Itaconix (LSE:ITX) — Interim Results for the year ended 30 June 2025

0:00 Good afternoon, and welcome to the ITACONIX PLC investor presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged and could be submitted at any time via the q and a tab situated on the right hand corner of your screen. Simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question received during the meeting itself. However, the company can review all questions submitted today and publish responses where it's appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll, and I'd now like to hand you over to John Shaw, CEO. Good afternoon, sir.

0:31 Good afternoon. John Sharp, CEO of ITACONIX, and welcome to our report on our interim results, for 2025. In terms of our highlights, it's a very important half year for us, for the long term development of ITACONIX into a large, highly profitable specialty ingredients company. Our h one highlights are really around our financial, results in a couple of different areas. We recorded record revenues, record gross profits, near neutral adjusted EBITDA, and we still have plenty of resources for additional growth. On our commercial progress side, we made a major step towards reaching profitability from both the revenue growth side and the revenue base we have in place for landing and expanding new customers.

1:23 Finally, we're also setting up future growth with two major new initiatives that advance in the first half with both our sparks program, our biobasterisk program. Our path to be a large specialty ingredient company centers around the value and potential for itaconic acid. Itaconic acid is a natural molecule. It's a metabolite actually produced in our bodies in the natural world through biochemistry. Its value is derived from its unique combination of three functional sites that are one more than acrylic acid has. These sites offer multifunctional benefits for polymers made from isocyclic acid, which is what we do. Its value is also derived from how safe it is to handle and use relative to the building blocks it can replace, such as styrene and styrene and, acrylic acid.

2:17 It's produced and readily available by industrial fermentation. It's been used for many years across many industries at lower levels in polymers. We we make it, into our polymers on it. What we do is we purchase isiconic acid, bring it into our facility here in, The US, and we process it using our proprietary technology into isiconic polymers that are key ingredients in our wide range of everyday products. We have a large technology platform for idaconic acid where we can use it across many different application areas. Right now, we are focusing on three areas on scale mineral scale inhibition, particularly for preventing the detrimental effects of calcium scale in your home and in your detergent industrial applications.

3:07 Second importance for us is odor neutralization, where we bind zinc into our polymer, and that polymer, because highly effective for getting, water soluble zinc to act as a neutralizer on contact. And third, we use our underlying monomers and binders to make paints and coatings.

3:26 There are a wide range of other potential applications we could pursue in the future, but for right now, we're focusing, on the scale inhibition, odor neutralization, and specialty monomers.

3:41 Within our wide range of applications, we're doing this under three business opportunities. First of all is our industrial performance, is our ITX PERFORMANCE ingredients where we produce and sell ITACONIX polymers, produced here and and and sold around the world. Second of all, and very important to our growth for the performance ingredients is is we have identified certain segments within the detergent market, the home detergent market, where we believe both our ingredients and other key ingredients are enabling a new generation of of better of better products. And we are facilitating getting these out onto the market, by doing formulation work for brands.

4:27 For that, we get paid a dollar per pound for the additional ingredients that we sell. So think of it as being a value added reseller of the other ingredients that we do, but the core of it is to bring better products in the certain segments that we have to identify, get it to brands better and faster to get them on the market. And then finally is our bioastrous building blocks. These are specialty monomers, that we are using, and making available, to be able to get used more broadly in paints and coatings, over the next, few years.

5:06 Where we've gone with this now is the capabilities we have. We are now leading, consumer product wins for brands in all the right places across a broad range of brands, and product categories that are found in pretty much every major retailer in North America and Europe and expanding around the world. So we have great technology. We've turned them into great specialty ingredients. We found ways to get them into the market faster, and we are winning out in the marketplace, in all the right places. So Laura will go through the financial aspects of how we're performing to date, and our future on it. Hi. I'm Laura Denner. I'm the chief financial operator, officer here at ITACONIX. I'm thrilled to be able to share with you more detail on the results for our first half of twenty twenty five. There's been a lot of positive progress made in the first six months of the year.

6:06 So to get into it, the overview for the first half, sales were at 4,800,000, up by 73% from h one twenty twenty four. This half revenue also marks a record half for us in the business. We beat our last record half by 20%, which occurred in h one twenty twenty three. This half, we also saw a strong gross profit of 1,700,000. This was due to maintaining our overall target gross profit margins at 35%. This in a consistent cost base for the period, we were able to improve our EBITDA losses to 200,000, which was an improvement from 800,000 from h one twenty twenty four. Lastly, the group ended the period with ample net working capital at 6,600,000 with the resources that we need for growth.

6:53 So as we turn to top line growth, we saw growth in h one twenty twenty four in both our ITACONIX performance ingredients and our sparks formulated solution. Performance ingredients contributed 3,300,000 for the half. These revenues increased by 51% for from h one twenty twenty four. This is largely due to the efficacy of our cleaning polymers in in enabling next generation detergent formulations. These polymers have an average gross profit margin of 45%. We anticipate strong growth in this business unit and to maintain similar gross profit margins in the near term. Our sparks formulation solutions grew to 1,500,000, which was a growth of a 156% from h one twenty twenty four.

7:40 This growth is related to our efforts in rebuilding our North American detergent sales, where we work with contract manufacturers and brands to supply turnkey solutions. These revenue do complement our performance ingredients and yield an average gross profit margin of 13%. We anticipate that in North America, these sales will continue to grow with North American detergent sales, and margins will be maintained at about 10 to 15% in the near term. Lastly, BioAsterix has generated some small volume ecommerce sales. We are seeing a lot of interest in these new building blocks, and we don't anticipate seeing a lot of commercial volumes in the next in the near term. Overall, the efforts made in converting our sales pipeline into revenue over the last twelve months has increased our sales by $2,000,000.

