Circa Group AS

OSE:CIRCA

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q1

[Bertel Karlstedt, executive]

Well, good morning, good afternoon, everybody. It is 8:30 CET time. I propose that we opened the event, and I wanted to wish you all welcome to Circa Group AS presentation -- Quarterly Presentation Covering Q1 2024. You're all warm welcome.

Next slide. The traditional disclaimer text. I won't spend much time on that, and let's go to the next slide. The agenda for today the traditional one introduction by myself with some highlights, followed by finance by Tone, manufacturing topics by Philipp, market and product development by Alessandro and then the outlook portion by myself before we move over to the questions-and-answer session, where I hope that we get a good line of discussion.

Let's take to the next slide. The highlights in Q1, one could say it has been a continued strict focus on the essentials, exactly the same main topics as we had regarding Q4 2023, in the presentation covering the funding and business plan, ReSolute as well as the market, and on top of that, a key change in the organization as well that I want to briefly touch upon. If we start with the business plan and the funding, which is a key, key topic behind that, as I'm sure most of you are aware of and up to date on April 30, we released the new business plan with related focus areas and short-term milestones and steps forward.

And of course, more information about all the details you can find in the investor material from those calls on the 2nd of May. But it is now the situation that at our side, we have both Pareto and Clarksons as financial advisors, and we are in the process with ambition to raise the capital up to EUR 10 million. That would take us into Q1 2025, give us 2 to 3 quarters of additional time to secure the preconditions and the milestones aimed at securing an overall EUR 40 million funding that is still the need as we communicated in January, February earlier this year.

A big portion of that funding we still pursue and aim and hope to secure by means of loans, we have earlier discussed and told you about the Finnvera, the Finnish Export Credit loan opportunity of up to EUR 20 million that we have the term sheet for. We are also in good cooperative and positive discussions with an alternative loan opportunity from France, where we actually have earlier this week, had a positive outcome, passing the first gate on the way to have a loan opportunity in France secured, I would say, during late Q3, early Q4 this year. So that's a good development that you have seen earlier this year, a new alternative opportunity that is progressing well.

The second topic that we released on April 30 is the change in business plan. That is triggered by the fact that we are in the process of securing funding. We are in the process of finally securing the environmental permit, but we also see a market-driven change leading to the fact that we see a different role for FC5 and ReSolute going forward. And part of this is, of course, also then to further develop FC5 for even bigger production capabilities and capacities in the future.

These are the main things I would highlight regarding business plan and the funding situation that we are in. On the project of ReSolute, Q1 has been a good progress at the sites. We are now as far along on the site as we can be and now the further progress is pending the environmental permit. So right now, we are in a store and preserve state at the site awaiting the environmental permit to open up for the next steps being finalization of civil works and starting the actual erection work of the equipment.

The discussions with our key partners, mentioning only 2 of them here that are more, of course, with Gazel Energie, our landlord, I could say, and of course, also the supplier of the main part of our operating crew in the future. We have continued good discussions about the long-term agreements to define and secure the cooperation going forward. And with Valmet, we have good discussions about the planning and the views on the next steps in growing together, taking Circa strategical intent and business plan forward. Good ongoing discussions with both key parties, both Gazel Energie as well as Valmet.

Now the environmental permit process has been all in Q1. It has been a surprise and disappointment to us. It's a trench process that has its required steps and the time frame for each of the steps. The first quarter this year has been a good discussion. I would say we are on an even more constructive mode now, in a more constructive mode with the authorities than I saw when joining the company, and we actually have a commitment to the next steps and the ultimate step of having the environmental permit in our hand late September, early October this year.

We have the commitment from the, should I say, authorities, there are key persons to proceed according to that time schedule, and that is the basis for our plans of taking ReSolute and the business plan further as we speak.

