Fusion Fuel Green PLC (HTOO) 2022 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Fusion Fuel Green's fourth-quarter 2022 investor update. My name is Ben Schwarz, and I'm Head of Investor Relations at Fusion Fuel. I would like to first remind everyone that this call may contain forward-looking statements, including but not limited to the company's expectations, predictions, the financial business performance, which are based on numerous assumptions around sales, margins, competitive factors, industry performance, and other factors which cannot be predicted.

Forward-looking statements are inherently subject to risks, uncertainties, and assumptions, and they are not guarantees of performance. I encourage you to read the disclaimer slide in the investor presentation for a discussion of the risks that may affect our business or may cause our assumptions proved incorrect. The company is under no obligation and expressly disclaims any obligation to update, alter, or otherwise revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, except as required by law.

Thanks again for joining us today. So I'll just quickly run through the agenda for the next hour. So we'll kick things off with an overview of our value proposition. The management team will share fourth-quarter highlights and financial results, a technology update, and the latest on our commercial strategy before wrapping up with a discussion of our milestones for 2023.

We'll then open up the floor for a 0.5-hour of facilitated Q&A. And as in our previous quarterly calls, questions can be entered in the chatbox in the webcast platform at any point during the next hour. You can also submit your questions to the Investor Relations mailbox at ir@fusion-fuel.eu. So with that, let's proceed to the following slide.

So we'll begin with an overview of how we at Fusion Fuel are creating value in the nascent green hydrogen market. So at Fusion Fuel, we are in the business of developing and delivering cost-effective clean hydrogen solutions to accelerate the global energy transition. At the heart of our value proposition is our patented miniaturized PEM electrolyzer, the HEVO.

Our simplified and scalable technology democratizes access to green hydrogen and gives us a material advantage in the markets in which we play. And that's on a number of ways: by unlocking the advantages of mass production; by positioning us to create bespoke, fit-for-purpose solutions; and by enabling co-located and integrated deployment of our hydrogen generators.

We'll talk further about some of the innovations that are within the HEVO itself, but what it comes down to is that we're able to deliver highly competitive, levelized costs for small to mid-scale green hydrogen projects. This is a segment that's often overlooked but aligns with where much of the commercial demand is today, particularly for the verticals that ascribe the highest value to green hydrogen.

I also want to drive home the reality that despite progress, distribution infrastructure for hydrogen remains a key downstream bottleneck and that available solutions for moving hydrogen from sources of large-scale production to demand centers add both meaningful cost. and complexity. We've estimated north of $2 per kilogram for the cost of last mile distribution and logistics. So we believe that co-located and scalable production is and will remain an extremely attractive offer for the foreseeable future.

So with that, I'll pass it over to Frederico Chaves, Co-Head of Fusion Fuel, for an update on the fourth quarter and subsequent events.

Great. Thank you very much, Ben, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. So I just want to start with some highlights for the first quarter -- the fourth quarter and also from the first quarter as of today. So in the fourth quarter, we announced EUR7 million of tech sales that have been contracted.

We also announced our first projects in the US and Italy. In addition, we were awarded a EUR36 million grant from Portugal's C-05 agenda, and we completed the EUR9 million sale leaseback of our Benavente facilities real estate.

In the first quarter, excitedly, we signed Portugal's first green hydrogen offtake contract with Dourogás. We also signed a EUR10 million grant for a C-14 project in Portugal. And from our joint venture partners in Spain, we have exciting news recently that we were selected for a EUR2.5 million tech sale tender in Spain, and we were awarded a EUR3.4 million grant for a project in Spain as well under their PERTE program.

Lastly, as part of our efforts to develop strategic partnerships, we signed in Spain as well an MOU with a leading logistics equivalent provider to create green hydrogen logistic equipment projects together. This is truly a really exciting and strategic move, and we hope to be able to disclose more details to you all about this partnership in the near future.

Now on to the financials, in the fourth quarter, we recorded an operating loss of EUR13 million. This is an increase of EUR5 million from the third quarter, driven by significant noncash items. Our cost of goods sold consist of two main items: Exolum-related impairments of EUR2.5 million, relating to further costs incurred on this first third-party project that we undertook.

