Itaconix (LSE:ITX) — Interim Results for the year ended 30 June 2026

0:01 Good afternoon, and welcome to the ITACONIX PLC twenty twenty six Half Year Results Investor Presentation. Your screen. Simply type in your questions and press send. Before we begin, I would like to submit the following poll. And I would now like to hand you over to CEO, John Shaw. Good afternoon to you, sir.

0:27 Thank you. We're I look forward to going through our results today and giving you some overview of what we've done and where we end up we'll be going in the near term here. So we started with a very a very good first half, record half year revenues, our fourth half of revenue growth, excellent commercial progress. What's most exciting is we achieved our first half of breakeven EBITDA profitability. We expanded our overall revenues to existing customers. We've landed new important customers, and we achieved that breakeven profitability while still investing in new applications, new products, and key operating improvements. And we ended the half with $5,000,000 to fund continued growth.

1:18 If you're new to us on on this call or want a quick refresher, we have a very straightforward business and value proposition. Iduconic acid is a natural metabolite found in our bodies and nature, safe and effective. It's produced at industrial scale by fermentation using plant based feedstock from corn. We purchase it on the open market. We bring it into our US operations to react it using our patented processes to produce a broad line of proprietary safer ingredients that improve the performance, affordability, and sustainability of consumer products. We ship our ingredients either directly or through partners around the world to be used in hundreds of consumer products.

2:05 Generating demand and revenues for our ingredients is also straightforward. Consumer products consumer brands are constantly looking for new competitive opportunities and advantages by formulating new products or reformulating existing ones. We use a range of direct and indirect efforts to influence brands to formulate or reformulate using our ingredients. When we're successful, we or a partner or distributor receive a purchase order to supply our ingredient,

2:36 usually to a contract manufacturer that's making the end product for a brand. Relatively rarely, less than 10% of the time, the brands actually that we work with actually produce their own products. Very simple business on it. We operate in three segments. Performance ingredients are where we produce and sell our our key products. Sparks formulated solutions is how we accelerate the process of influencing brands in North America to belt to develop and produce iodiconic based formulations. Through that, we also sell some other ingredients to the contract manufacturers that need to produce our formulations and capture some additional gross profits from these sales to support our technical marketing and sales efforts.

3:26 Our third area is bioasteris, which are specialty itachymic monomers and polymeric bindings used to make plant based ingredients.

3:39 Laura will show you how we are turning demand for our ingredients into attractive financial results. Our goal is to become a large specialty ingredient company. We started the 2026 financial year with record revenues and major profitability milestones. We're confident we will have the reorder rates from existing customers and new customers for a strong second half. Beyond 2026, we believe we have the ingredients and customer base to reach $30,000,000 in revenues in the next three to four years, and we can do it comfortably with our existing US operations. Beyond $30,000,000, we have broader growth opportunities in our core detergent applications, and we are progressing new potentials in crops and paints.

4:25 We had a first great first half, and we're just getting started. Let's have Laura get you into the financial details. Thanks, John. Hello. I'm Laura Denner. I'm the chief financial officer of ITACONIX, and I'm delighted to share the exciting financial progress that we've made over the first six months of twenty twenty six. So we did achieve 8,300,000 in total revenue. This was an increase of 72% half over half. Again, the primary driver of this success was the performance ingredients business. The performance ingredients are those proprietary polymers that we manufacture and sell. The revenues in this the revenues in this business unit more than doubled to 6,700,000.

5:12 This growth reflects both higher reorder volumes from existing customers and contributions from new customer wins. Gross profits increased as well by 74%. This contributed $3,000,000 of overall gross profit. Our margins remained stable at 36%. So maintaining margins while growing at this rate demonstrates the value that our customers are putting on our polymers as well as the pricing discipline that that we do have. But I think to John's point, the most important thing that we achieved this year was or this half was our adjusted breakeven EBITDA. And we did we did all this while continuing to invest in product development, commercial expansion, and production capabilities for our future growth.

6:01 So as we turn our attention to the revenue buildup, we saw our fourth consecutive half of growth. North American revenues increased by about 29% half over half. EMEA grew at an impressive 166%. So as a result, EMEA now accounts for approximately half of the group's revenue compared to about a third in h one twenty twenty five. So after many years of developing this market, the sales volumes in EMEA have hit that new phase of takeoff for us. This also is an important milestone because it helps reduce our reliance on any single geography and allows us to build a more, resilient, broad revenue base. North America. Our North American revenues, which are comprised of both our sparks and our performance ingredients, grew as we engaged with more customers to bring tablets and capsules to market.

6:55 We expect to be able to achieve our near term goal of 600,000,000 unit dose detergent pods in North America in 2026. EMEA revenues, which are comprised solely of our performance ingredients, showed significant adoption by, customers in that region. Our detergent polymers are providing those key claims that that market is looking for. John will go into some of the use cases shortly to show you those key claims that we can support. And in 2026, we did land a new EMEA customer that has the potential to bring in some significant volumes. So we're currently monitoring the reorder rates, but we're enthusiastic at the progress of this opportunity converting to a customer. So now that we've achieved growth in EMEA, we are looking at other markets, to assess the progress that we can make in those geographies and for future expansion. This is really just an assessment phase, though.

