Co2 Capsol AS

OSE:CAPSL

Earnings Call Analysis

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q1

[Wendy Lam, executive]

Good morning, everybody, and welcome to Capsol Technologies' Q1 2024 Presentation. My name is Wendy Lam, and I am the CEO of Capsol Technologies. Today, I'm joined by my colleague, CFO, Ingar Bergh, who will present the highlights for this quarter.Let me start with a view of Capsol Technologies at a glance. Capsol Technologies is a [ licensor ] of commercially-ready post-combustion carbon capture solutions that has superior efficiency and safety.We have a carbon capture and heat recovery system in one that allows us to achieve carbon capture costs of 40% lower than some traditional technologies using amine chemical solvents.We are meeting the customer requirements of the industry of 90% to 95% capture rate. And we are also built on a long legacy of R&D, over 15 years of R&D experience, EUR 50 million invested, and we now have IP in 12 patent families, up from 11.We continue to prove our technology with now over 11,000 hours of operation in our demonstration CapsolGo units. These are units that are actively capturing CO2 and liquefying it at customer sites in Germany.We are also using a proven chemical solvent, hot potassium carbonate, which has been used in the chemical industry in hundreds of plants over many decades.Our team is headquartered in Oslo, Norway. We also have team present in Germany and in the U.S. And we are responding to customer [ enquiries ] and working with customers from around the world in 4 key segments, first in cement which makes up about 8% of the global emissions and where we have projects already announced with Holcim and Schwenk. We have projects and customers in the biomass and energy-from-waste, which is where we have been signing our license agreements. And then our newest segment is in gas turbines.So let me move to our Q1 2024 highlights. We continue to see accelerating revenues and pipeline growth. We have 13 million tons of CO2 in mature project pipeline, which is up over 400% year-over-year. We have revenues of NOK 19.5 million with -- compared to 0.9 NOK million from Q1 2023, and all of this is driven by our CapsolGo demonstration campaigns and paid engineering studies.Second, we have a mature project portfolio -- maturing product portfolio towards technology licensing revenue. We're seeing very good progress with our anchor project, Stockholm Exergi. They are showing progress towards de-risking the FID for 2024. We've also recently signed a preliminary license agreement for Switzerland's first large-scale carbon capture plant, and these recent agreements are confirming our target of EUR 7 to EUR 12 per ton of installed capture capacity.Third, we are expanding our footprint, capacity and our product offering. We are currently establishing our operation in North America, which is the world's largest CCS market. We are also expanding our CapsolGo demonstration program with a third unit to come live this quarter. And we continue to commercialize our CapsolGT program, working with leading gas turbine providers and progressing a standardized plant design for several gas turbine models. So Capsol Technologies is building a leading global capture technology company, and we're doing this in a market that is accelerating and with exponential growth ahead.If you look at any energy transition scenario, carbon capture is a part of that -- part of the solution, whether it is to remove CO2 existing that's in the atmosphere or to capture CO2 from emitting industrial processes.One of the scenarios for the energy transition is shown on the left hand side of this page. This is a projection by Rystad Energy of the amount of CO2 that needs to be captured to achieve a 1.6 degree scenario.You'll see 2 big waves of CO2 that need to be captured in 2 categories. The light blue at the top is classified as carbon removals, and this is where you see technologies such as direct air capture, but also BECCS, which stands for Bioenergy and CCS. This is one of our key segments, and we call it biomass, where the burning of the biomass is already carbon neutral. When you add carbon capture on top of that, you get a type of carbon removal that gives you high carbon -- CO2 credits.The other big category in the type of CO2 that needs to be captured in the future is classified under industry and this is where our sectors, cement and waste-to-energy, are fitting. And we are well-positioned to ride the growth ahead in the CO2 market -- carbon capture space.What we are seeing -- what we are aiming to do with Capsol Technologies is to have ambitious goals towards 2030. We aim to have the top 3 position in target segments such as cement, biomass, waste-to-energy and gas turbines.Second, we aim to achieve 5% to 10% of the carbon capture technology market share globally in terms of licensing. And we will do this with licensing revenue of EUR 7 to EUR 12 per ton of installed capacity and aim for a pre-tax profit margin of 40% to 60%.So Capsol Technologies' innovation allows us to achieve high performance across the CO2 capture process. We have the ability with our technology to capture a range of flue gases with concentrations of CO2 as low as 3% to 30%, and we can do this in a highly competitive and energy-efficient way. We have seen energy savings of up to 70% compared to traditional technologies for carbon capture using amines solutions. And this energy use we have seen can be point 0.7 to 1.5 gigajoules per million tons of CO2 captured.We are meeting or exceeding the customer requirements in terms of capture rate of 90% to 95%, and we are also producing CO2 of high purity of over 99%.So what makes Capsol Technologies' technology superior is really 3 key points. First, the