As disclosed in our September financials, we together with Exolum are working to pursue innovation awards to partially offset this contract loss. We are also taking an inventory provision of EUR2.9 million. This has been the case for us as well as others in the industry. The speed of technology evolution means that we have items that the value needs discounting and in certain cases, reworked to be suited for our latest tech developments. Both of these are noncash expenses.

During the fourth quarter, our operating expenses increased by EUR2.3 million, driven by significant nonrecurring items listed in footnote three and that I will address shortly. Before I do so, I just want to highlight the operating costs for the full year.

So for 2022, we have provided guidance of operating costs of around EUR14 million, but given the significant one-offs, the total operating costs for 2022 are around EUR18 million. The EUR4 million difference is mainly driven by the costs identified here in the Q4 figures. Firstly, we reserved certain production capacity with our production partner, which, given project delays, we did not use mainly to avoid spending more money on raw material purchases, but this has led to a EUR1.5 million charge. The production agreement for 2023 has been halted to avoid this potential charge in the future.

In Q4, we also started amortizing our HEVO gen-one development costs, and we will amortize this over its expected useful life of three years. In addition, we had EUR700,000 of R&D costs related to our demonstration plans in Q4, and this totals around EUR1 million for the full year for the same cost item. During Q4, we saw service and professional fees of EUR700,000, again, one-offs, mainly driven by the sale leaseback transaction costs, some strategic partner engagements, and also legal fees.

There are significant one-off items which we were not able to foresee when we first provided our 2022 guidance. At the end of the presentation, we'll provide guidance for 2023. To note and I think importantly and hopefully, the slide will develop in coming quarters. In Q1 of this year, we have already started invoicing clients for technology sales.

During the fourth quarter, we strengthened our cash resources through the following activities, principally our sale leaseback efforts. We were able to secure net inflows of EUR7.5 million, which we received net of the security deposit and some deferred considerations. So the EUR7.5 million was the net of the EUR9 million sale leaseback sale.

We also, from VAT, we saw inflows of EUR3.8 million, mostly on reimbursement claims that we made to the Portuguese authorities. We have submitted additional payments in the first quarter for a significant portion of the EUR3.7 million receivable balance as of year-end.

In addition, we received EUR3.0 million as a prepayment of a portion of the C-05 grant awarded. The very fast turnaround time of this payment -- so we were awarded the grant in December, and we actually received the reinvestment cash in December -- reemphasizes Portugal's commitment to the hydrogen business and to operationalize it as quickly as possible.

During the fourth quarter, we raised EUR1.5 million through the ATM shelf and a further 2.3 million -- sorry, dollars, $1.5 million for the ATM shelf, and a further $2.3 million was raised prior to mid-February this year.

We continue to see increased efficiency in the grant process in Portugal. Recently, the Portuguese prime minister signed the terms of acceptance of our EUR10 million C-14 grant award. And our team is already working on submitting the prepayment application for this project, similar to the C-05 process. In addition, we expect to be able to operationalize additional drawdowns under our C-05 grant award as 2023 progresses.

Grants bring substantial value to our projects. And in the early stage of this emerging green hydrogen market, it makes many projects viable. We'll continue to secure grants where possible, and we'll continue to add to the nearly EUR65 million grants already awarded to us.

I would like to now take a moment to truly drive home what makes our technology so special as we are unique in the market. Our technology centers around the HEVO, as you see pictured there on the slide. It is at the heart of both the HEVO-Solar and the HEVO-Chain.

It has a unique membrane electrochemical cell design that allows for reduced power system costs. This is a major cost driver for any centralized electrolyzer. It also protects against system-wide degeneration and issues as our membranes operate independently and not in the traditional stack. It allows for a modular approach using this miniaturized electrolyzer, which reduces O&M costs and complexity as well as system downtime as modules can be replaced individually.

We can use inexpensive structural materials and simplified engineering and assembly, which reduces costs further. All of this enables us to create an industry-leading cost of green hydrogen, which Ben showed previously, an advantage that is amplified further in small to mid-scale projects.

To note, we have two core products. We have our HEVO-Solar, which is, for those of you who've been following us for some time, are hopefully very familiar with. This as an integrated solar-to-hydrogen generator. It integrates the CPV technology to our miniaturized PEM electrolyzer, the HEVO, and allows to have a grid-independent and modular solution that requires good solar radiation levels and available land.