7:56 So as we look more closely into where the growth is coming from, we use our land and expand strategy, and we're seeing some good results. A significant portion of our revenue growth came from existing customers increasing their order volumes. So this is their products gaining wider distribution and greater market acceptance. These reoccurring orders are a key indicator of our sustainability for the growth that we're seeing. At the same time, we successfully added two new major customers during this period, one in North America and that one in EMEA that we just to talk we just discussed. We also brought on 10 new smaller accounts. So the combination of the expanding activities that we're seeing with existing customers and bringing new customers in gives us that confidence that we that we need for our medium term growth ambition.

8:50 So how is the growth supported by our customer base? As the business continues to scale, we're seeing a broader mix of opportunities move through the pipeline from major customer wins to smaller emerging accounts. In the first half, two of our customers contributed over a million dollars, representing about, 40% of our revenues. It's important to note that, these customers are contract manufacturers, and they're build they're manufacturing for multiple different brands. So there is that additional layer of diversity beyond the headline customer count. We are also seeing growth across, midsize accounts that contribute between 500,000 to a million dollars along with a wider base of smaller, customers coming online. So this broader revenue distribution reduces the concentration risk and demonstrates the increased adoption of our technology across the detergent sector.

9:47 Taken together, our customer diversity gives us that strong foundation that we're gonna need for a long term growth strategy. So as we continue to grow our revenues, this did translate into improved profitability. Gross profits increased by approximately 1,200,000 during the period. At the same time, we did increase administrative expenses by about $1,000,000. This was to support future growth initiatives. So, despite these investments, we did achieve breakeven adjusted EBITDA. This is in comparison to the first half of twenty twenty five where we had a $200,000 loss. So most importantly, what this does, it it puts us on our track to achieving a small positive EBITDA for the full year.

10:41 So as we continue to invest in our growth, those administrative expenses that did increase by about 49% half on half, to about 3,200,000, Much of that was, an increase that is reflected at targeted investments. So one from additional personnel, two product development initiatives. There were some transportation costs associated with the higher demand in EMEA that we saw, and then finally, some commercial activities that we were doing. It's important to know that these note that these costs are proportional to, our revenue growth, so they are variable in nature. So they will scale alongside our revenues.

11:23 So as we talked about additional personnel, we went from an average headcount of about 26 employees to 33 employees. This was done primarily to support those, volumes in manufacturing. We also were doing a lot of work at innovating new formulations for the detergent market as well as developing some of those new revenue opportunities in crops and in paint. So that's where a lot of our administrative dollars went. So alongside with the investment in people, we continue to optimize our throughput in the plant that we have here in our stratum facility. We've done most of the improvements to date without a significant CapEx expense, So that puts us in a good position.

12:09 We believe we have all the infrastructure we need to make it to 30,000,000, which is our medium term objective and beyond. One of the things that I do like to mention here when we talk about the stratum facility is that we do have an exceptional metric that is way beyond our peer group. Our fixed asset turnover is 15 x for the period. So what our equipment can do out there is generate significant revenues. We expect that to continue to grow as we continue to scale the volumes in our facility. So we believe that our existing facility has all the capacity that we need, and we can further leverage that that asset base.

12:53 Lastly, our balance sheet remains strong, giving us the flexibility to support all these initiatives that we're working towards. We did end the half, with cash and investments of 5,100,000 compared to 4,400,000 at the end of twenty twenty five. Working capital was about 4,400,000 at the period end. We benefited from some lower inventory balances as a timing effect due to one large customer order leaving at the end of June. So inventories were slightly lower than our target. We probably will invest again, back into working capital of $304,100,000 dollars. However, we left the period in a good cash and working capital position. During this period, we also did some capital spending, to support the growth that we're looking to do. This includes the implementation of an ERP system.

13:47 We're in process of doing that. We plan to have that live by the end of the year and be utilizing that for the full year of 2027. We did some production optimization projects, and we fur did some, capital work on developing those future applications. So all that was capitalized onto our balance sheet. But, overall, we left the current period in a great cast position with sufficient funding for our medium term growth ambitions and beyond. So I think what we've been able to achieve here in the first half of twenty twenty six, was an important period for ITACONIX, and it shows some of the impressive metrics of what we can do here. We delivered strong revenue growth. We maintained stable gross profit margins. We achieved EBITDA breakeven for the first time in the company's history.

14:42 All at the same time, we're using our land and expand strategy to continue to further our work with existing customers by increasing volumes. New customers are coming online,

14:53 and there's a broader, diverse base, of customers across all geographies. What we're doing is we're continuing to invest in people, systems, product development, production capabilities needed to support that growth. We're all doing this within our existing infrastructure. So our stratum facility has all the capacity that we need to support that medium term growth, and, we have those impressive fixed asset turnovers. And finally, we have the cash and investments that we need leaving the first half to support all of our growth plans, and to continue to invest in those future opportunities. So overall, these results show clear progress towards our goals of building a large, profitable, attractive specialty ingredient company.

15:39 So I'm gonna turn it back over to John to talk a little bit about our growth path and how we're gonna achieve those ambitions.

15:48 Thank you, Laura. What a great, financial position to be in. To talk about our growth path on it, we are in a very strong position. We are expanding revenues from existing customers. We're landing new customers, investing in new products, applications, and production capabilities. But what next? Where can we get to, and what do we need to do to get there?

