ITM Power Plc

Good morning and welcome to the IT Empower PLC investor presentation. Throughout this recorded meeting, investors will be in listen-only mode. Questions can be submitted at any time by the Q&A tab situated in the right-hand corner of your screen. Just simply type in your question and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question received 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. I'd now like to hand over to the team at IT Empower PLC. Good morning.

Good morning and welcome. We are pleased to present a strong set of results for the first half of the financial year 26. We have yet again delivered our highest six-month revenue performance while maintaining strict cash and operational discipline. Today, in order to set the scene, we will start with a look at the market environment, our operational and financial situation, and our sales activity. I will then explain our business model, talk about operational progress achieved, and provide an update on selected projects. Simon, our CTO, will shed light on our newest product Alpha 50 and give insights on the levers we have and use to lower the cost of hydrogen. He will then talk about ITM's future, our game-changing next tech platform, Kronos. After that, Amy, our CFO, will explain our financial results in more detail and provide guidance for the full year. Okay, let's start with the market and our competition. Hydrogen will play an essential role in the decarbonization of industry and the energy mix, especially in hard-to-abate applications like refining, ammonia, heavy industry and industrial heat. While refineries undoubtedly show the biggest momentum right now, we start to see first hydrogen applications in cement, steel, paper and many other industries. Despite the known macroeconomic headwinds, the momentum is undeniable. The Hydrogen Council and McKinsey have tracked clean hydrogen project investments from 2020 to 2025 and recorded an 11-fold increase from 10 to 110 billion US dollars. The policy situation remains favorable for our industry, and the EU, Nordics and UK are making the most tangible progress, while the US has unsurprisingly stalled. With market consolidation continuing to put pressure on many of our peers, we continue to see a hazy level of sales engagement and strong demand in particular for Neptune 5 and Alpha 50. Let's move on to our operational situation. Commercial activity has progressed well in the first half of the financial year. We were awarded several equipment supply contracts, including for Westnet in Germany and for a cement producer in Spain. We also signed multiple engineering contracts and we were selected for a number of small to large scale projects laying the foundation for future order intake. Importantly, RWE, as a repeat blue chip customer, has reserved 150 megawatt of Neptune 5 capacity with us, following on from our strong project progress on the two Lingen plants, each 100 megawatt in size. I will speak more about these projects later in the presentation. While we wish that some customer FIDs could be taken a bit quicker, we remain agile and exceptionally well-positioned to capitalize on the market dynamics, be it based on our comprehensive and competitive product portfolio or through our new built-on operating business, Hydrofence. Next up, our financial position, which remains strong, underpinned by capital discipline and our focus on operational improvements. Our balance sheet is increasingly seen as a competitive advantage by customers. Later, Simon will shed more light on this topic. Now, I don't want to take Amy's part away, but despite record revenues, our firm contracted order backlog continued to grow and init the share of profitable contracts as we work through the few remaining legacy projects. As I already mentioned, sales activity has remained healthy, with a notably increasing share of industrial customers in the mix. Neptune 5 continues to be our most demanded product, and given very high early interest, we expect our new Alpha 50 product to become just as successful. We are also pleased to see growing momentum in our home market, the UK, where we were selected for a number of HA1 and HA2 government-backed projects already, including the Unipa Hamba 120 MW project, which has been progressing well through feed towards FID. We have also signed our first Poseidon contract for the HA1 modern energy project, for which our customer expects to be able to take FID in the short term. Also post-period end, we have seen continued momentum. Among other successes, we were selected for two grid balancing projects in Germany, totaling 710 megawatts in size, and we were awarded a 12.5 megawatt contract by Octopus Energy Generation, one of the first Havan projects in the UK to have taken FID. Our strategic priorities, you have seen them before, were shaped by a dynamically evolving market environment and unsteady macroeconomic conditions. They have served us well and while many of our peers are struggling, they have helped us grow sustainably, steadily and with the necessary patience. And they remain fully valid. You can be assured that we will continue to closely observe the market environment and that we are staying adaptable and responsive. Now on this slide, I'd like to explain you our business model and take you on the journey of building an integrated hydrogen company with significant growth potential. It is the journey of becoming a one-stop shop for customers who need electrolyzer equipment, complete hydrogen plants or simply just hydrogen. Today we are proudly looking back on 26 years of innovating, designing and manufacturing electrolysers. Electrolyzer technology we and many of our customers believe is the best in the world. We have learned to engineer these electrolyzers into full green hydrogen production plants, and over time, we