In addition, we also have the HEVO-Chain, which is also modular and scalable and a highly, highly efficient PEM solution. The HEVO-Chain is a containerized PEM solution that uses our miniaturized PEM electrolyzer, the HEVO, working in a series. The interesting thing is it becomes location and power agnostic. It can be deployed, connected to any source of energy.

So we have received questions about what does the European Union's -- what are the implications of European Union's consideration of nuclear power as renewable? Well, HEVO-Chain can work with any source of energy, including nuclear. So we actually have a product that fits for several types of requirements.

I'll now pass on to Zach.

Thank you, Frederico, and it's nice seeing everybody this morning. I want to start with a quote from the great Jack Welch. Strategy is simply resource allocation. When you strip away all the noise, that's what it comes down to. Strategy means making clear-cut choices about how to compete. You cannot be everything to everybody no matter what the size of your business is or how deep your pockets are.

This is very timely, not only for Fusion, but the entire industry. In such a massive addressable market, we need to boil down to the core: what makes us competitive? Our key assets are the HEVO proprietary technology, our strategic land and grants we've secured, and our people. Our business model is transitioning more to a solutions provider than just a technology company as that allows our technology to ramp up production, getting numerous facilities operational to build a track record, while getting to scale through hydrogen production focusing on development.

First, the HEVO technology is particularly competitive at less than 10 megawatts projects, so we're focusing our efforts on small to mid-sized projects. We see most of the immediate market in the next couple of years as under 10-megawatt projects, and have a strong pipeline of opportunities to execute this. As previously noted, the market is mobility, logistics centers, industrial, and gas-blending operations.

Regarding our technology, we have collaborated with upstream technology partners such as Ballard on the Evora project. And recently, we signed a collaboration agreement with a global equipment provider to help us build out our mobility and logistic applications. Over the next few years, our plan is to ramp up production by investing in Benavente and expanding our addressable market with HEVO-Chain. This allows us to focus on all of Europe and North America as our core markets versus just markets with strong solar radiance.

After an assessment of ourselves, our production capacity cannot meet the demands of our project portfolio, and our tech sales are largely driven from our development efforts. For these reasons, our development portfolio is so strategic. Developing our own projects allows us to control our own destiny by having more control over our future tech sales pipeline. Our team has done an incredible job on establishing the equivalent of approximately 200 megawatts of hydrogen capacity in land that's been secured, and EUR50 million in grants have been secured.

As we continue to work on business development opportunities, we're seeing a clear distinction between projects that are under 10 megawatts and larger-scale projects. As I noted, this allows us to develop the current market, which is still in a nascent stage, which are mainly smaller projects while also having an eye to the future on larger projects and larger demands.

With our technology production estimated to be 250 megawatts of capacity until the end of 2025 and our development pipeline being substantially larger at estimated 1.5 gigawatts, we look to maximize shareholder value by also working with other technology providers to execute our portfolio of projects. This is a strategy we already kicked off and announced last year in our agreement with Toshiba to explore solid oxide solution for certain large-scale projects. This strategy solidifies Fusion Fuel as a holistic green hydrogen solutions provider.

To do this, we have decided to create multiple development partnerships. First, we have Fusion Fuel Spain, which is doing an incredible job in building a pipeline of projects in Spain that's grown to 500 megawatts of high-quality opportunities that are in various stages of development. The team in Spain continues to do a fantastic job.

Secondly, we are creating a development company to focus on building out development opportunities, focusing on the North American market, one of the most important hydrogen markets currently. Given our extensive development experience, this will be led by myself and Jason Baran. We'll continue to de-risk our portfolio by working with world-class engineering, procurement, and construction companies to minimize construction risks and sign long-term customer agreements to provide certainty of recurring revenues and EBITDA.

These key elements, combined with what we've already initiated with entitling our portfolio, will make this attractive to third-party capital. We continue to work with investors at both the project and broader development portfolio level. Our North American pipeline currently stands at over 250 megawatts of capacity, and the balance of our portfolio of projects in Portugal and Europe is how we get to an aggregated total of 1.5 gigawatts. We will have 200 megawatts of potential technology sales from the development activities and potentially over 30 megawatts of tech sales from third parties.

As more and more of the development projects convert to operational projects utilizing HEVO technology, that will build up our track record and will make it easier to do a traditional tech sales model. And we also benefit from having potentially recurring revenues from the development projects that again will further de-risk the overall business.