16:12 In the second half of twenty twenty six, we need to exceed the $14,800,000 in revenues and have clear EBITDA profitability. And as Laura said, we need reasonable reorder rates from our new customers and to just keep doing what we're doing. Our next horizon is $30,000,000 in revenues. And why $30,000,000?

16:32 Because we think that is when you will see our full financial capabilities as the attractive specialty ingredient company that Laura just outlined to you. We have the valuable products, the existing customers, the pipeline of new customers, and the production capabilities to get there. You've seen how expansion in demand from our existing customer drives our growth. For $30,000,000, we need one more large EMEA detergent customer and success with purpose driven brands, in North America, and we are on it. So where do we get in three to four years? Not sure, but we not sure when we'll get to the 30,000,000, but it'll be three to four years, but we will get there. But we're not here to build ITACONIX to be a $30,000,000 company. We're here to build it to its true potential of at least a $100,000,000.

17:24 Now that's gonna take a while longer, but we're already working on it. We'll get far beyond the $30,000,000 within the detergent uses, and we're investing in developing new product opportunities in paints and crops right now. And paints and crops right now are leading the way to to get us there.

17:46 Our core products are our core product area is dishwashing detergents. There are 70,000,000,000 annual dishwasher cycles across EMEA, North America, and slightly beyond. Our high value plant based multifunctional scale inhibitor for dishwashing detergents is currently less than 4% of these cycles

18:05 per year. Very small percentage. We have great opportunities. The number of laundry machine cycles is even much larger than dishwashing machines. People use their laundry machines more often than they use their dishwashing machines at home. Our high value plant based multifunctional odor neutralizer doesn't even register as a fraction of a percentage of these laundry cycles. So our path of $30,000,000 and beyond will be driven by these core ingredients and applications.

18:36 On top of these revenues are large new applications we're pursuing, the plant based polymeric binders for paints and soil additives for plant health. So overall, the installation of automatic dishwashing machines is growing in the world, so the number of dishwashing machine cycles is growing. There's also demand for safer ingredients.

19:01 First, on regulatory bans on the use of phosphates, which our scale inhibitors replace, and there's also the consumer desire for safer chemicals in their home, and we are a safe chemical. Global the other key one driving our our demand here is that global brands who we do work with are steadily advancing their performance. They have their own process of how they come up with next generation formulations. But when they do come out and push formulations and cost better, all the remaining brands

19:32 need to keep up with better performance and cost. And that's where we work with brands. We start in North America working with these brands to accelerate their introduction of next trainer generation products with our sparks formulated solutions and our deeperclean.com programs.

19:52 Our t our ITACONIX TSI scale inhibitor polymers manage the detrimental effects of water hardness and cleaning, particularly in dishwashing detergents. If water hardness is not managed, then you'll have calcium and other minerals deposited as spots or film. Phosphates are used for spotting and filming. They were used, but are increasingly banned due to the environmental damage they do when they cause in waterways. Our TSI products are gaining market share as leading replacements for the phosphates, and you can see the kind of performance that we can get in terms of managing spotting and filming with the best of them in both European formulations and North American formulations. But let's look at why they're doing were so good as a replacement.

20:41 Our TSI polymers reduce the overall product cost if properly formulated. You need less of our polymer, far less, because of their monk multifunctional performance. Compact detergents, less cost, less chemicals, same or better performance. This is why our revenues are growing and will keep growing. It is a great product. We're not just waiting for brands to figure out how to properly formulate with our polymers. We are creating our own next generation formulations to bring to brands. We're patenting them, and we're collaborating with market leaders to get them out to gain market share for our for our customers and to drive our growth. Let's start with a new triple chamber pod that we have. There's two liquid chambers and a powder chamber.

21:31 We patented this. It's 3.3 grams less per dose than the super premium market leader in The United States. 3.3 per dose, same performance. This is what our customers in North America are looking for, to bring out next generation multi chamber dish pods.

21:54 But it gets even better. We knew we could push innovation even further using Benal's tablet presses to be able to go to a unwrapped naked detergent tablet. And by the way, Benal's knew it too. That's why we're collaborating of bringing a new generation of detergent tablets into North America.

22:14 We've developed and patented eight gram dish detergent tablet using our Benals development press line here in Stratum. No plastic wrapper, high plant based content, super premium performant, seven point seven grams less per dose than the super premium market leader. Think about that. Seven point seven grams across if we could do that across 70,000,000,000 dishwasher cycles, the annual savings and the chemicals used would fill up tractor trailer trucks bumper to bumper from London to Edinburgh. That's how much 7.7 grams of savings can do in just terms of the volume of of chemicals that that could be reduced. That's what we do in dishwashing detergents.

23:01 We know many of you have tried tried them at home. We've gotten some orders, and delivered them into The UK. Go to deeperclean.com and order some and try them in your home. They work great. So let's turn to the laundry machine cycles, which is a much larger much larger market than dishwasher machines. Our odor neutralizers are easy to use and extremely effective on major classes of odors, and odor control and odor control claims are the next frontier in terms of laundry machine, laundry detergents, and we have an excellent product to do that. How to go about it? Let's go back to our eight gram tablet design and use it for a laundry tablet. Make sure it has great performance. It dissolves in cold cold wash cycle, and that's what we've done.