On the market and applications and commercialization side, there has been a wide front of activity by Alessandro and his team and the whole organization. It has let to positive things that you also have press release, we have revisited and signed a new contract with Merck for the Cyrene product. We have signed a new agreement with IXOM for looking at the Asia Pacific area from a marketing perspective. And we are in discussions with many, many more opportunities and hopefully soon, topics that we will progress on and be able to press release.

There is a wide front of activity ongoing, talking with as well as distributors as end customers for our products. Circa Group has also been visibly present in customer industry and -- the chemistry industry and customer events. Just to mention a few, we were strongly present at the bio caterings in France earlier this year. We were a key contributor to a, should I say, more university scientific-based seminar at the University of York covering biochemicals as the future, and there will be more participation in industrial events forthcoming during this quarter and the rest of the year as well.

So we are visibly promoting the company and its products, making the awareness and the interest for our products growing at all the time. And as a consequence of that, and as a foundation for the new revision of business plan, you also see new opportunities in the market for the products that we can deliver. Today, we are quite often talking about the product portfolio that Circa Group can deliver to the customers, encompassing LGO as such as a saleable product, encompassing Cyrene as the first commercialized derivative based LGO. And we today see many customer applications where we can have other derivatives based upon LGO as a customer in product as well.

And based upon the balance between these products in the market interest and demand picture, leading to a volume and pricing set up. We have revisited the business plan and looked at ReSolute and its profitability, as we discussed and brought forward in the investor calls as well and in the press release from April 30.

So vast activity in the market continues and we have good outcome with new opportunities and increased interest from the customer side. And the last topic here in the highlights is the organizational change that we have released came out with. I think it was a late Q1 actually, talking about the release of it, but the fact remains that Tone will leave us at the end of May. And we now since late April, have Erik Berger on our side and then taking over as a successor of Tone. I'm happy to have Erik on board. And I'm sure that together, we will be able to ensure the future demands and the progress of the company as we see now short term, talking about financial issues and funding especially.

With those words, I will leave the floor over to Tone, who will cover the finance situation.

[Tone Leivestad, executive]

Thank you, Bertel. Good morning, and good afternoon, everyone. So we'll move over to the Q1 financials. The financial report was released this morning with a lot of details, but we will just go through some of the highlights in this presentation. If we look at the profit and loss, we see that the spend remains in line with the expected quarterly run rate and the level we have had. And the revenue -- operating revenue item is mainly related to FC5 sales of Cyrene and grants received.

And yes, other employee and operational expenses continue to be in line with the quarterly run rate. If we move over to the balance sheet. We have now, as per Q1, fixed assets of EUR 40 million, that is netted against grants received of EUR 8 million. That's EUR 32 million net figure in our balance sheet. But EUR 40 million has been paid as per or invested as per Q1. We have total cash at the end of quarter 1 of EUR 6.1 million. And it's also worth mentioning that we received shortly after the end of the quarter, another EUR 4.1 million in grant payments from France Relance.

And quarterly cash spend was quite high. And the reason for that was investments in the period for more than EUR 11 million. So that was the highlights of the accounts.

I also want to mention, although addressed by Bertel already that we updated our financing status and business plan on 30th of April. So all of that information is out there and accessible for everyone. We are aiming at a capital raise of well, EUR 5 million to EUR 10 million. That will support us for the next 2 to 3 quarters in order to get some items in place for the further process.

So this is what we're working on right now, and that was a revision compared to what we have communicated in the past. So I will not go into any details on this right now. I spoke about the best way thoroughly in our calls on the 2nd of May. But if you have any questions, then we can raise them at the end or send it afterwards. And by that, I will leave the floor to Philipp, status of manufacturing.

[Philipp Morgenthaler, executive]

Thank you, Tone. Good morning, and good afternoon, everyone. Next slide, please. So on FC5, we have focused on quarter 1 on improvement works actually in line with the new business plan. So we are currently installing a lab scale LGO distillation facility for the production of high purity LGO to support development work for future derivatives.