have acquired the capability to perform the necessary EPC services by ourselves. Our newest product, Alpha 50, is the culmination of that. We are also offering our customers comprehensive after-sales services to help them to best operate and maintain our plants and to maximize the value they can derive from the use of our products. The newest pillar of our business model, Hydropulse, is the logical next step on our growth path. Following in the footsteps of the big gas makers of our time, once you have the leading technology and the capability to deploy it competitively, then you have a solid foundation for a build, own and operate model. Hydropulse will buy the electrolysers and related EPC services from ITM and operate plants to supply hydrogen to industrial customers under long-term off-take contracts. This increases the group's factory utilization, provides plannable recurring income streams and is highly cash generative. HydroPulse is poised to play a key role in creating shareholder value and will be able to offer green hydrogen at a cost level not seen before in our industry. Our operations have been further strengthened. Besides countless day-to-day improvements, we were able to cut electrolysis time during end-of-line testing in half, saving precious energy costs and increasing throughput significantly. In our last update, we spoke about our planned Neptune 5 assembly line and our adjacent second factory. It is now in full operation and the Neptune containers move from build station to build station until they are completed. This efficient production line layout allows us to meet the growing demand for our best selling product. The next and even bigger improvement is our new AutoStacker robot assembly line for our stacks. We took our time to develop a tailored machine and validated the process properly. The AutoStacker marks a major leap in factory automation and is capable of producing more than two gigawatts of stacks per year. Last time I featured our 20 MW Neptune 5 project for FDE in Norway. This time I want to highlight a project we won just about a month ago. Octopus Energy Generation awarded us a 12.5 MW contract for their government-backed North Fleet project in the UK. The green hydrogen will be used to decarbonize the paper-making process, a hard-to-avate industry at Kimberly Clark's UK mill, which manufactures Andrex products. Hydrogen will replace natural gas in a new dual-fuel boiler system, which can operate on either of the two gases, offering operational flexibility. The second project I want to highlight is in Germany. I already spoke about RWE reserving 150 MW of Neptune 5 capacity with us, following their satisfaction with our delivery against the world's biggest PEM electrolyzer in Lingen. So let's talk about the project. The 200 MW installation is divided into two 100 MW plants, Lingen 1 and Lingen 2, which we are building with our partner Linde Engineering. The installation of the first 100 MW, Lingen 1, was successfully completed at the end of 2025, marking the completion of the first plant of its size anywhere in the world. For ITM, this meant producing and shipping 50 Triton skids and 150 stacks, which have all been successfully installed into the Linde balance of plant and pressure tested on site. Importantly, we have delivered everything on time for this massive plant. I hope the photos convey this gain. Lingen 2, the second 100 MW plant, is in full construction swing, with all skids and 40% of stacks already installed. Yet again, all on time. With this, I would like to hand over to Simon to talk about Alpha 50.

Thank you, Dennis. Since the last market update, we've introduced another product to our portfolio, Alpha 50. A full scope 50 megawatt green hydrogen plant. This was triggered by two key pieces of market feedback. The first was that a full scope offering from a single supplier is highly desirable. We've seen that with the success of the Neptune product line, where everything from AC power and water all of the way through to high pressure and high purity hydrogen is provided in one package. This minimises integration complexities and splits supplier responsibilities, making it a straightforward and more competitive deployment. The second is the demand for ever-larger systems, which have previously been the domain of the EPC stick-built approach. Alpha50 fills a gap in the market, providing a skid-mounted, standardised and pre-fabricated solution compatible with scale. As is common to all ITM products, it has the state-of-the-art Trident Stack platform at its heart. It has a highly optimised footprint and is designed for outdoor operation over a very wide temperature range. Being modular, it can be adjusted in 10MW blocks, providing flexibility for a range of project sizes without needing to reinvent the wheel. This means, for example, that Alpha could be configured into a 60 or 70MW plant. The product was introduced in October 2025 with a price of 50 million euros for the 50 megawatt system. Just like Neptune 5 that Dennis referred to earlier, it's landed very well in the market and we're already pursuing several live opportunities. At this point, I'd like to take a step back and answer a question which we frequently get asked. Let's take a look at the factors that influence the cost of green hydrogen. I break this down into three categories. CAPEX, how much does it cost to buy the necessary equipment? OPEX, how much does it cost to operate the equipment? And customer confidence, how much risk is perceived that requires contingency in the project budget? Improvements in these areas have positive impacts on business cases, making green viable in more and more applications. CAPEX first. The cost of an electrolyser can be broken down relatively simply. The stacks account for approximately one third of the costs and the balance of