inherent heat recovery that we have combined with the carbon capture gives us a very energy-efficient and low opex solution. This is done with IP and patterns that involve the heat recovery and heat integration of the system. And you can see on the chart on the right hand side that there is a compressor, expander and also energy recirculation that occurs in the absorber and the desorber system that gives us this energy efficiency. The system is also a standalone capture unit. It is all electric with low water need and requires a simpler integration into emitting plants that reduces CapEx and project risk.Finally, the solution is very safe with a non-toxic solvent. We use a solvent called hot potassium carbonate, which is [ also ] openly available. It [ is ] low degradation properties, and because it is such a safe solvent, it helps enable permitting of projects easier and helps projects get to final investment decision in a faster way. So all of this enables a solution that can be 40% lower in capture costs compared to traditional solutions, such as those using amine solvents.So we commercialize the Capsol [ Technology ] platform with 3 products. The first product is the CapsolGo, which is a mobile demonstration unit with all-inclusive service package, and this is manned by our staff. We have 2 of these units operating in Germany today, again, actively capturing CO2 and liquefying it.What the demonstration unit does is help our customers understand the flue gas coming out of their emitting factories and helps them make a decision for a full-scale capture plant. So the CapsolGo combined with engineering studies accelerates the solution towards the second product, which is called the CapsolEoP, or Capsol end-of-pipe. And it's called end-of-pipe again for that easier integration into the mother plant.The CapsolEoP is a full Capsol solution for CO2 emitting industries. It is a solution that can be designed for 100,000 tons of CO2 capture to over 1 million tons of capture per year. And it is this CapsolEoP where we have license agreements already in the waste-to-energy and biomass sectors.The third product that we have commercialized is the CapsolGT. This is the solution for gas turbines. And we use again the same technology platform in a slightly different configuration, basically to be able to take the high temperature exhaust of a gas turbine to capture the lower concentration of CO2 coming out of that gas turbine. And what this does is provide our customers another option for decarbonizing gas power.We are working with 2 leading global gas turbine providers to bring this solution into the market.So I'd like to go into some operational highlights from Q1. So we've had a very busy start to the year, and this is a summary of the investor news that we have released since the beginning of the year, plus an additional one from just last week.As you can see, we've been quite busy. We have had announcements in 3 biomass and energy-from-waste projects: first one being Tekniska Verken in Sweden; second being KVA Linth in Switzerland; and then most recently, a BECCS project with a European energy company. We've also had 2 announcements in the cement space with Holcim and Schwenk.We've had an announcement with our CapsolGT program, where we were awarded a pre-FEED from a leading gas turbine provider to mature the plant design for several gas turbine models and this solution will be for application in the U.S. and Middle East.We've also had a very successful capital raise of NOK 88 million, and we're able to bring in some new investors such as Munters, who is also a technology partner of ours, Storebrand, and Danske Bank. We have also been able to secure additional technology collaboration partners and also working with a local EPC partner called Carbon Circle.I will also add that I also began my official role as CEO in the middle of Q1. So it's been a very exciting quarter.All of these activities is what's contributing to our rapidly growing sales pipeline. And this is the view from Q1 2023 to Q1 2024. We've had a 400% increase in our mature pipeline of projects in terms of million tons of CO2 capture capacity. And you see the biggest increase is in our engineering studies, over 7 times increase. We've had almost double of our CapsolGo demonstration campaigns. And our license agreements have gone from 1 to 3.So I'd like to highlight that it is these engineering studies and CapsolGo campaigns that start to build the funnel for that future licensing agreement which is very high margin and part of our future and what we are aiming for.The pipeline is also supported by a number of key partners that we have. Munters is one I've already mentioned. They are a Swedish industrial focused on air technology, and we are working with them on some innovations around the capture plant, including the packing towers, to make the capture process even more efficient.We've had a long time partner with Sumitomo for energy-from-waste plants and they are the ones who are helping us deploy our third CapsolGo unit in Sweden.Petrofac is a partner that we have used for bringing our plants to life. Siemens Energy is a provider of equipment for our CapsolEoP plant design. GE Vernova has been a partner for our CapsolGT solution. And Storegga is a -- one of our newer -- also newer partners which was announced late last year. They are a project developer for carbon -- [ or ] CO2 storage and transport, and we are working with them on different models for Carbon Capture-as-a-Service.So behind the pipeline I'll say a little bit more. We have different waves of demand. And the first 2 waves of demand have been around biomass, energy-from-waste, and cement, which is what's given us our traction so far. And then the third wave of demand that