We are also installing bigger tanks. You see the picture on the right, the bigger tanks are there to ensure continued supply of product from reactors. Today, that's done through IBCs. And this will mainly enhance safety, but also improve our productivity. We are also implementing a basic quality management system according to ISO 9001, this is to support the requirements of our pharmaceutical customers who have a clear requirements for just the system to be in place.

Whatever is implemented here at FC5 will be also applicable to ReSolute later on. And on the already communicated improvement plan, we are continuing to increase production to 12 to 15 tonnes per year. One main project is the sawdust drying process to increase the LGO yield, and we are also currently running cost to reduce the sulfolane content to increase LGO and reduce OpEx significantly.

So as of this week, we are at a 40% reduction, which is a significant reduction in OpEx. So F5 is on track to achieve and lead the plans for -- according to the new business plan.

The next chart, please, Tone. On ReSolute, so CapEx estimate remains at EUR 73 million. In line with the announcement of end of April, the project will now be delayed by 6 months. This means and start of mechanical erection is planned for early December 2024. And with that, the plant ready for start at the end of 2025.

As Bertel mentioned, the site activities have started. So we installed a base camp for the Phase I of the civil works that has been completed. And the civil works have started at the beginning of the year and are approximately 50% are completed. I'll show some pictures of the site here in just -- in a short while.

On the permitting, the dossier is now deemed complete by DREAL and has moved on to the next step, which is currently under review by MRAE, MRAE is another government authorization, basically to check whatever DREAL has approved and then to push it forward into the next phase, which will be the public inquiry. As mentioned, we met with the authorities, and they confirmed the permit to be expected end of September, early October. So next step of that will be the start of the public inquiry in June.

Next chart, please, Tone. On engineering, we have made a lot of progress. Obviously, if you spend money, we expect progress. So the manufacturing of the hydrogenation unit by Ekato has been completed, and we had a successful and a factory acceptance test at the end of March. Manufacturing of distillation equipment by Rhine Ruhr has been completed as well and the shipment is in preparation. Generally, engineering and manufacturing of balance of plant items are ongoing as planned as per initial time plan and the packages for mechanical erection and the electrical and instrumentation installation are now in the tendering phase.

For Valmet, I think we have shown some pictures of the warehouse before. About 95% of the Valmet equipment for the boiler and pyrolizer as well as the steel structure for this installation has been received at the site and at the warehouse in Santa word. Now we can have a look at a few pictures. How does it look at the site. Next chart. So here, this is a picture of the woodyard area. You see a lot of steel on the right, as you see this red piece. This is actually an insert for the installation of the moving floors. You see there are a lot of steel that is a heavy structure, which has to be a port.

Next chart, we'll have a look at the Valmet area. On top left, you see, this is the base frame for the installation of the boiler. Bottom left is the frame of the foundation for the installation of the 35-meter high stack. And on the right, you see several pictures, floor for the base, the foundation for the woodyard -- for the Valmet package at the site. So work has been progressing quite well.

Next chart, one back, please. And here, you see the parts at site and in the warehouse on the left side, steel structure. The steel structure is solely for the Valmet area. On the right, heavy-duty parts, Valmet heavy parts have been delivered to the site directly. And then in the middle, you see pictures of the outside and inside of the warehouse, which are also all related to Valmet deliveries. Half deliveries are now coming to site for first balance of plant items and other items.

Now next chart, we see the hydrogenation plant. The hydrogenator skids that's completed, that's manufactured. On the left side, the 2 skids, the whole unit. And in the middle, you see the hydrogenator itself. And on the right side, this is the filtration and catalyst loading. So that unit has been completed it has been going through a successful FAT and is now sitting at the supplier's warehouse to be delivered to the site as soon as we call it off.

So you see we had some progress at side and in the manufacturing of equipment during the past month. And with that, I thank you, and I hand over to Alessandro for market and product development.

[Alessandro Napoli, executive]

Thank you, Philipp. Good morning and good afternoon to everyone. I think in the next few slides, I'm going to show some highlights of the already mentioned by Bertel, the efforts we're having in product development and market commercial development. So I would like to start with some of the highlights for Q1 '24 around the innovation and regulatory activities, which are important and are very key to the development of the market as well.