23:57 We one one eight gram tablet is good for lightly soiled load, two tablets for a regular load, and three tablets for a heavily soiled load, and you get outstanding cleaning performance. And on top of the cleaning performance, you get outstanding odor control. Great performance and great performance against the latest and greatest detergent format being introduced by the global laundry detergent cleaner leader. That is a 23 gram, unit dose product that is getting introduced across North America right now. I think a lot of brands are gonna wanna talk to us when we get this tablet launched in the first half of twenty twenty seven. So we have two ingredients that are enabling new generations of solid unit dose detergents in very large consumer product categories.

24:48 They're cost effective, plant based, and safer for your family and the environment. I think we're going to be a large, profitable specialty ingredient company with these two ingredients.

25:03 But our ambitions are much higher than just detergents, because we have at least two more potential game changers in our ITACONIX technology platform. First is our new class of safer paint. No emissions of volatile chemicals, less toxic ingredients, higher plant based content. We have a patent on our plant based binder that's used in the paint. We've also filed a patent for the paint formulation, and we've trademarked a name for this entirely new class of paints. We're collaborating with a leading paint company to optimize our formulations. It is a gradual, careful process to get it right, but we're making tangible progress, and we will get it right.

25:48 Our second opportunity is plant nutrition. We have known for many years that our polymers might improve plant growth. We did a hyperponic growth study internally several years ago that showed we increased the number of blossoms on snapdragons by a dramatic amount. We found the opportunity beginning of this year with the hiring of Nick Spoden to go out into the field and start field trials in The US, and that's what we've done. We're on over a 100 acres of row crops across multiple states in The United States. They are out there. They're performing, and we expect to have firm evaluations in hand of what happened out in the field by later this year, early next year.

26:35 If these go well, we expect to scale this to at least 10,000 acres next year, to expand the evaluation. So paints and crops, large, attractive new horizons for ITACONIX. So we have big potential in detergents, paints, and crops.

26:57 What do they say about our outlook? We have a very strong first half. We're confident in our second half. We have very tangible programs in place for the medium term to three to four years to hit $30,000,000, and we have higher ambitions and efforts in place to go far beyond the $30,000,000. We are just getting started.

27:21 So, foe I'd like to say that Laura, Yvonne Durant, our board, and really our entire ITACONIX team, and I appreciate the support and confidence from our shareholders, particularly our long term shareholders over the last couple years as we structured the results and milestones, to be able to achieve, the results we have in the first half. We have fundamentally structured our our customer base and our product line to succeed in the future, and we're just getting started. So thank you for, all of your support over the last few years. And with that, let's get to all your questions on it. We've have many, many questions in it, on it, which we have, consolidated. I think we We still received over a 100 questions. So we tried to break them down into categories and, group questions that were similar in nature together, but we are intent is to try to answer all of the questions that you guys have submitted to us.

28:25 Yeah. So what we'll do here is, we have consolidated into major topics. We will, go through we these cover the best best we can, the the the 100 questions we have. We will go back over the next two weeks and, go back in within the IMC, platform and answer every single question that you submitted. So we will get to everything on it, but we wanted to be as efficient as we could with the time, with the time we have available this afternoon. So these are the topics that we have on it. Are we gonna go through, go through each one on it?

29:07 That's great, guys. So if we just dive straight into the first group of questions, which is on financial performance, what are the commercial and operational needs for consistent profitability?

29:20 I can take that one. So I I think we're very focused on our medium term ambition of 30,000,000. We have all the capacity that we need here to achieve that revenue target. We have the people that we need. We'll probably have to scale a little bit as the volumes grow just due to the number of transactions, but we have the infrastructure. We have the foundation in place. From a revenue perspective, I think John will talk a little bit more about it. But during the presentation, you know, we really need one more major customer win in EMEA, and then we need further traction in our US market on that unit dose detergency. Thank you, Laura. Next question here is, does the company currently have any plans for its tax loss carry forwards? So we do have some sizable tax losses.

30:08 They are we have every intention of using these in the future to offset any profitability that we see. So, we don't see them expiring anytime soon, so we'll be able to utilize those in the future. I'd say we don't we don't see any special transactions. No. They're very difficult to use those within transactions anyway. So I think it's the normal course of business. Correct. Thank you. And moving on to questions on fulfillment operations. What facilities does the company currently use? So we currently produce out of our stratum facility, and we do use third party warehousing. We have some facilities here, on the New Hampshire Sea Coast that we, store raw materials and some finished goods in.

30:53 And then we do use third party warehousing in Belgium to supply our EMEA customer. And that's really the the the footprint that we use to kinda make sure we can supply, in North America and in in EMEA. Thank you. And sticking with Stratum questions. What are the capabilities at Stratum operations? So we're currently running twenty four hour shifts. So we run once we're up and running, we continue to run our production process. We can we kind of moderate based on our demand. Right now, we're running anywhere between three to four days, to meet the revenue tar revenue demand that we have. But within the facility, we're continuing to increase throughput, and we can, increase the number of days we run. So we have all the capacity that we need here at the Stratum location.

31:43 Yeah. I think our operations team has done a tremendous job of Absolutely. Increasing our hourly throughput, and we think we're gonna continue to get advances on it. And they've guaranteed, Laura and us, that they will on it. So it's great great progress there. Thank you. How is the company mitigating risk from potential plant disruptions? So a couple of things that we mentioned, we do warehouse materials off-site. We do have backups for key pieces of equipment here, for any minor breakdown in the plant facility. So that's how we're mitigating, currently having one facility. We have warehouses off-site that hold sufficient inventories to meet near term customer demands, and then we can get up and operating pretty quickly on any key piece of equipment.

