Roundtable Discussion; The Future of Mineral Sands. Watch the video here.
Very interesting article! Australia has been striving to bolster its green energy initiatives. One significant effort involved the collaboration between the government and companies like ITM Power and BP. ITM Power operates from the world's largest electrolyser factory in Sheffield with a capacity of 1GW (1,000MW) per annum.
I just found a link to the ITM Power Business case on the West Australian government website :
https://www.wa.gov.au/system/files/2023-09/public-knowledge-sharing-report-electrolyser-business-case-statement.pdf
The business case discusses electrolyser stack manufacturing facility in the Fremantle Port area.
"ITM is starting to look like really good value again."
I very much agree, all UK & US green shares are soaring while ITM hasnt done 10% increase yet from all times low. Great potential here and I am expecting the sp to test the 30 days moving average at some point today (around 66p)
ITM Power has $460 million MCap - $345 million in cash !!
Yep, plug is 15% up so far !
Plug Power has $2.15 Billion MCap vs $110.8 million cash with equivalents while ITM Power has $460 million MCap - $345 million in cash (without equivalents)
Dennis on Linkdin
The news and significant share price drop of one of our competitors on Friday caught the market by surprise. The company spoke of unprecedented operational and scale up challenges, supply chain issues, and rapid cash burn.
ITM Power won’t face these issues anymore - simply because we’ve worked hard to identify and fix them.
When I joined ITM about a year ago, the company was on a similar trajectory. That’s why in January this year I introduced a 12-month plan, which has been pro-actively tackling each and every topic our competitors are facing today. Our plan had three priorities:
1. Product portfolio: ITM had too many products and product variants. This was disruptive to our engineering and manufacturing processes. Also, design kept changing (improving), without proper design freezes. ITM was even engaged in adjacent businesses like refuelling. This led to a lack of focus, and consequently slowed down project progress.
2. Cash burn: ITM lost too much cash, much of it related to a too broad product portfolio, plus immature processes and controls - almost all of it avoidable. In principle there is good and bad cash spend. Investments into automation, upskilling, and new factories is cash well spent. It’s also normal to incur losses for overhead under-absorption prior to capturing scaling effects. But it’s important to limit losses and cash burn to those reasons which will dissolve with higher turnover.
3. Debottlenecking: From day one at ITM I put focus on analysing the bottlenecks we were facing, or would face, with further volume ramp up. Over the last months we announced several partnerships with critical suppliers who are scaling with us. This is essential, as it doesn’t matter how much a company debottlenecks its own factory; if the company’s suppliers don’t deliver in the right quantity and quality, it can’t produce at scale.
This might sound odd coming from a competitor, but to reach net zero we need more than one company and technology. I wish them well and hope they will overcome their challenges, for healthy competition drives us all forward.
Ok, to put things into perspective here:
A) From Plug Power’s results:
“The Latham, New York-based Plug said cash and equivalents at the end on Sept. 30 stood at $110.8 million.”
So Plug’s MCap :
Before today’s 40% drop : $5 billion
After the drop :$ 2.15 billion
>>> So Plug Power has $2.15 Billion MCap vs $110.8 million cash> ITM Power has $460 million MCap - $345 million in cash
Itm Power posted the following on LinkedIn yesterday, after the market closed:
Today, Claire Coutinho, Secretary of State at Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, visited us in Sheffield. It was a pleasure to show Claire and her team the exciting work we are doing in our R&D facilities, and in our factory where we are producing TRIDENT (stacks and skids) and NEPTUNE (autonomous plug and play containers). Continuous dialogue with Ministers and Secretaries of State is crucial to advance the UK to the forefront of a thriving hydrogen economy.
Our CEO Dennis Schulz expressed that it is great to welcome politicians who are genuinely interested in the energy transition and who are keen to explore ways to collaborate with businesses to advance this important industry. For the UK, the green hydrogen journey has just begun, and as a country we need to make sure to maximise economic benefit including securing and creating new jobs in the domestic supply chain for the many projects to come.
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/itm-power_hydrogen-ukmanufacturing-greentech-activity-7125871327265067010-0yuF
Chair and Independent Non-Executive Director
Ann is also on the board of Lightrock, a global private equity platform investing in sustainable businesses. She is Chair of Financial Alliance for women, a global peer-to-peer network whose members work in more than 135 countries to build programmes that support women with access to capital, information, education and markets.
She is also a member of the UK Government’s Artificial Intelligence Council. Ann has previously held board positions with ICE, AstraZeneca and Charity Bank and was the lead non-executive for BEIS, the UK Government’s department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.
Until December 2022, Ann served as the executive Vice Chair of Mastercard, having previously been President of International Markets for the company, responsible for the management of all customer-related activities in over 200 countries around the world. During her time at Mastercard, Ann’s role focused on building sustainable, strong growth rates across both mature and emerging markets and she led the company’s expansion into new territories.
Ann spent over 20 years in banking, predominately in the payments and FX businesses. She was the CEO of Transaction Banking at ABN-AMRO, following 15 years in senior operational positions at Citigroup. She ran the payments infrastructure of Citi across 103 countries with circa 6000 staff and she launched the first-ever electronic currency trading platform for Citi during her time in the investment bank.
Ann has a First Class Pure Mathematics degree and honorary doctorate from Sheffield University and a M.Sc. with research into medical statistics and honorary doctorate from Newcastle University. She is also a fellow of London Business School.
According to Anne Cairns, Chairwoman of Cab Payments, “My attitude is that I should just be thinking about how to make sure the stock bounces back by really delivering for the market. I think that’s what’s expected of me by investors and all the people inside the bank. And I really care about that. So I’m much less concerned about my legacy than actually making sure this works for everybody.”
“Based on the revenue run rate to this point in Q4, the Company now expects Group revenue for 2023 to be at least 20% ahead of the prior year (2022: £109.4 million); this is around 17% below previously issued guidance.
This assumes no further changes to these core markets, and any material improvements here could result in a higher Group outturn.“
It is a profit making company making 20% minimum YOY growth in profit so enough of this doom and gloom nonsense…
“Medium-Term Outlook
To this point in 2023, the Company has signed 74 new customers and is confident these customers will deliver good growth into the future. However, should the current market conditions persist in some of our key currency corridors, as described above, the softer exit rate from 2023 could result in 2024 revenue growth falling below the medium-term potential.
The Company remains confident in its ability to continue to deliver strong growth over the medium-to-long-term by executing on the strategy it has outlined. The market in which the Company operates is undergoing a structural shift from incumbent providers to specialists such as CAB Payments. The Company is executing on its plans to take advantage of this shift by investing in and expanding its already strong network of partners, liquidity providers and nostro accounts across a range of markets. This includes further developing its technology solution, expanding its product offering and extending its geographic reach in order to broaden and grow its customer base. As previously detailed, the Company is working on a range of initiatives which should provide significant growth opportunities in the coming years.
Initiatives include:
- a regulatory licence application in The Netherlands, which will open up a substantial new sales channel across the EU;
- a US representative office licence, which will enable sales to the very deep national and regional bank market;
- significant technology upgrades, which would enable an expansion of the Company's capabilities and product set, substantially increasing commercial opportunities;
- the longer-term potential to become a US Dollar clearing institution, which could greatly increase volumes into emerging markets.
While the Company is disappointed with recent market volumes, CAB Payments remains confident that the trends within the business-to-business cross-border FX and Payments market continue to be supportive. The Company has a well-managed cost base and focused investment plans, remains highly profitable and continues to generate significant free cash flow, which will be used to invest in the business and reward shareholders going forward.”