we expect to see more from is in gas turbines.So with biomass and energy-from-waste, the market drivers pushing that industry along is the need for clean power and also the opportunity for new business opportunities in carbon removal.Again, when you burn biomass to create energy, it is already considered carbon neutral. So when you add carbon capture on that process, you get a form of negative carbon emissions and are able to generate high-quality carbon credits.So this is what's driving that industry. And what Capsol Technologies is able to provide to that industry is a solution that has low energy consumption, a solution that is safe with its benign solvent. Often these plants are located near residential areas. So that is an important point for this industry.Our system also has the ability to generate extra heat, and this heat can actually be used by these customers to boost their district heating needs and providing additional revenue opportunity. So these biomass and energy-from-waste makes up just under half of our project pipeline and is -- has been where we have been signing our license agreements.The second wave of demand has been around cement. And the challenges for this sector is that there are growing strict regulations for the sector to comply to. For example, in Europe, the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism.These businesses also need to stay competitive. So what Capsol Technologies is able to provide to the cement sector is a low energy consumption solution for carbon capture, and that works especially well with higher CO2 concentrations. And the fact that we don't need an extra steam supply makes the system low cost as well. This has been the fastest growing sector for us in the last year, and now makes up more than half of our total project pipeline in terms of CO2 capture capacity.And again, gas turbines is the newest area where we are entering commercialization with 2 leading gas turbine providers. And the need here for the industry is for decarbonized gas power. There hasn't been a very good solution for carbon capture for gas turbines today. And what we're able to do with our technology platform is take the high temperature exhaust from that turbine and use it to capture the low concentration CO2 from the system. And again, our system can also help generate additional electricity to make that overall power plant even more efficient.So these 2 -- these areas of demand, the commercial traction, is all leading towards a future growing portfolio of licensed revenue. This is what we see our longer term revenue potential to be focused on.So many of you already know that our first license agreement was signed with Stockholm Exergi. This is the largest biomass plant in Scandinavia. And this is an agreement we signed in -- at the end of 2022, and that is progressing towards FID. This is our anchor project.But what we've also seen is following that are additional agreements in the waste-to-energy/biomass sector, which further confirm the commercial model we are going forward with, with the EUR 7 to EUR 12 per ton of installed -- capacity installed.So we're very pleased to see confirmation of this commercial model being confirmed in the market with customers, also at different levels of project maturity.I'll say a little bit more about the Stockholm Exergi project and also the recent project that we signed with KVA Linth.So Stockholm Exergi is, again, one of [ the ] anchor project for Capsol Technologies, but it's also one of these projects that the industry is looking towards. It is one of the biggest BECCS, or Bioenergy with Carbon Capture projects in the world with a capacity of 800,000 tons of CO2 per year. It was already awarded EUR 180 million by the EU to bring this project to life.And we were really encouraged that in Q1 we've already seen some [ great ] -- [indiscernible] by Capsol Technologies. The Swedish government also signed, just a few days ago, a new agreement for CO2 transport and storage with Denmark and Norway. So storage option has been secured as well.And then finally, there are additional steps that enabled the project to get state support. State support application has been submitted to the EU Commission, which is also another major step towards this project coming to FID this year.Next, a preliminary license agreement for the first large-scale Swiss energy-from-waste plant is something we announced last week. This is a plant that has 120,000 tons of CO2 per year, about half of which is biomass. So there is the opportunity to get the high carbon -- high-value carbon credits in a carbon removal situation.And we are really pleased that we are able to sign this kind of license agreement in early stage. We do have a number of engineering activities to complete on this before this project comes to life. But again, this project is another confirmation of the business model we have for licensing.So I will just conclude my remarks with a comment about the equity raise that we had in February. We raised NOK 88 million. This was to drive the continuing growth and value creation for Capsol Technologies. And I do just want to update that we are using those funds towards 3 main areas with our North American expansion where we are continuing to build our relationships with customers and bringing our first personnel on board.Again, our CapsolGT solution, we are continuing with the study based in the U.S. with Audubon Engineering to mature standard plant designs for this third wave of demand.And then finally, with CapsolGo, our third unit will be coming live in Q2, and we are exploring further opportunities for putting those demonstration units at our customer sites.So I will now pass on to our CFO, Ingar Bergh, who will give the financial highlights.

