larger product.

37:03 Next one. Maybe if I take it to your your voice rest for a moment. So Thank you. Have you had any input in on any aspects of the design of the new factory factory in Bridgewater. Understandably, no. We have had no impact or advice given to that. Really, that plays back to where we are looking to focus to our own strengths. So we recognize that our skills are in that r and d sector, not in that mass manufacturing. And you can see that in our relationship with Certik. You know, we chose a partner that was, best placed to manufacture at scale, for our SteraX partnership. So giving advice into Agratus in how they should set up a factory is not really appropriate. However, what I would say is our choice of chemistry and cells has been designed around making it as applicable as possible to the standard, gigafactories that are out there and also the model that Aggratis are using so that the cost of change or the cost of implementation of the ILIKA Goliath cells is much lower than maybe some of the other sulfides or, lithium metal, chemistries that are out there that might need changes away from the current manufacturing sites. And we've been able to prove that out and demonstrate that with some of the work that we've been able to do with the UK battery industrialization center, the UK BIC, where they have taken our designs and run it on their larger gigascale type equipment to be able to prove that out. So,

38:35 no direct input there, but also we've worked very closely in those conversations, as Graham said, with the Gratus on that collaboration to make sure that our technology is applicable to what they're doing within that factory. What's the annual battery capacity of your pilot line, and how is it affected by battery applications for automotive, defense, or consumer? So annual capacity broad brush is one and a half megawatt hours per year. And that means that when you take into account yields that ultimately we will be able to produce up to 20,010 amp hour batteries a year.

39:23 So it is an interesting question because what we built as a pilot line for automotive is actually the right size to be a commercial manufacturing line for some of these other smaller applications. So low volume, high margin manufacturing is something that we are evaluating in order to deploy that pilot line. Maybe we should call it a a mega factory line instead of a gigafactory line more usefully in order to enhance our return on investment. Next question here is can you give us better clarity on what the future holds in terms of projected sales figures within specific quarters?

40:14 Unfortunately, we are tightly regulated as an AIM market market listed company in what we can and can't say, so we are not in a position to be able to give that. What I would do is point you towards our own website and the analyst section there, which is available for anyone to access. You have to just click a couple of confirmations as you go into that, and that will give you a better understanding of where the analysts who've looked in-depth at what we're doing, have put in terms of this next financial year. And I think the Cavendish analyst goes a little bit further out than that, and they give their own rationale for for those calculations. So while we can't provide it here, I'd point you in that direction, and hopefully, will help answer your question. Very good.

41:01 Could defense become an earlier commercial opportunity than automotive? I think that's a really good question. We are seeing the defense sector radically reinvent itself. I think, you know, historically, timelines for new technology adoption in the defense sector were quite long, but we have learned a lot from the war in Ukraine. I think a lot of defense authorities in Europe are looking to re equip themselves with relevant technology as quickly as possible. And actually, from being one of the slowest moving sectors, it appears to be rapidly becoming one of the fastest moving sectors with hybrid approaches to defense.

41:51 For instance, you know, in in the navy, not just large ships that take many years to build, large aircraft carriers and frigates, but actually a lot of marine autonomous uncrewed vehicles and some very sophisticated technology, state of the art technology that's being deployed. So I I actually think that there's a very exciting opportunity for us in that sector. Next question we've got here. How does Trump's tariffs impact ILIKA? Actually, we are relatively well placed to avoid any impact, and that goes back to that licensing model. So one of the main reasons for choosing, Certik as our partner for the SteraX factory is, obviously, they are in America, for their main manufacturing process.

42:40 And as they are using us for one of the stages of that manufacturing process, we have an ability to pass materials through with very little impact of that. And that really goes back to, you know, the The US looking to help themselves. But by choosing the right partner in the right market, we've been able to, make sure we're in a position where we are not by that. Obviously, as we scale up Goliath or the, defense opportunities and look for, any further partners, what the global situation is at the time, we'll try and position ourselves so that we are as protected as we possibly can, but we don't have a crystal ball to understand what happens in the longer future, but we'll look for mitigations as we go forward. Next question. Do you currently have the manufacturing capability to meet the demand for Sterex needs in 2030 and beyond? And what is the level of capital investments needed by ILIKA to meet the demand.

43:38 So I would say to that that, of course, we've transferred manufacturing capability to Certec. And the capacity that we have in place with that equipment that's now installed in The US will meet our needs for the forthcoming period. And when we max out that capacity, which actually I hope is sooner rather than later, actually would be Certik that would invest in that equipment for larger volumes of manufacturing. The the only piece that we have retained is our ability to make electrodes. So actually, the the cathode electrode, the positive electrode within our stereo x batteries. We still got the piece of equipment for doing that here in The UK.