Fusion Fuel's strategy creates a diversified revenue model with traditional third-party technology sales and sales from our projects created by Fusion Fuel Spain and our other development company. We're currently focusing on -- we're currently forecasting over 230 megawatts of potential technology sales until the end of 2025 based on our current pipeline and our forecast.

Our third-party technology sales are focused on Iberian Peninsula and Italy. We're seeing approximately 10 megawatts of potential sales this year. And as Fred highlighted earlier, we have recently been awarded another mobility project and winning another grant in Spain. We'll continue to explore additional technology sales and work on them in the current and our other core markets.

We have also started commissioning the Exolum plant and signed contracts for Alcala project and began invoicing to our client KEME in Portugal. All this brings our committed tech sales to a total of EUR12.5 million for 2023. We are projecting additional opportunities to expand the technology sale of Alcala, also to complete the sale of our recently awarded project in Spain and a few other near-term opportunities to bring our target to over EUR25 million in revenue this year.

We expect exciting things from our partnership with Duferco and are forecasting further opportunities in 2024 and 2025 with them based on our recent efforts. Fusion Fuel Spain and our other development entity have a pipeline, as I noted, of over 200 megawatts of tech sales for Fusion Fuel into 2025. This strategy also monetizes most of our grants and provides a steady diet of project pipeline for Fusion while we build up more traditional tech sales model in our core markets.

As noted earlier, our strategy is to focus on creating value for our shareholders in project development and our technology. We see the benefits to Fusion Fuel being that we execute potentially up to the 200 megawatts of tech sales, as I've noted, generate potential equity returns via recurring revenue and fees from creating value in the development process. We also benefit from building a footprint and track record in five core markets, Portugal, Spain, Italy, USA, and Canada.

Our development strategy will be to continue entitling our projects through securing strategic real estate grants where available and licensing these projects. Secondly, we'll commercialize our pipeline by securing offtake agreements and signing EPC contracts to de-risk the construction. We recently signed our first agreement with Dourogás, and we plan to continue building off this by signing additional offtake agreements as our projects move towards final investment decision.

This approach will increase shareholder value by monetizing the grants, the land, and selling our technology. We'll also potentially capture upside and development while controlling our own destiny through having our own project portfolio we've created that gives a credible backlog of tech sales. As part of creating this development entity, we'll opportunistically look to bring in third-party capital to support the funding of the projects, both in the development phase and the construction phase.

The more we entitle and commercialize our portfolio of projects, the more attractive the portfolio will be to third parties. Fusion will balance how far it takes the portfolio prior to bringing in third-party capital to maximize shareholder value while also keeping an eye on our financial exposure. This will be managed by myself, Frederico, and other senior managers of the current team, and we'll be adding additional members to support in this effort.

Frederico, back to you.

Great. Thank you, Zach. So now I'd like to provide some overview and forward guidance on 2023 and outlook of our 2024, 2025 core figures. So I want to note that for 2023, we're providing guidance that we're seeking to achieve EUR25 million of revenues. This is based on five projects, of which EUR13 million of those have already been contracted.

As mentioned before, we've already invoiced clients for technology sales. At this point in time, we've invoiced a little over EUR1 million. For some of these projects, we're also selling the balance of plants and the equipment. So increases the revenue per megawatt that we're able to secure. I want to make that clear just that people don't simply divide these megawatts by the revenues to try and calculate the cost per megawatt of our system.

We'd like to note that for 2024, we're aiming for EUR80 million in revenues, and for 2025 over EUR140 million in revenue. These are largely driven by projects that we are developing ourselves. This is part of that development effort of ourselves and the development partnerships that we have. So those projects are clearly identified. As I commented, the overall pipeline is 1.5 gigawatts, and we're talking about 220 megawatts for both 2024 and 2025 of fuel tech sales.

As noted, we have not reflected any additional income, but we expect to realize from our development activities such as fees for possible equity returns or shares. The reason for that is that at this stage, it's too early. The value of such fees for such -- or equity returns that we might have will be dependent on how mature the project is when an investor or partner comes in. So at the moment, it's too early to be able to accurately forecast what those revenues or income would be.

I want to note that we are aiming to be cash flow self-sufficient and be able to deliver positive net income in 2024. If successful, we will be one of the first companies in this industry to do so. Also want to highlight, as we always have some core milestones for 2023. Naturally, I have not included booking of first revenues, but that is obviously implied with the previous targets that I noted earlier.