[Ingar Bergh, executive]

Thank you, Wendy. So to start, I would like to give you a little refresher on our business model. The carbon capture market will become a major global industry. We believe that the best way to leverage our technology platform in this market is through technology licensing. This model is capital light. It is very scalable and it's very high margin.Today, we have 3 types of revenue streams. One is what we call paid engineering. This is where our clients pay us to learn more about how our technology will work on their specific plant. Two is the CapsolGo demonstration campaigns. We deploy these at client sites to help de-risk and accelerate project development for large-scale projects. And three is the licensing fees. This is how we're going to, again, monetize our IP and our technology platform, generating real values for our shareholders.Currently, most of our revenue is from the CapsolGo demonstration campaigns with more and more revenue coming in on the engineering side. In the future, the revenue stream is going to be dominated by the licensing revenue.The way we get paid for these IP and licensing is through amount per ton of installed carbon capture capacity on the plants to be built. This is in the range of between EUR 7 and EUR 12 as a onetime payment, starting at final investment decision and paid in installments. For a large-scale cement plant, say, this would typically mean about EUR 10 million pre-tax margin for Capsol Technologies.In addition, we have this great technology platform. We have a large portfolio of clients and projects. So we see tons of opportunities to generate new revenue streams around this. This could be reoccurring revenue from projects in the form of technical services, digital services to help the clients optimize their operations. It could be selling key equipment together with our technology license. And we are also exploring models with the opportunity to deploy larger amounts of capital.During the quarter we continued to see accelerated demand for our technology. We also saw an increasing awareness in the market on how our value proposition can help projects be realized in the key industries that we are operating in.Hence, we have focused on building our ability to meet this demand. We have done this mainly through 3 different ways: one, simply adding more internal engineering capacity; two, streamlining and optimizing our delivery processes so we can deliver more with less; and three, working with our partners to ensure that we add flexible and global execution capacity.In the quarter, we had a revenue of NOK 19.5 million, a considerable increase over Q1 2023. And we did a successful private placement of NOK 88 million, getting high-quality institutional and industrial investors on the shareholder list, as well as enabling us to invest in strategic initiatives like our expansion to North America, bringing the CapsolGT solution to market and enabling us to do more CapsolGo demonstration campaigns.So with this capital raise, we have now a very strong cash position. We started the quarter with a cash position of about NOK 41 million, and we ended it with about NOK 97 million.Now, the cash flow chart here is pretty self-explanatory. I would like to draw your attention to that we have a higher negative operational cash flow than typical. This is mainly due to the [ post ] you see account and accruals, and most of this is actually related to CapEx. It's CapEx for the CapsolGo demonstration units that we are currently building and going to deploy in Sweden. That was booked in Q4, but paid in Q1, in addition to some VAT associated with this. So today, we are fully funded to execute on our business strategy, including executing the strategic initiatives outlined.Finally, last year we communicated an ambition to uplist the company to the main board of Oslo Stock Exchange. In October, we converted to an ASA to comply with regulations on the main board. And this year, we published our first annual report on IFRS, also to comply with the regulation on the main board. Last night, we announced that we have formally applied to uplist the company to Oslo main list.We are doing this. We believe, as one of the very few pure-play listed carbon capture companies out there, it's important that our shares are available for large institutional and global investors. So this is the next step on our journey.That's it from me, and I'll give the word back to Wendy.