44:30 That has significant capacity, but in due course, we may replace that. But that is not a particularly significant piece of investment that is going to make a a radical change to our financial profiles. Next question is an interesting one. How are you as a company dealing with your battery being used in robotics? I remind myself of a newsletter where a robot was not allowed to travel with its owner in the plane because of the danger with lithium ion batteries, are now the standard. Is this a market you're looking for ahead in the coming future? Yeah. So, yeah, airlines are very nervous about lithium ion batteries on board.

45:23 If you've flown recently, you will realize that, you know, you get asked if if you're carrying auxiliary power packs, and you're actually not allowed to put batteries into the hold. If you've got an ebike, you're not allowed to take that on board because of the risk that the battery poses. So there's a lot of interest in enhancing the safety profile of lithium ion batteries. And that's very interesting for us because, of course, we specialize in a technology that has got an enhanced safety profile. Some of you will have seen the videos that we've published of our two amp hour cells on YouTube that show that the batteries are more resilient to penetration tests.

46:14 So this is part of our mission that ultimately we make batteries that are safe for air travel and and use on public transport, and we remove this risk that users of lithium ion batteries are currently having to manage. We've got a question here. Are modules and packs for the cells going to be provided by ILIKA or will the licensees create them, have the materials to be used being decided? So I think going to the theme that we've talked about already, we know to stick to our strengths. So we would look for the licensees, to be integrating those into packs and modules. However, in some of the smaller certainly, on the automotive scale, we'd be looking for that to happen at a licensee.

47:06 At the smaller opportunities in and around the, defense and autonomous vehicle sectors that Graham has talked about, we would certainly look to collaborate with experts, in that field and, have already had a number of conversations with, those people to make sure that, the products that we are producing in terms of our 10 amp power is applicable and how they would fit into those applications. So once again, we wouldn't look to delay ourselves and go backwards. We'd need to get draw on the right expertise to make sure we were, staying relevant. And in terms of the materials, certainly, the the materials we've identified for that 10 m power, prototype, are decided that we would use for commercialization. Although, as an r and d company, we continue to obviously look to optimize and look for improvements wherever can. So always one eye open to the future.

48:03 What are the lead times for new battery formation and testing equipment? Are there third party facilities that could be used in the interim? So, actually, we pride ourselves in our ability to plan ahead. The reason that we specified that we were going to use some of the funds that we raised in the last placing for battery formation and testing equipment is to make sure we've got sufficient equipment in place for when we need it. We, of course, have equipment already, and that's enough to deal with the levels of production that we've got. But as demand starts to ramp and and we define this 10 amp hour MVP, then we need to increase that capacity.

48:51 So we probably won't need to go to third party in order to access external capacity unless we're totally overwhelmed, in which case we might be ringing up our friends at facilities like UK BIG that has the ability to be able to do that. And, that's a great segue into the next question. So are the facilities at UK BIG capable of producing a complete 10 amp hour Goliath battery from start to finish? Is it cost effective or is it a cost effective alternative? Should demand for the 10 amp hour batteries exceed IKA's pilot line capability?

49:36 So, yeah, the the facilities at UK BIG are capable of producing a complete Goliath battery 10 amp up Goliath battery from start to finish. And, well, whether it's cost effective or not depends a bit on the batch size and also whether the application would tolerate those costs. But it's certainly a capability that we are aware of, and we'd be happy to work together with UK BIC again should the commercial and business case justify it. Next question here is the benefits of grant funding are obvious. However, the government and its affiliates are generally not viewed as dynamic in the same way a private company is answerable to its shareholders. Given IDACA's university roots, is it staying within its comfort zone of pursuing a grant to every step?

50:33 That's this in the concept, context of every project having a twelve month duration irrespective of what it actually seems to involve. We are absolutely pursuing commercial interactions and conversations with non grant bodies Where you see a lot of the news flow happening around grant funded is obviously because it's publicly funded information of money. That information becomes public and therefore has to be published, whereas, behind the scenes collaborations or conversations with a lot of potential customers or collaborators tends to be under a NDA, so we're not in a position to make as much noise about those, if any at all. So please be reassured that we are actively and very rapidly trying to secure various conversations across the the broad range of our products, but they tend to be more tightly controlled in terms of what we are able to put into public domain.