So from our production, we want to keep expanding our production capacity and build out our nominal facility in Benavente. We want to finalize the development of HEVO-Chain. As we announced, we want to be putting it out in the market commercially in first half of 2024.

From our commercial side, we want to make sure that we have obviously all revenue for 2023 contracted. As mentioned, we are well advanced on that stage, with already EUR13 million there and the remainder coming from very specific projects that are very advanced at this stage, and as well to convert our 2024 pipeline into confirmed orders.

We've clearly done a good job of securing the grants for company-owned plants. So already, at this stage, I'd say we've outperformed any expectations on the amounts of grants that we could hope to secure for all projects. We'll keep developing projects that are in our pipeline and of course, secure the required license and permits for our portfolio.

Safety is always a core alert for us, and this is -- we want to make sure that we keep safety at the forefront of our mind. That's why we make sure that we keep it here in our key priorities for 2023 as always.

As the industrial market takes shape and is taking shape, we've noticed that our advantage in our technology solution for a particular market needs become clearer and clearer. In addition, the advantage of our project development pipeline sets us apart from our competition.

So we hope that with our ability to be delivering revenues and delivering on the projects we have in 2023 that the market and the industry recognizes the clear value that Fusion Fuel has, and we're able to change the course that obviously our market cap and our share has taken over the recent history.

So with that, I'll pause, and I'll open up to Q&A.

[Thanks], Federico, and thanks to everyone who has submitted questions thus far. We have quite a few. So we'll begin with some questions from Chris Tsung at Webber Research. He asks about the Dourogás offtake agreement, which was announced a couple of weeks back, specifically around the duration of that agreement, the volumes considered in price, and also how will the hydrogen be transported from Evora where it's being produced to where it will be injected.

Would you like me to take that, Frederico?

(inaudible - microphone inaccessible)

I'll work in -- thanks, Ben. I'll work in the inverse. So we plan to take it from Evora and connect it via pipeline. We're working with the local pipeline operator Floene on connecting to the grid. The agreement is a market-based price contract.

It's based on the forward-looking natural gas pricing and carbon offsets, and the volume is based on us nominating volume from the project. So right now, we have sufficient volume out of the Evora project, and that was what the plan was, but we could have opportunity to expand with future projects through having this be a good solution for selling our merchant capacity.

Thanks, Zach. Second question is around the C-05 funding, which as a reminder was EUR36 million to Fusion Fuel's consortium, of which Fusion Fuel would receive EUR22.5 million for its r H2 HEVO-SINES project. Will the company receive all of that EUR22.5 million when FID is reached, or will it be distributed as certain milestones are achieved?

So it's distributed when certain milestones are achieved, and actually as equipment is delivered, there is a certain amount that is available. And we have actually received related to expenses that we expect to have for development costs of the project. That is the case for C-05 and also for the C-14.

Yeah. Finally, this one is for Zach. Any update on the Bakersfield project in California with Electus? What is needed to reach FID? And when is your expectation of when that's achieved?

Thanks, Ben. So we are concluding our concept study with Black & Veatch. We plan to do that next month, and then we'll make a decision with our partners at Electus to move to the next phase of work, which is pre-feasibility and feasibility, which is permitting.

On the subsequent calls and the first-quarter call, we'll provide more guidance on timing. So I don't have the report just yet, but our anticipation is a late-2024, early-2025 final investment decision from that project due to the permitting timeline in California.

Thanks. Moving now to some questions from Erwan Kerouredan at Royal Bank of Canada. He asks about the revenue recognition timeline for Exolum. Frederico, if you can touch on that.

So we can start recognizing revenues for Exolum once the acceptance of the project starts. That will be dependent on how the commissioning process goes. As noted, during March, we will start the commissioning process.

And there's a separate question around what are those, the expected revenues related to that project, if we can share?

So we expect that all of the EUR13 million primarily that was already contracted, just [five two million] is related to Exolum.

Thanks. Second question from Erwan is, with respect to impairment charges, is there any expectation of additional impairment in the first quarter of '23 and beyond?

Not at this stage. In fact, if we had, we would have already had to recognize it in Q4, even if it was -- even if we only learned about it subsequently. So at this stage, we believe we have taken the impairments.