So I would like to start that we are receiving very, let's say, positive results on some of the ongoing tox studies that we have for the Annex IX. So the registration and the REACH in Europe. And this is, of course, is helping us as well to identify additional applications and uses for Cyrene. This is related to Cyrene, of course. As mentioned as well, we are also having a lot of interactions with different customers. I would like to mention particularly also brand owners in the textile industry because we see, let's say, I have very high interest in using bio renewable chemicals in the manufacturing processes.

This is something that we need to keep as activity, even if has already mentioned, our focus is now on high-value intermediates in different applications like pharma and fragrances. And so this is definitely confirmed from the commercial activities we are having and the support we are providing to customers to qualify and validate our products in their processes.

At the same time, we also have initiated activities in medical device manufacturing, where solvent are as well used. And we think as well that this is a high-value application that should be explored. Other regulatory activities that relate to LGO. So LGO is undergoing the preliminary work for Annex VII, which is the registration in Europe, up to 10 tonnes, as well, we are also updating the promotion material, especially related to how Cyrene can bring an advantage to solvent blends for different applications.

We are closing -- in terms of the EU-funded projects, we are closing the Champion project. We are definitely also have another collaboration with the University of Twente, and we are proceeding with the Transpharm project, which is looking at our products as intermediate for active pharmaceutical ingredients, and we have a new scientist onboard that joined -- just joined us.

The outlook in the innovation activities, of course, beyond the collaboration we have with the Circa Renewable Chemistry Institute in York, we are looking carefully on how we can actually improve the different qualities for Cyrene so that we offer -- we have the possibility to offer the customers fit-for-purpose quality. We are also completing some other tox studies, and we will report in the next quarters on that. And we will also as well have a general assembly meeting for the Transpharm project.

We can move now to the market and the commercial activities on the next slide. And as already mentioned, we are having different interactions both with direct customers where we have, let's say, we are carefully looking at the applications, and we are carefully reviewing as well the qualities required for those applications from our products.

This is confirmed by different, let's say, activities where we're also delivering material in the multi-kilogram scale or in multiple hundreds of kilograms for the scale-up of the customer. In the space of the distribution, we see this very important that we agreed with IXOM to start in Australia and New Zealand to distribute or to develop the market for Cyrene. At the same time, we're also considering different partnerships with distributors in different parts of the world where we are less present.

The outlook, as we see that, of course, we need to formalize this collaboration, the supply and distribution agreements in different parts of the world. We need to move with IXOM to have a formal supply and distribution agreement, but this is going with the market development that we have initiated.

And the other outstanding, let's say, deliverable that we have is to formalize -- to finalize, sorry, the new supply and distribution agreement with Merck for the LGO. That was mentioned, we have done it for Cyrene, and we're finalizing this now for the distribution of LGO.

In the next slide, I summarize some of the, let's say, short-term or shorter-term opportunities we have, and this is a format I've used in the past, showing how the different projects, which is a combination of product -- Circa's products with application is advancing in the pipeline from development to scale-up and commercialization.

So we typically see decent volume sales in scale up because customers are purchasing the material to scale up their process. This is -- so that means that we define commercialization when we have -- we pass a certain threshold of volumes. And this is the goal. So to move all these projects into commercialization and to have as well a robust offtake agreements for Circa. And with that, I can pass the word back to Bertel.

[Bertel Karlstedt, executive]

Thank you. Thank you, both, Tone and Philipp and Alessandro for the reviews on your parts, and I'm happy to see a very wide front of activity reported by Alessandro, especially that is very important for us going forward. If we go to the outlook and the key upcoming topics, it's more of the same. It's a continuation of the topics we have had on our radar and as a focus already in quarter 4 '23, and in quarter 1 this year as well.