32:32 Thank you. Next one here is when do you anticipate a need for an additional production operation? Right now, within our medium term ambitions, we have all the capacity that we need on it. So, for right now, we're we're all set in terms of, that in terms of, additional operations. We will be increasing our production capacity here in Stratum. Thank you. And following up from that, where do you expect to locate such an operation? You know, that that's gonna take some time to figure out exactly where. A lot of it's gonna depend on where the demand develops. It will it will be outside of The US. It'll depend on the concentrations, and the best supply chain we have, but we have not made any determination, right now where where to place it.

33:23 Thank you. And last question from this section is how do you expect to fund the development of such an operation? I think that's something we'll look at in the future. It'll look the company will look dramatically different once we reach that stage. Our financial our our financials will look significantly different. We'll be $30,000,000 and plus and with many different options of how we can we can do it. We can partner with people. We can collaborate with people on a site. The main thing, we're not we do not plan to use our current you know, we aren't really wanna use our equity, particularly where we are now, at all to do that. So, no plans that dilute our equity at all, where we stand right now. We will look dramatically different with a as a $30,000,000 company, both on our our debt capabilities and our ability to collaborate with people.

34:20 Thank you. And moving on to questions on the supply chain. Do you have alternative sources of itaconic acid other than from China? Iduconic acid is only produced in China right now. There are multiple producers there, and there are no alternatives to it. I you know, that is the case with iodiconic acid, but you have to understand that for our detergent producers and our customers, many of the ingredients that they use are dependent on China. It's not just us. It is a industry situation. It's not just specific to us. So we are very comfortable with the capacity and and capabilities of our Chinese suppliers. We have very close relationships with them. So we do not, we do not see any issue with the supply of itaconic acid right now.

35:12 Thank you. Understood. And how is the company managing fluctuations in shipping costs, shipping times, and tariffs? So we work very closely with our suppliers, and, you know, they help keep us updated. We're also monitoring kind of just the what's going on in the business. So when we do see those pricing increases, we'll review our our current prices by account, and we'll see if there's a need to increase prices. So we do some selective price increases. Sometimes we'll do a surcharge if the nature of the increase is temporary. For example, the current tariffs in July that were just announced, we did do a small surcharge to some of those customers. And, hopefully, we can remove that when the, the tariff situation, kinda normalizes, and we can determine whether it's permanent or just that temporary in nature.

36:08 Great. We're we're just we're very confident, though, in maintaining our overall margins in it. Correct. I think we're very diligent, Laura, in the operation. We are very diligent of coordinating, what our cost what our cost position by account with what our profit margins are. Fantastic. Thank you. How is the company mitigating potential risks from raw material supply disruptions? So, again, we have very close relationships with our suppliers. So we, first of all, maintain a certain level of raw materials here in our third party warehouses and on-site. And then we do work with our suppliers to maintain, inventories at various warehouses so that we can pull on them for various surges, in demand that we see. So we have kind of multiple layers of making sure we have the right raw materials that we need.

37:00 Thank you. And switching gears on to sales expansion. Is there is is the recent volatility in oil prices creating major new urgency for brands to switch away from fossil based ingredients? Well, it it it creates interesting discussions. People do come back and ask whether, we have, our pricing is still the same for the pre pre Iran prices that we gay we gave them. But overall, I mean, where our core value, is cost and performance always. We do not need external forces like changes in fossil based ingredients to create demand for our product. Also, you have to be careful that formulations do not react quickly. From the beginning to the end on a formulation change, that can take, that can take a year a year or more. I can assure you when we when we have control over, the formulation like we do in our sparks formulated solutions and our deeper clean and everything we develop, we've already put plant based the amount of plant based ingredients we can get in there, for, the performance and cost that we need.

38:13 So we are showing customers how to get there with plant based ingredients, and I think that's one of the effectiveness of our of our formulation work and our deeper clean work. Thank you, John. Next question here is, do you expect any of your new detergent customers to become your largest customer in 2027? You know, the the progression to being the largest customer takes a couple of years. Our largest customer right now, really, where most of our growth is, is coming from customers that's we started in on a couple years ago. Yeah. So, the new ones that we see now, they will be significant parts of our revenue. I think even more exciting is how big they'll be, for us three years from now as you just do that steady progression in size on it. So I think our current customers will continue to be our major source of revenues.

39:08 Thank you. And next one. What are your plans to expand sales beyond EMEA and North America? Well, we do sell globally. We are in formulations throughout Asia and Pacific. We are across The Americas, across Europe on it. Some of that is directly in some specialty applications. A lot of it is also through our global collaborations with Croda and Homecare and Neurion and hairstyling, and though they're they're effectively taking us everywhere. So we are in foot odor control in India. We're in fabric fabric sprays in in China. We are do have a global footprint with our current demand.