Great. Last question here, what's your view on the latest policy developments in the EU in response to the Inflation Reduction Act here in the US? Do you expect additional funding potential in the near term or incremental commercial opportunities as a result of the latest developments, whether that's the EU green industrial plan or the delegated acts. I know we touched on that somewhat in our shareholder letter, but if you have any thoughts on that.

So I can start and then, Zach, please add. But actually, I wanted to advice on a high level, I would say that the IRA has been phenomenal for the industry. I know this is not regarding Europe, but obviously it has pushed Europe and other markets to act. So we are now seeing Europe. We're also seeing Australia start developing similar activities and start beefing up their support for the hydrogen industry.

So we find this absolutely exciting, the movement in Europe. Naturally, there has been obviously some pressure from the nuclear side to include nuclear energy under the renewable cap. Again, for us, this is indifferent for us from a HEVO-Chain perspective as that is power-source agnostic. So we're thrilled to see the developments. We believe this will continue.

We've already been hearing from Spain that they are actually increasing the grants available. In fact, they are already reopening some of the PERTE programs to consider funding some of the projects that were not awarded. So we do expect that trend in Europe to continue.

Hopefully, similar to the US, there will also be more support on the demand side and not only on the CapEx front. In Portugal, that is expected to take shape with a hydrogen auction later this year, where similar to the energy market, there will be sort of, let's call it, feed-in tariffs for green hydrogen blended into the natural gas grid. We do expect to see more of that also emerging in Europe.

Zach, do you want to add to any color there?

No. [outside] two things, though. Also another market that we're in, in Canada, is also counterbalancing against what the Inflation Reduction Act has been doing by working to pass a 40% investment tax credit in hydrogen, which will help reduce CapEx. And I'd say the last piece would be California is a leader in the US and just generally even in environmental and renewable markets.

And the low-carbon fuel standard credit that has really helped drive the mobility market in California for hydrogen refuel infrastructure, we're seeing that replicated or being discussed be replicated in other states throughout the United States, which will help expand mobility, which is a kind of a core market for Fusion Fuel.

Thanks, guys. There's a question here about the green hydrogen tender that Portugal recently announced. Frederico, you just spoke to that. The question was whether we, Fusion Fuel, intends to apply for parts of this tender. I think you might as well answer that explicitly, even though you already did.

So I mean, the hydrogen also in Portugal, yes, absolutely. We expect to not only participate for our own projects, but also likely participate together with partners as well.

Thanks. Pivoting to HEVO-Chain briefly, a couple questions here around customer reaction to or early indications of interest from prospective customers regarding the HEVO-Chain.

I think there's been significant interests in the HEVO-Chain, with even existing partners that were already familiar with HEVO-Solar as well as new. Obviously, the fact that it opens up substantial additional markets for us helps. But the HEVO-Chain solution, the fact that it is modular, scalable seems to be facing a very good note in discussions that we've been having.

Zach, you want to add to that?

Yeah. Only thing I would add is the unnamed recent announcement of a global equipment provider really is a good fit with our HEVO-Chain product, and what we think that there'll be a lot of opportunities that come out of that in the logistic and mobility market. So what we're excited about are the product, the advantages the product has.

And we're also seeing opportunities just based on the design of HEVO-Chain. As Frederico said, it's quite unique compared to our peers. We're seeing a lot of opportunity within curtailed power and being able to offer solutions that makes us quite unique, putting costs aside compared to any of our peers, just based on the fundamental design of the system. So we're excited about the mobility market and really tapping into curtailed power opportunities within the European market and gas blending and other applications.

Thanks, Zach. Question here from Amit Dayal at HC Wainwright. How much do you expect from development economics on a per-megawatt basis? And can you talk about the costs that will be incurred upfront and potentially supported by the balance sheet?

Yeah. So it's a great question. I'm smiling because every project is unique, right? So what the plan is, and I should have addressed it in the front end of the presentation, the plan going forward on future quarterly calls is, as projects reach a final investment decision or we close a final investment decision, we're going to highlight those in the presentation.

So that way, we can talk about what it means to Fusion Fuel from a technology sales standpoint. What does it mean -- how do we finance it? Did we get development fees? Did we get equity returns out of it or an equity ownership interest?