But if we then start with the business plan, the key topic, short term is now to secure the capital fund raise that we have initiated up to EUR 10 million because that will be the foundation for our forthcoming activities and the forthcoming further financing and funding processes as well.

FC5 is going to have a key role in our short-term activities in the market. As Philipp brought forward, we have ambition and ongoing actions to actually improve the capacity in FC5 with 50% from where we are today up to 15 tonnes a year level in the short-term future. And that will be the foundation for the focus on the revised product portfolio, talking about net of intense, talking about joint R&D, talking about offtakes from FC5 towards the market and the needs in the market.

ReSolute on top of the funding that need to be in place, it's all about the environmental permits. As we've heard, we have good ongoing progress and discussions. Latest early October, we should have the environmental permit in our hand, facilitating the initiation of civil work and actual erection work at the site late this year, making a start-up and start-up production by Q4 2025, as Philipp brought forward as the time schedule for ReSolute, coming on stream now.

And in the market, as Alessandro brought forward, further distribution and offtake agreements addressed with distributors and key customers both talking about a wide geographical area focus as well as different applications. good ongoing discussions with companies you have heard about before, OQEMA, Merck, IXOM, as a new one. And we have also good traction and interest at actual end customer side of the market, which is important, not only talking about the distributors but also to the end users and the end customers.

And based upon the market activity and the progress we have seen, the focus on the product portfolio, the balance between LGO as such as a product, Cyrene as the first derivative or other derivatives possible and a very, very strong focus on value-based pricing towards the customer or the distributors from day 1. That is key here going forward, ensuring the long-term interest and profitability of the company.

Those are the key upcoming topics, the focus areas. And like I said, the continuation. And should I say, also hopefully, a continuation of the good progress we have seen during the past quarters on these topics. With those words, I would leave the floor open for questions and answers, please. Raise your hand or I guess there's a chat possibility as well.

[Tone Leivestad, executive]

We received a question from Chris Lawrence in the chat. FC5 development was proposed by shareholders 2 years ago, why has it taken so long?

[Philipp Morgenthaler, executive]

I can answer that, Bertel, if you want...

[Bertel Karlstedt, executive]

You have been there since 2 years ago. I have not, so you had the history with you, please.

[Philipp Morgenthaler, executive]

I saw it 2 years ago and immediately initiated a value stream mapping exercise, which have raised the productivity in 2023 by 40%. Out of this and many stream mapping, we have now the identified improvement work, which we are working on now, which will raise productivity by 40% to 50% as well. So 2 years ago, yes, I was not sure if that has been raised in that meeting, I was part of, which was my first meeting, but I addressed FC5 immediately after I started.

And I think we have made good progress, and we're pushing it forward. Also, I think it's important to realize that FC5 has been built on a very low budget with parts, which have been just -- a plant manufactured together with parts, which were available on the secondhand market. It wasn't a plant which has been built, engineered and then built as engineered. So with that, there were a lot of issues in the productivity. But I think now we have reached first of all, a stable production and a good basis on where we can improve which we are doing now.

[Bertel Karlstedt, executive]

Chris, did that sufficiently answer your question? Is there any further comments on the chat, Tone?

[Tone Leivestad, executive]

No. But another question. From Alex, no last name. Does Circa foresee any major technical difficulties in the construction of FC6?

[Bertel Karlstedt, executive]

Well, on FC6, now we are then talking about the next step after ReSolute. And as we have said in the business plan revision of April 30, the further steps post ReSolute is going to be firmly and solely market demand-driven timing-wise as well as, should I say, details of the next unit talking about capacity and so on.

To scale up, FC6, will most likely be a scale-up of ReSolute. I'd put it that way. I'm not ruling out that it could be another. Let's see the size of the unit and you see the demand picture and the portfolio that it's going to serve. But the scale-up from ReSolute is not going to be an issue. As FC5 has constituted a very solid foundation for the ReSolute technical design. We know that the main portion of the process, the pyrolizer in ReSolute is actually scaled down from Valmet's traditional sizes.