39:54 What we are doing is careful work when I when you look at the following auto we are going to follow automatic dishwashing machines around the world, and we are going to follow increased usage of automatic dish machines around the world. And we are studying specific segment regions where we think there are new opportunities for us. What is nice when you get into those territories is it's less of a battleground against the global the brands we could get to work with, it's less of a battleground against the global players relative to what it's like in North America and Europe on it. So, we do think we will follow, the nonphosphate solid unit dose detergents around the world, remembering that a lot of parts of the world do still allow phosphates. And if you're allowed to use phosphates, that's always a cheaper solution than the safer formulas that we have.

40:49 That's great. Moving on to questions on intellectual property. Are you working on additional intellectual property, or are you covered now? Well, we have excellent coverage with our patents, our know how, and increasingly, as we mature as a company using more trade secrets, particularly. We are always assessing our patent portfolio in areas we're developing. A lot of it is not as much on the key core processes and the core compositions and chemistries, and this is making sure we're protecting, formulations that our products would go that that our product would go into to make sure that we maintain access, to the to the commercial market and don't get blocked with any, formulation patents. Thank you. Our next one here is global brands are filing patents to reference ITACONIX polymers.

41:42 Do you see any risks or opportunities in these patent fillings filings? Sorry. Well, we do pat we do monitor patent filings for to make sure maintain freedom to operate, and that we have access to our customers. There are no patents we know of that are limiting our ability to operate. We did find one, that was, going to be issued in Europe, that sat on top of, we're not sure why the European patent office allowed it through, but it sat right on top of an existing patent. And we went back and contested that over the last twelve months, and just a couple months ago, confirmed that we were succeeding in having that patent withdrawn. So we are very diligent about it. What you will see, there's a lot of there's particularly some global players that love to file patents and throw all sorts of, all sorts of technology and polymers in there and list sodium polyatoconate freely in it.

42:40 That does not certainly does not necessary. It does mean that they are they are probably have been evaluating our products and understand the value of our ingredients, and that's why they would bother doing it. It does not necessarily mean that, any revenues are imminent on it. And then there are other times they they're actually doing another type of polymer, and they just throw every other polymer that's like it into the patent, just to try to do it. But, you know, the so they do they do file, patents that, may mention idekine technology because they think there's clear value to our chemistry, but we do not see anything, limiting it nor is it necessarily indication of imminent revenues from them. Thank you. And one question on regulatory approvals.

43:28 Does the company have approvals for its ingredients in China? We've made some excellent progress there. We already had full approval for our copolymers and home care. We did have some limitations, on the personal care side because in your particularly if you're in hairstyling or any other personal care product, the global players wanna make sure that you that they can sell in China, so they needed we needed approval, for our personal care products to be, listed on the international nomenclature, for cosmetic ingredients list. We did achieve that, with our homo with our sodium polyatoconate in the last year. That was an important advance for us, and and we think that will help our volumes in hairstyling polymers some on it. The so I think we've done well on regulatory approvals. Really, globally, I think we're in a pretty good shape on regulatory approvals Right. On it on it. So I think we're in good shape on it.

44:30 Thank you. A few a few questions on research and innovation. Is the company considering higher investments in staffing and equipment to accelerate the introduction of new products or applications? Well, Laura Laura controls the checkbook on that, so we'll let let her reference that. We have enough now. We're investing at a rate that I think, we're driving those opportunities as quickly as they'll go. So investing more money in the investment of crops or, paints wouldn't necessarily make the progress any faster. So I think we're investing at a pretty significant rate, and we're progressing those opportunities as quickly as they'll go. Thank you, Laura. The next question here is what is the outlook on commercial progress in paints? Sorry. I skipped the question. Is the company considering all sorry. What is the outlook for commercial progress in paints?

45:22 And then if I just join the next one on crops as well. Yep. So first of all, in paints, I think as I referenced earlier, we are progressing formulations and and optimizing formulations for a paint. It is a it is a deliberate process that we're going through. We're working with an outstanding partner to help us optimize those paints on it. I still think we're a little ways off. I mean, sometime in 2027, we will be comfortable, that we have a excellent paint and that we're achieving all the the claims that we wanna get. I think what's most exciting is right now, we do, we are meeting our desire for a no VOC claim. We already know we have, high plant based content, on it, and we have some base performance.

46:11 We wanna make sure we don't we we leave very few gaps in the market in terms of performance. So that last bit of performance will take a little bit more to go on it. But we're progressing it. I'm very pleased with what we're what we're doing in it. Particularly, we have our patents in our trade marketplace. Thank you. Then on crops, crops, we're on a 100 acres right now across multiple states. We'll have test results on that, evaluations on crop yield improvements in the next by the end of the year, early next year. What we're measuring is what the cost is per acre to apply our product relative to the increase in crop yield per on on on a per acre basis on it. So farmers wanna see that if they spend $10 per acre on $10 per acre on applying an a a material that they're gonna be able to make, you know, $20.30 dollars more per acre in terms of increased yield.

47:15 So that's what the the test results we're gonna look for is those yield improvements, and we'll have those on multiple test plots across multiple states. Right. With that, we are already preparing. We our initial results look good, so we are already preparing to go on a much to scale it up to at least 10,000 acres next year. This is on row crops like corn, and soybean, across multiple states on it, and we'll continue to scale so that, we just continue to progress from 10,000 acres to 50,000 acres to a 100,000 acres year to year. It's a pretty, it's a slow progression on it. But if you get the efficacy, that we're looking for, we we we're looking for a favorable growth pattern to it.

