All eyes on former hydrogen darling ITM Power’s results amid turbulence for green tech players
ITM Power will finally unveil its results on Thursday this week, with the troubled hydrogen specialist having delayed the announcement this summer – amid growing expectations of plunging revenues and swelling losses.
The London-listed company told investors last month that its auditors Grant Thornton needed more time to look at the company’s books, with shareholders still awaiting a trading update to April this year – following a series of profit warnings over the past 12 months.
Its share price has suffered from the uncertainty, plummeting from 402p per share last October to a nadir of just 67p per share last month – a more than an 80 per cent slide in its share price – suffering a series of steep drops in tandem with successively gloomy announcements,
Based in Sheffield, ITM Power specialises in making electrolysers, devices which use electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen – a fundamental part of green hydrogen generation.
The government is targeting 10GW of hydrogen generation by the end of the decade and the company hoped to ride the wave of demand for heavy goods vehicles, light aircraft, storage and potentially some heating systems.
However, it has struggled to scale its business in its bid to become a volume manufacturer of electrolysers – suffering delays to its signature Leuna project in Germany with investors also awaiting updates on the 24MW development in Norway it sold to Yara last year – which has entered site testing.
The company reported revenues of £5.6m and pretax losses of £39.8m up to April 2022 and revealed in January it expected a further £2m decline in revenues this year, and for the company to suffer much larger losses of £85-95m.
Late last year, ITM brought in Dennis Schulz to replace its long-serving chief executive Graham Cooley, who pledged to make the business more focused and to enhance its cost management.
This has included the company shoring up funds with job cuts of more than 100 staff, with the company expecting to hold a net cash position of between £245m-£280m – and a recent deal to dispose its stake in a refuelling joint venture with Motive Fuels.
The company is far from alone in new technology groups reporting troubles this year – with AMTE Power, the homegrown battery cell maker, scrambling for cash to avoid administration.
It has threatened to move future operations stateside, calling on the government to improve the country’s investment climate in response to vast subsidies in Europe and the US.
Separately, Britishvolt’s takeover from Aussie battery specialist Recharge Industries is shrouded in uncertainty after the company missed a funding deadline.
Administrators EY are still locked in talks with the company over pushing through the agreed takeover.