So a further scale up to an FC6, whether FC6 would be 6,000 tonnes or 12,000 tonnes, which we still are looking into, it's not going to be an issue from where I see it. It's a minor scale-up competitor ReSolute, and it's going back to traditional sizes from a pyrolizer perspective and Valmet's perspective. So I don't see issues there, no.

[Tone Leivestad, executive]

And then we have another question from Chris Lawrence. When will the first offtake agreement be signed, not distribution but SLAs?

[Bertel Karlstedt, executive]

Alessandro, do you want to answer that?

[Alessandro Napoli, executive]

Yes, of course. So of course, we don't have the crystal ball. So I think that all the activities that we are conducting at the moment, supporting customers that have decided to scale up are going in the direction at a certain point to have a supply agreement. Now typically, supply agreements come when there is, let's say, a sizable scale of manufacturing and as well, the market for our customer has been developed to the point that's, let's say, volumes that get close to the available material are developed and the market is so big that requires an offtake agreement.

What we -- our work is definitely to make sure that we have the supply agreement with direct customers, and this will take time, which is related to the development of the customer application and market. So I don't have a date, but our goal is definitely to have results -- tangible results within 12 months. And this is something that, of course, does not depend only on us. But we are very, let's say, clear with our customers about the need for us to have those agreements and those offtake agreements. So this is, I think, what I said -- we said collectively at Circa as a time line to have direct customer offtake agreements.

[Bertel Karlstedt, executive]

And Alessandro, if I may, one could add to that. The picture you've drawn was more aimed at having offtakes securing a major or a significant portion of the future ReSolute volumes. When we talk about sizable scale, I think there is also customer needs and applications where FC5 capacity can be more than enough. And for that purpose, I hope that we can get an offtake agreement for FC5 volumes. It's small scale, I know that, but it will be a sign that there is commitment to this product in the market for certain applications.

So I don't -- I wouldn't rule out that we could have an offtake for FC5 type of volumes and scale, but only future will tell. But we are working as hard as we can to secure those because we realize the importance of the offtake.

[Alessandro Napoli, executive]

Absolutely agree. And that's why when I say 12 months' time based on the times we are communicating for ReSolute, this apply to FC5.

[Tone Leivestad, executive]

No more questions in the chats.

[Bertel Karlstedt, executive]

[Operator Instructions] Do we have something, Tone?

[Tone Leivestad, executive]

So another from Chris Lawrence, Would Martin like to comment on talent turnover that seems very high recently?

[Bertel Karlstedt, executive]

Martin, do you want to comment on that? Or do you want me to comment on it? Martin?

[Martin Laudenbach, executive]

Yes, I can certainly comment, Chris. But the question is simple. Talent turnover is something we try to avoid. We've had it. We've had it for different reasons, a whole array. The important thing, and I think better risk is where Board and management are aligned. Our efforts are to secure and keep our talent within the company, plus obviously attracting further talent as we go forward. We have to recognize, though, that the situation of the company may also have an impact on people's decisions, which is something we don't like, which is something we try to minimize, but something we have to face as well.

Looking at that, I think while we try to minimize and discuss how to minimize loss of talent, if we look at -- well, basically, the faces we have here from management on the screen, be it Bertel, who we have had joined successfully. If we look at Erik joining, if we look at Alessandro, if we look at Philipp, at the same time, I think it is -- we can say we have a strong team that has the capability, the experience and the energy to take Circa forward.

Our focus right now is the short-term focus in funding with -- to enable that. If that answers your question, Chris.

[Bertel Karlstedt, executive]

And Chris, I would add one more word to the adjectives that Martin mentioned, I would say, committed as well. The commitment is there as well to the company to take it forward. Any other questions?

If not at this point, then I want to thank you all for your participation and contribution and your interest and want to ensure a good continuation of the day and the spring time, if you are in the Northern Hemisphere, recognize that some of you are not heading towards warmer times but rather on the contrary. Thank you all, and have a good continuation of the day.