The latest Investing Matters Podcast episode featuring Jeremy Skillington, CEO of Poolbeg Pharma has just been released. Listen here.
That's why I'd much rather government stick to a fiscal policy using tax breaks as incentives rather than grants. That's far more efficient than having to apply for a grant and wait for an answer through a sclerotic central government approvals system.
Beware the unintended consequences.
The chancellor's new/recent funcding announcement is targetting 2025-2030. What will companies do through 2024? Likely they'll put off FID until 2025 to see if they qualify for government support. We've seen this before after all the big funding intentions of COP26 when everything went quiet whilst companies put plans on the back-burner in case there was a handout potentially coming their way.
Let's hope ITM are escalating their international sales to bridge the gap.
I think a share buyback would be a mistake. It's more important that the company doesn't look like running out of money. That's what's gone wrong over at Plug Power. Dennis has already said he doesn't expect positive cashflow until 2027. That's quite a long way off. He needs to concentrate on generating as much revenue as possible and minimise cash burn. The share price will reward a successful company. If we are confident that ITM can make it, we should see the current share price as a gift and load up. It's a pity I'm already fully loaded.
Hi BESST, I'm most interested in your comments/feedback from the battery storage event you attended this week. To repeat my question - Did the attendees/speakers discuss whole life cost of storage technologies, and what was the consensus around that? i.e. Did it seem like something they cared about? Or were they solely focussed on the low price of lithium? Many thanks if you get time to respond.
Plug announced their Q3 earnings and company update after hours last night. They stated that their overall 2023 results have been impacted by supply chain issues affecting North America hydrogen network - visible in California by hydrogen at fuel dispensers being $30 /kg. They also need more money to complete all their massive projects. Combined the market reacted very badly after hours dropping the stock price by 30%.
These issues are quite specific to Plug so shouldn't have a knock on effect on ITM and that seems to be generally the case with this morning's ITM price.
Maybe Plug's supply chain issues shouldn't be considered so negative as it could be argued that demand is outstripping supply, but the need for more money probably can't be anything but dilutive so it's probably fair for its stock price to be so impacted.
Thanks BESST, I thought there was supposed to be an argument for the whole life cost of VFB bringing it close to, or even on par with, the cost of implementing standard Lithium (due to anticipated double the lifetime for VFB). Was that discussed at your event, and what was the concensus around that?
I remember when ITM opened their Australian subsidiary back in 2017 it seemed like all guns blazing.
https://www.lse.co.uk/rns/ITM/new-australian-subsidiary-and-md-contract-update-cxgygd04eksll80.html
Aside from a couple of reference sales and a pilot project I can't say I remember anything coming out of it.
https://www.lse.co.uk/rns/ITM/first-sales-in-australia-tbaju85w30kyb9y.html
https://www.lse.co.uk/rns/ITM/equipment-sale-to-boc-project-in-australia-2411jf44y79qal2.html
Does anyone know if we still have an Australian subsidiary?
Latest update sounds reasonably promising. As long as the controls modification and shutdown procedure doesn't open another can of worms. Delivery in early 2024 would be a welcome relief but will still require careful monitoring to prove in-field lifetime performance and reliability. I hope it triggers a surge in orders.
A few chunky £100k buys going through around 4pm today. On top of L&G's substantial purchase two days ago suggests a few with deep pockets are thinking this is now fairly valued. With any luck we could be near the bottom of this recent nasty sell-off now. I certainly hope so, so I added a few more to my portfolio as well. Fingers crossed.
Nojhead, the 99.9% in the RNS refers to the quality of the hydrogen produced (i.e. no residual ammonia) not the efficiency. You are right that efficiencies for this sort of conversion are nowhere near 99.9% and neither will this one be.
Feels like they're going to have to announce some spectacular orders following the recent "Solar & Storage Live" trade exhibition to stand any chance of collecting on those outstanding warrants for Christmas.
Can they postpone the Warrants again or is it the case they must lapse this time?
How many investors do you think would purcahse the Warrants anyway despite them being above SP? At first glance there may seem an obvious answer - none - but isn't there is a subtle distinction between purchasing shares from the current curculation versus giving your new money directly to the company in exchange for bringing new shares into circulation thus directly helping the company's cash-flow situation? It feels like if you were a large institutionaly investor you might choose to do that.
Here's the Times article for anyone stuck behind the paywall...
https://archive.ph/ipb7B
Weird isn't it. I'm sure most people are perfectly reasonable in real life, but give them a keyboard and a sense of anonymity and all hell breaks loose. It's all a bit mental really. Wish people would just chill and let comments go.
Let's hope Dennis goes on to prove Barclays wrong with their pessimistic view on "difficulty transitioning from small-scale to large-scale operations".
btw did everyone see yesterday's announcements from Plug regarding their recent 500MW and 200MW opportunities. When is ITM going to startregularly announcing that scale. Or better still, not announcing that sort of scale because it's simply commonplace.
** Barclays cuts Nel , ITM Power , and Mcphy Energy , citing scale-up challenges with the hydrogen market's growth expected to commence around 2030
** "We've learnt over the past 18 months the scale-up takes time, and the listed electrolyser companies are not necessarily the best exposed," says the brokerage in a note
** Barclays expects government policy to move to support the development of infrastructure, as it sees capital costs just for production equipment to amount to nearly $500 bln until 2050
** It also predicts an eight-fold growth in the hydrogen market over the next 30 years, but emphasizes electrolyser manufacturers' difficulty transitioning from small-scale to large-scale operations
** It cuts Nel to "equalweight", while giving peers British ITM Power and French Mcphy Energy an "underwight" recommendation
** However, the brokerage favors Nel on "its track record of offering technology-agnostic solutions to large-scale green hydrogen projects"
** Shares of Nel are down 3.8%, among worst performers of pan-European 600 index
Let's hope it climbs above the 50p and stays there through December so we can collect on those outstanding warrants and get some fresh cash injection into the business. If they get that and can turn a few more of those base case pipeline opportunites into confirmed sales then 2024 would be satisfied. Fingers crossed.
Visitinghost, there is one aspect that we technical people should always keep in the back of our mind. Sometimes, just sometimes, politics and economics trumps engineering facts. If a country chooses to subsidise one technology over another then that economic support can overcome, in this case, the technical inefficiencies. I'm not saying it will in this case, but just because something is a technical certainty is no guarantee of a win.
In the short term it certainly appears that hydrogen is all but out of the running in short range ground transport and home heating. But developing hydrogen in all sorts of ways is not off the radar, even politicians are still backing CCS. If in 10 years hydrogen has developed a foothold through CCS then there's no reason that the other sources of hydrogen generation don't get involved too. Technologies like PHE are more likely to generate revenues from waste disposal rather than hydrogen generation so the hydrogen becomes almost a byproduct rather than the main product.
Cards on the table though, I've still written off my investment in PHE just as I have with EQT. Both poorly run it turns out, although PHE could still just about rise from the ashes.