plant, including the power conversion system, accounts for the rest. There are several levers available to ITM to address CAPEX and I'll give a few examples. From a technology perspective, increasing current density has a significant effect on stack cost reduction. Doubling current density doubles the hydrogen production rate from the same stack, meaning half the number of stacks are required for a given hydrogen demand. This is why ITM pioneered high current density and has been providing high current density stacks commercially for several years. I would add that in parallel to making the stacks work harder in this way, we've done so while both reducing the use of high value precious metals and increasing stack efficiency at the same time. Something that is a credit to our technical teams that continue to push the technology further. From a supply chain perspective, standardizing the product portfolio means fewer parts to manage and more efficient repetitive processes. Strategic relationships with key suppliers ensures priority access to the best equipment at a negotiated price. Working closely with suppliers in this way maximizes joint learning, builds trust, and enables both sides to work together to drive down costs and optimize the offering. A high-quality manufacturing system minimizes waste and rework costs while enabling processes to be streamlined. This also saves energy and people cost for repeated end-of-line testing. On-site construction costs are minimized due to pre-assembly and containerization. Smaller footprint requirements and the full scope nature of products eliminates complex on-site works. OPEX The operational cost of a green hydrogen plant is dominated by the consumption of electricity. While there are several power consumers in a system, the stacks account for over 90% of the electricity used. Therefore, improvements to stack efficiency have a disproportionate impact on reducing the molecule costs. Through our in-house IP and our joint research and development with Gore for membranes, our stacks benefit from a market-leading efficiency. We have also demonstrated and published extremely low rates of in-field performance degradation keeping operational costs low and predictable over long periods. The ability of the electrolyser to modulate rapidly enables access to lower cost electricity. The plant can also attract revenues for providing balancing services for the electricity grid. And waste heat can be recovered and utilized in adjacent processes, further optimizing overall energy usage. Ongoing maintenance programmes are lean and supported by a remote operating centre that provides real-time support and helps maximise plant availability. Finally, customer confidence. Every customer business case builds in buffers for risk and the main risk questions for customers and their lenders are usually technology related. That's why the increasing availability of operating data from real industrial deployments is so important. Having gained data from real world, small and large scale applications, we've been able to show customers performance data that they can build into their models with increasing confidence. This in turn has enabled ITM to develop specific product guarantees that help customers achieve the certainty they need. We're proud to have received repeat business from several blue chip companies, and I personally see this as an important indicator of customer traction and trust. Combine this with the reference plants mentioned earlier and our strong balance sheet, the bankability dial is moving in the right direction. This is particularly important when project financing is required. From capex and opex minimization to maximizing customer confidence, ITM has been active in all these areas. Our continued development activities focus on real-world deliveries and operational learnings are the foundation of tangible improvements that are driving down the cost of green hydrogen production for our customers. Let's take a look into the future. In due course, Trident will be succeeded by Kronos. And this will be a genuine game changer. Kronos is our next generation stack platform, and it benefits from all our experiences. It will be lower cost, higher performing and more compact. Now remember that the stack is the heart of all of our products, such as Neptune and Alpha. Therefore, improvements to the stack mean improvements to the full product range, making them even more competitive. Using the market leading Trident stack as a benchmark, Let's take a look at some of the changes that Kronos will bring. We've reduced part count by over 50% and made it significantly easier and faster to build. And none of this comes from making slight tweaks. This is the result of a major exercise, rethinking each element of the stack. We're targeting 40% cost reduction, and Kronos has been designed to maximise component reuse and recyclability up to 90%. A single stack will be rated at 2 MW in base operation, tripling the capacity compared to Trident, and it's capable of up to 2.5 MW. We're targeting a 10% efficiency improvement, despite further reducing precious metal loading. The footprint is reduced by over 50%, achieving an unmatched power density of 2.5 MW per square metre, making it compatible with even the most congested industrial sites. The weight has been reduced by over 50%, making it easier to handle and transport. All of these attributes are focused on further reducing the cost of green hydrogen production. Kronos represents a genuine step change and will continue to innovate and improve. The development and validation of Kronos is well underway and progressing to plan. We've deliberately not guided for a specific release date because we're doing this thoroughly and ensuring that we get the most important technological foundation to all of our products right.