48:03 Fantastic. Thank you very much, John. Why is the company holding off further development work on its superabsorbent? Well, superabsorbents is a huge potential market for us. It's about a third of the acrylic acid market is used for superabsorbents that go into baby, adult diapers, and, and other hygiene products on it. We believe we have the low cost, plant based superabsorbent, and it's significantly lower than what other approaches will be. We have good performance out of it. It's still significantly more expensive. It does not have any fundamental performance advantages over a fossil based acrylic superabsorbent. So I would say right now, we just don't see relative to the other advantages that our ingredients are bringing to applications like crops and paints and the value we're bringing there and our need to focus focus our investments in in in time and effort on it. We just don't see it as as attractive right now. But, you know, it's still there, and we can always go back to it.

49:13 Thank you. What are the prospects in sustainable leather? You know, we we put a lot of effort into that. I'd say I'm a little disappointed, in in the results that we had. I think we we do have a performance advantage that we bring, to leather, and we also bring a plant based content to it. The structure of the market, though, is accessing and getting into those applications and generating demand has not been has not given us the results that we hoped. We did work with some very large players. They ordered some product. They tested it. They liked it. But actually turning those into, reorders has been difficult on it. And at this point, I think we have much better opportunities. I mean, part of maturing as a company is to focus our efforts and focus our operating expenses and capital spending on areas that are gonna generate revenues faster for us, and we just didn't see it.

50:09 Thank you. And what are the prospects in hand soaps and hand gels? I noticed that, we had a question because, you see, some particularly brands in North America and elsewhere that have been in maybe the detergent space going off and buying companies in the hand soap or hand gel area. There's a big difference when we talk about solid while we're in solid detergents. All those are at relatively high pH, you know, pH nine, ten, and 11, to get really good cleaning. That's when you need our scale inhibitor in there. When you get down into hand soaps and hand gels, those are at skin pH. They're lower lower pHs where we just don't bring as many advantages to it. We are in some bubble baths and some and some body washes and areas like that, but we don't see that as a it's not a major area that we're, investing in right now.

51:07 We just don't see the revenues relative where else we can go. Thank you. And, of course, the question here on AI. How is the company using AI to speed up development? Well, we're actually looking at it across across all of our businesses on it. I think not as much in r and d, but it's more opportunities than some of our administrative tasks. Yeah. So, you know, AI is a wonderful tool, so we're looking to implement it prudently. But we do have some utilization in the administrative side as well as making some efficiencies in, some of our operating capabilities. We wanna make sure that no proprietary information gets out there, so we are making sure that we're doing our homework before we just implement a new tool. So we're looking at it, and we're we're using it where it where it makes the most sense.

51:57 In the r and d side of it, I mean, if we thought it would accelerate anything, we would use it. We haven't found it yet on it. Fantastic. Thank you. And moving on to questions on corporate development. To what extent would the company consider being acquired? So we're not currently looking at being acquired at this time. We're continuing to focus on our growth path being that large specialty ingredient company. But if we're ever propositioned or, there's a proposal out there, you know, the board will do its work to make sure it it would be a good fit if it ever came to light. But as of right now, we're not looking on any acquisition prospects. Yeah. Well, there's you know, we have, the growth that we have in front of us, is tremendous on it.

52:46 We see, much more value to the shareholders of, continuing the the path that we're on. Understood. Thank you. And to what extent would the company consider a strategic combination with a complementary specialty ingredient company? Yep. You're always looking at opportunities, and it's a fairly common area to look at as a strategy. The reality of doing the idea of doing it versus the reality of doing it, sometimes don't align. Laura and I are very familiar with the combination of two specialty ingredient companies because ITACONIX Corporation combined with Vervolum or PLC, and we know how and we know on a day to day what happens. The concern you have is that you think, well, you're gonna you there's all this opportunity.

53:37 But once you get a consolidated company, you find out you put all your chips on the best opportunities. Mhmm. So for us right now, if, the opportunities that we have in our company, we have the resources we need. We have the capabilities we need. We have tremendous growth opportunity to it. Right now, the idea of trying to grow faster by combining with other companies, it it's it's a very high proposition and very it's it's far riskier than anyone could have imagined. And we've been there and tried that. And I've in in my career, I've done it a couple times, and it always sounds good. And then three years later, you go like, why did we do that? Thank you very much. Next question is, how does the company expect its range of new products and applications to develop? If you could just touch one on the eight gram dish dishwashing detergent tablets, eight gram laundry detergent tablets, BioVel GRZ, BioAsterix monomers, and binders.

54:37 So, I love dish I love the detergent tablets. So, the eight gram one is very exciting for us. We've we have a pilot production press here that we we've developed the tablets on. We have a dishwashing detergent tablet. We will have a final laundry tablet in in the next couple of months. We are already rolling out the eight gram dishwashing detergent tablet. We introduced it at the American Cleaning Institute Innovation Showcase. Got a lot of press on it. We were highlighted in the CNE news profile on solid growth of solid detergents, and we, can do small scale production there. We can probably do ten, twenty million tablets on it.