[Wendy Lam, executive]

Thank you very much. Thank you, Ingar.So we have had a very active Q1. I want to recap that Capsol Technologies has a competitive solution for carbon capture, which has a carbon capture and heat recovery unit in one, providing a very competitive solution for the market. We've had great commercial traction. We are building our portfolio of licensing revenues, and we are also expanding our capabilities and our solutions to grow for the future.

[Wendy Lam, executive]

So, we'd like to take any questions from the audience and help -- tell you a little bit more about what we are doing.

[Unknown Analyst]

Thank you so much to both of you, Wendy and Ingar. We have a couple of questions here. The first one is regarding CapsolGT. The question is, what are your expectations for CapsolGT demand going forward?

[Wendy Lam, executive]

Thank you for the question. CapsolGT, again, is a solution for open cycle gas turbines that works in a much better way than other solutions today. It is a very energy-efficient solution. And we know that there is a great interest in this already because we have 2 leading gas turbine providers who are working with us to bring this solution to market.The study that is going on, which we were awarded in Q1, which was a pre-FEED, is to mature plant design for standard guest turbine models to be deployed in the U.S. and the Middle East. We will be seeing the results of that study within Q2, and that will help define further what the path is for this sector. But we do see it as a third wave of demand for Capsol Technologies.

[Unknown Analyst]

Then this one is for you, Ingar. When you mentioned license target range of EUR 7 to EUR 12 per ton installed CO2 capture capacity, is this a recurring income, or is it a onetime income?

[Ingar Bergh, executive]

This is a onetime income, which we need to be clear about. For us, at least in this early phase, it's valuable for us to get the revenue upfront. So, it's pretty front-loaded. We get the first payment on final investment decision, which is typically a couple of years before the plant is operating. But also, as I mentioned, we, of course, see the potential from generating [ reoccurring ] revenues from all these projects we have in our pipeline, and we are working on models to get to that.

[Unknown Analyst]

And then we have a question regarding the Houston presence that you have mentioned. So you mentioned you have established Houston presence with first personnel hired and that you have several projects ongoing in the sales engineering phase. So when do you expect to see projects moving into more mature phases? And what segments do you see the highest demand from?

[Wendy Lam, executive]

So we are, yes, building our presence in the Americas to cover both U.S. and Canada. We have hired our first personnel there, with the appointment of an executive advisor based in Houston, and also the formation of an advisory board. Soon we will say more about with representatives from the Americas.So the potential in the, especially U.S. and Canada is very high with the different incentive schemes, promoting and making projects more economical. So we do see a great potential in the gas turbine space. As we've already mentioned, we have our engineering study to mature the plant design based in -- with the team in Houston. And we also see great potential in our other -- in other sectors around biomass and waste-to-energy.Biomass, again, being able to generate high-quality credits is going to be important for sectors such as the pulp and paper, which is very closely aligned with what we're doing in biomass. So we are very optimistic about the U.S., and the ability for project decisions to be accelerated with all these incentives.

[Unknown Analyst]

Obviously, CapsolGT does get quite a lot of attention. So we have one more question regarding CapsolGT. Would you primarily target the market for new installations of gas turbines? Or will it also be for retrofitting existing units out there? Could you say something about the size of this market?

[Wendy Lam, executive]

Yes. There is a potential in both of those areas, both Brownfield and Greenfield solutions for gas turbines. There are hundreds of gas turbines where the retrofit of a carbon capture system would make very much sense. But there's also opportunity for new builds as well.There is going to be a continuing need for gas power, especially clean gas power, which is what makes this space very attractive. We have not guided on the size of this market yet, but again, we do see this as a third wave of demand driving the growth for Capsol Technologies.

[Unknown Analyst]

Thank you so much to both of you. Those were the questions that we had. So thank you so much.

[Wendy Lam, executive]

Thank you.