And then I think the last piece is the plan for the company is to continue seeding the development of the projects until there's a balance. As I noted in my remarks, there's a balance of seeding the projects until a point where we can create enough value to bring in third-party capital. But the entire plan is to bring in a third-party capital to fund the developments and fund the projects once they reach final investment decision. That is not in our plan for Fusion Fuel to do that and take on that capital exposure.

Fred, do you want to add anything?

Oh, perfect. Perfect.

Thanks, Zach. This is a question that I have received on a number of occasions. I figure I'll ask it here. When do you expect news about the IPCEI funding decision?

I wish we knew. No, I think we're on a waiting pattern here. So we don't have further guidance as to when that news might come. What we know is that what we've done and in all our pipelines and so on, the numbers we've been giving, we haven't included it so that it does not significantly distort the figures while we wait for that news.

At this stage, and this has been the case right from the beginning, we take this as a first-come first-serve. We continue to develop our own projects. We continue to engage with third-party clients, and we're moving forward with our hydrogen projects as fast as we can. When the IPCEI gets announced, we'll have to see how we handle our production constraints and plans accordingly. But at this stage, we don't know anything else.

Thanks, Federico. A question here around -- can you elaborate on your plans for Morocco, Middle East, India, Australia, all places where partnerships have been announced in the past?

Do you want take that, Fred, or you want me to?

(inaudible - microphone inaccessible)

Yeah. As I just noted, right, we've -- and again, this kind of goes into the strategy, I just want to be clear on it. We are not -- I don't want this -- I don't want us to look like we're signaling that we are abandoning Australia or Morocco or North Africa opportunities.

We have finite resources. We have created significant opportunities, momentum in the five markets that we talked about earlier. And there, we see much near-term opportunities for technology, sales, or growth in these development pipeline projects.

So we continue to develop and push forward in Australia and North Africa. We hope to have some news in the coming months in those markets so we can then add them into the pipeline discussion that we've been having. But we want to make sure that we are being cognizant of where we are and trying to give confidence to the market that we're focused on near-term actionable opportunities that have land, have identified customers, are in licensing or licensed, have grants in order to show a real path to getting to our forecasted pipeline and revenues.

And Zach, I will just add it's exactly for that reasons as you mentioned the focus that we have on partnerships for those markets. So in Morocco, Middle East, where we have partnerships with CCC and so on, this is where we're counting on those partners to help us bring those projects to a further stage of maturity where we'll start to disclose the progress on those as well. At this stage, we're disclosing the progress we're making on the ones that are effectively under our sole or principle control right now.

Thanks. Okay. Well, last question here. So if you do have final questions, do get them in. The levelized cost of hydrogen chart on slide 5, is that for the HEVO-Solar, HEVO-Chain, or both? I'll take that one, and you guys can correct me if I'm wrong.

As we are still in the process of industrializing the balance of systems for the HEVO-Chain, which will have an impact on the levelized costs or the cost profile of that product, that chart reflects an estimated cost for the HEVO-Solar. Of course, the levelized cost of hydrogen from that product is highly dependent on where that product is deployed, right? In Northern Europe would look a lot different than in Southern Europe or in California.

So we do assume our benchmark location in southern Portugal. But again, if that's deployed somewhere with superior solar radiance, that number is below that range that we provided, et cetera. So that's the answer there.

So in the absence of -- one final question here with respect to, I think, liquidity and financing in general and in our own project portfolio. Is the company in discussion with potential capital partners?

So I'll take that. On our capital efforts and so on, so we'll break that onto two pieces. On the project side, as I mentioned with the development company, our idea is to have partnerships to fund the development costs of that substantial development portfolio. That's the easy question on that side.

On the corporate side, as mentioned before in our Q4, we have several options that we are pursuing and we are considering for the capital and to ensure the company is effectively capitalized. This is something that the Board management is acutely keeping an eye on. And we would like to be able to find a capital solution for the long term that is strategic. At this stage, I don't want to say more, and I can't give more details on that without getting myself into problems, but this is certainly something that is being looked to be addressed by management and Board.

Thanks, Federico. Last one here is not really a question, more a request. Is it possible for future presentations to provide insight into how much revenue will be recurring versus one-off? Yes, we will make a note of that for future reference. So in the absence of additional questions, I guess we'll wrap it up here.

So thanks, everyone, who joined and contributed questions. If there are additional questions that come up, please feel free to reach out to me and the IR team at ir@fusion-fuel.eu, and we look forward to seeing you all again in our next update.