55:24 And we have done that. We have signed our first supply agreement to supply them in bulk to a major brand. They're a little delayed in getting their packaging together, so the actual deliveries on those having nothing to do with us will probably be we'll maybe just squeak it in this year if they get their packaging sorted out on it. But what it's gonna we're that is gonna draw more attention. We have lots of inquiries about it. The ultimate step is that we are working with contract manufacturers to install a high speed banal's press that goes much faster, much lower cost to it to meet growing demand in it. And we are in active discussions with contract manufacturers who'd be interested. They all wanna know. It's like, well, you make sure do you are you gonna bring do you have the volume to make sure that we put this machine in, it's gonna be running a lot? So there's a little balance there that we're using our development machine to generate assurance that, yes, in fact, there's gonna be volumes there.

56:27 So not only the dishwashing detergent, but then when we bring the laundry detergent out, that'll even give a higher certainty that if someone installs a high speed Branal's press that they'll be able to run it and run it effectively. And now, that's what we want is somebody else to be running it. So, you know, it's a delicate delicate balance going back and forth on it. But we're when you have a great product that brands want, we're gonna maneuver through that. The BioVale GRZ on the crop side of it, I think I described that is that, we have all the production capabilities we need for it. We do need some regulatory approval. Some of state, but there's some state by state regulatory registrations to expand, but, that's why we're going after corn and soybean. I could tell you there's a 180,000,000 acres of corn and soybeans in The United States. We think about 40% of them is addressable at 60,000,000.

57:26 You pick any state and any of the large states, and there's more than enough crops for us to grow a nice business on it. So, again, we're gonna continue to get, valuations to show what we approve in crop yields on it. We have the production capabilities to deliver for it and just expand it out to more and more, farmers, next year and the year after. On the bioAstra's, monitors and binders, we are focusing on that end product paint, starting with an artistic grade, paint on it, that I've described. We're advancing and optimizing it. We think more in the early part of next year, we'll be able to go out and start field testing it and start finding, ways to start generating demand for it.

58:11 Thank you very much, John. Moving on to the last group of questions here is, can the company provide quarterly revenue updates? I can take that one if you want. Yeah. So, I think the desire is for more communication from ITACONIX. We're not really in the position to do quarterly revenue updates because, there is some, like, as in January 30, we had a large shipment go out. So, providing quarterly updates wouldn't necessarily provide the full story. There sometimes can be a little bit of, lumpiness, especially due to the size of the shipments that we're shipping out at any one time. But what we are trying to do is get more RNS reaches out, connect more through our LinkedIn, make sure that we're getting all that exciting progress that ITACONIX is doing out and to our shareholders, get that information out to them as quickly as possibly so that, you know, as we grow the company, you guys are aware of all the exciting things that we're doing here.

59:06 Yeah. I agree. I think the quarterly ones, boy, it'll I mean, the amount of it it will raise more questions and concerns relative to what's actually happening in the business in terms of the lumpiness of what actually goes out the door on it. Right. Fantastic. Thank you. Will the company consider a share split to keep the share price within range for retail investors who would like to own parts of ITACONIX? So we're not currently considering that. I know we did a stock consolidation a few years ago. Right now, we're just working on driving that share price up. So doing a stock split is not something that the board's really considering at this point, but we'll continue to monitor that kind of situation for the future. The the share consolidation was important for our prospects in The US in The US market. You need to be over a dollar a share or else you really can't, you know, you can't brokerage firms won't carry you. So, actually, as our share price increases, we're gonna attract more people in The US market on it.

1:00:11 That being and and I think, you know, at 200,300,400 p, that's still very reasonable, I think, for the for The UK market. Mhmm. You know? If we ever get to, you know, 900 p, you know, well, we'll we'll go back and start thinking about that again. But for right now, when you're near the 200,300,400,500 p range, relative to what it does for us in The US market, I think that's a reasonable a reasonable range, but we'll always keep track of it. Fantastic. Thank you. And the last question for today is, has the situation with Octopus changed regarding divesting additional shares? Well, we have regular dialogues with our shareholders, smaller shareholders, larger shareholders, US shareholders, UK shareholders, you know, to to to understand what's going, what their concerns are, what the opportunities might be.

1:01:05 We are not aware of any, any change with Octopus on it. We we we we, like you, can see, that there's been a little bit of dribbling out of shares on it. We don't we don't believe it's any change in the fundamental sentiment about the company. And we're not at our certainly, our current share price, we're not aware of anyone changing, changing their position. Everyone right now is pretty happy, and all we wanna do is make sure they're even happier Yep. Six to nine months from now on it. That's great. Well, look, John, Laura, you have covered a lot of ground there, so thank you very much for addressing those questions. And as mentioned before, we will publish these responses on the investment company platform where appropriate to do so post the meeting. But, John, before we direct investors to provide you with their feedback, which is particularly important to yourself and the company, could I please just ask you for a few closing comments?

1:01:59 So, again, I'm just very happy with where we are. We're very happy with the support that appreciate the support that we've received from all of our shareholders as we've restructured our our business for the path that we're on right now. It was a it had some challenges to it, but we knew what we needed to get done. I think we're getting it done, and you can see right in front of us. But we really appreciate all the patience in in from from all of our shareholders and the confidence that you showed that Laura and I and the company and the board could redirect our business on the path that it's going right now. So we look forward to giving additional updates. We're on a great path. We know what we need to do. We're gonna go do it.

1:02:47 Fantastic. John, Laura, thank you once again for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close this session as you now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback, which will help the company better understand your views and expectations. On behalf of the management team, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good afternoon to you all.