51:34 Does the Brompton JDA help you to develop an MVP for scooters and maybe drones as well? So the reality is that there are lots of different applications for batteries. You're absolutely right that there is a big demand for batteries for e scooters and, of course, you know, drones, land, sea, and air. What's key for us actually is to just evaluate the the business case for each of these different applications in turn and to work out what products would be required in order to realistically develop the applications. And actually, you often find that the duty cycles for different applications require different battery designs.

52:25 So what we've got to avoid is becoming jacks of all trades and masters of none. What we'll probably do is we will identify one, maybe two market opportunities that are a really good fit for our 10 amp hour prototypes and focus on them, deliver them, generate commercial revenues, and then use them as a platform to diversify into other markets in due course. We've always got to avoid going head to head with less expensive Chinese, principally, manufactured batteries that, you know, we're not differentiated with. So we we always choose the applications very carefully so that we can emphasize the USPs of our products and make sure that, you know, we can sell the products for a profit margin.

53:19 That's a good segue into a question here. What are the risks from China given their reputation for copying our technologies already? Obviously, that's a risk that we discuss IP leakage, and therefore, we make sure that all of our activity where possible is protected by patents and trade secrets. We employ external IP experts, lawyers to make sure that we are looking after and protecting as much as possible everything that we have. We're also using trade secrets where putting information into an IP application might give people enough of a clue on what to copy there, so using trade secrets. So it's not in the public domain at all. And our choice of partners to talk to is clearly carefully selected. We do receive inbound inquiries from the wider Asian market, including China itself, and we are very careful in what we have as conversations with those individuals. So that's where, as we've talked in previous presentations, our markets are primarily focused around the Western Hemisphere in terms of the European and US market. Although, you know, clearly, the Korean market, and maybe outside of Greater China, is an opportunity for in the future, but we certainly wouldn't look to, do anything there in the near term to make sure that we're giving as much protection to our technology for it to be out in the market.

54:50 Here's a great one. The government announces x billions for ILIKA related fields, but ILIKA itself receives relatively tiny amounts. Given the potential for ILIKA to redefine aspects of automotive and defense applications, why is more money not forthcoming? Well, we would be delighted, actually, to receive more grant funding. The reality is that the government agencies that are responsible for dispersing government grants are under an obligation to run competitions for companies that wish to access that funding. Actually, the the amounts that are are that are on offer are typically massively oversubscribed.

55:39 Sometimes there's only a 10% chance, actually, that a company can secure funding that's made available. So we have to choose which competitions we enter very carefully. And, you know, we've got a pretty experienced grant team that has been very successful over the years and continues to be successful. So we we try and make sure that when we put in for a piece of grant funding that it's a compelling proposition and one that will score highly. Otherwise, you know, we end up spending an awful lot of time writing applications that wouldn't go anywhere. But, yeah, grant funding is is very important.

56:24 And, you know, the agencies responsible for dispersing those funds are doing their very best to make sure it's dispersed on an egalitarian and and and on an egalitarian basis and on merit. There's a a clarification here actually from an earlier question. With with the question about robotics, I meant the current future vision on robotics as a business. So industrial robotics, autonomous robotics, human like robotics. Yeah. So that that's a good question. There there is actually a a massive diversity of robotic applications.

57:13 It depends, you know, what you mean by a robot. And there there are lots of uncrewed vehicles and autonomous robots that all have slightly different duty cycles. It comes a bit back to, the question on, you know, what what should we be developing, Goliath batteries for? You know? So some applications require a really long cycle life. Some are really power intensive and and require batteries that will release their energy very rapidly. Some are very low power robots that just require a really high energy density so that the the robot can operate for a long period of time, sometimes in a sort of sleep mode.

57:59 So, you know, we're evaluating all of these. These really important applications of the future whether we like it or not, actually. I mean, there's some concerns about the rise of robotics. But, you know, they are here to stay, and and we are currently evaluating them very closely. I think we're just about out of time, so we'll take the opportunity to look at any other questions that have been submitted that we weren't able to get to you, and we will do our best to answer them if we can. That's great. Thank you for answering all those questions you have from investors. And, of course, the company can review all questions submitted today, and we'll publish those responses on the InvestoMeet company platform. Just before redirecting investors to provide you with their feedback, which is particularly important to the company, Graham, could I please just ask you for a few closing comments?

58:51 Well, many thanks for the exciting q and a interaction today. I I really value the opportunity to be able to engage and and talk through some of your ideas and and concerns. And, as Jason said, we will follow-up with, the few remaining questions that we haven't managed to get around to verbally today. That's great. Thank you for updating investors today. Now please ask investors not to close the session as you'll now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that the management team can better understand your views and expectations. This may take a few moments to complete, and I'm sure it'll be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good afternoon to you all.