8:31 All this done while maintaining our overall desired gross profit margin at 35%. Next, we'll look at sales by geography. Sales in North America were 3,300,000. This made up 68% of total sales. These sales were comprised of Performance Ingredients and Sparks Formulation Solutions. Over the last three halves, we've seen strong recovery in that North American detergent market with existing company customers growing revenues use utilizing our flagship polymer, TSI four twenty two. This one has excellent multifunctional performance, and it offers cost advantages. Another reason for the growth we saw was the utilization of our sparks program.

9:16 This is helping us bring formulations to market faster. We have two examples of this in the North American market. One was with a contract tablighter and one with a contract formulator blender. These started at relatively small to moderate revenues about eighteen months ago, and they are now our top two customers in the region.

9:36 Both of these made up about 14% of revenues each each, and this is really showing our land and expand strategy in action. So turning our attention across the pond, revenues in Europe and globally were 1,500,000, which was about 32% of our sales. Formulation work is done typically done a little bit differently here. Brands and contract manufacturers tend to do their own formulating work. This is different than in the North American market market where we act as a partner. Growth in this region is from our competitive advantage of our polymers for bringing scale inhibition in dishwashing and laundry detergents. An example in Europe of our land and expand methodology is illustrated by the success with our customer who is an integrated contract manufacturer.

10:25 They represented about 21% of the group's sales. This sales growth is due to their ability to win bids with a multitude of private label brands because our polymers are providing that key claim for their formulations. So next, we'll look at the makeup of revenues by customer type. We work through three main channels. One, direct sales to brand. Second, we go sales through partners and distributors, and last is sales through contract manufacturers. So sales to contract manufacturers are primary avenue. This comprised 85% of our sales for the half. Working with contract manufacturers, we can provide strong technical support in bringing formulations, ingredients, and claims marketing together faster. So in North America, we have higher visibility through our sparks program.

11:13 We are able to engage with brands and contract manufacturers and act as a collaboration partner. This gives us the better visibility on demand for our ingredients, and we're able to better estimate the underlying demand for the end merchandiser or brands. We estimate that no one brand was responsible for more than 15% of our total revenues for h one twenty twenty five. So I think one of the most thrilling advancements we've made was the progress towards profitability. Not only did we have the strong revenue growth, and we main but we also maintained our price discipline. We continue to price to the value of our ingredients. This is really what allowed us to maintain that gross profit margin of 35% for the period. Gross profits for the period were 1,700,000, which was an increase of about 600,000 from h one twenty twenty four.

12:05 Next, we were able to improve our cost base. We reduced group expenses by about 200,000 for the half. Our current cost base provides us with sufficient resources for this next phase of growth that we're going into. So now shifting our focus to cash usage for the period. We did invest capital we did invest in capital spending, which I'll cover in a moment, but our working capital did consume some additional cash resources as we pivoted to mitigate potential risks that might develop as a consequence of The US international trade relations. We worked with raw material suppliers to increase our raw material inventory and also understand the ever changing landscape of import tariffs.

12:50 So as of recent, we still believe that there's a favorable assessment to the impacts of these tariffs on our raw materials. Most of our raw material pricing does not appear to be materially affected by these current import tariffs, but the strategic decision did increase inventories for the period, and it increased our working capital days from eighty three to eighty seven days. We anticipate over the next half that we'll bring these inventories down unless we start to see some unfavorable trade negotiations starting to develop. So another important part of here at ITACONIX is during the first half of twenty twenty five, we did invest in additional fixed assets. These additions were made to support our production needs as well as our growing workforce.

13:39 This investment in fixed assets did impact our fixed asset turn ratio from 11 x in the full year twenty twenty four to nine x, which was still well above the industry comparatives of two x. So with a significant investment in our property, plant, and equipment for ITACONIX, we still have an attractive fixed asset utilization for our specialty ingredients. And we have sufficient capacity in the plant, and we can dynamically enhance this ratio to meet our near term revenue demands. So another key investment made during the period was in our intangible assets. Advances were made in the development work for our bioastrics building blocks as we bring these new ITACONI polymers to market in our paints, films, and coatings.

14:30 Another area of focus was the development work done in our performance ingredients. These investments, along with our patent portfolio, which includes 16 different patent families, is a critical piece to the value of ITACONIX. So next, why ITACONIX? So we've made some exciting progress in the half on our path towards being a profitable specialty ingredient company. We've ticked quite a few boxes, I think. One, we've executed on our land and expand demand generation for revenue growth. We've offered a wide range of valuable ingredients at attractive gross profit margins. We have effective use of capital in our fixed asset turn and our working capital utilization. Next, we have a growing base of intangible assets and a broad patent portfolio.

15:19 Next, we have a the cash to continue on our growth path. And last, we are focused on our future growth and achieving breakeven profitability. So overall, I think we're well positioned with the right resources and a good customer base to get us there. In I'll turn it back over to John Shaw to kinda share with you a little bit about our growth path. Thank you, Laura. So our growth path is being defined in three in in the three areas three business areas We're our the way we grow is we find an opportunity. We turn that opportunity into a particular product or service. We get traction for it. We get growth for it, and then we to get

16:09 our performance ingredients to be a standard ingredient in the future in a wide range of formulations. I'm gonna move right to right to left on it because our building blocks at BIRES, we're just in the very early stages of an opportunity. Over the next couple of years, we expect to advance into getting initial traction there and growing it, that is a three to five year growth plan on it. Within Performance Ingredients, we are advancing our way into into a high growth phase, and we're working and using our Sparks formulated solutions services to accelerate getting new winning formulations out in the market faster. And then, ultimately, that's driving, the use of our performance ingredients as standard ingredients in a wider, wider range of of formulations.

17:03 So to talk about performance ingredients itself, first and most important are our scale inhibitors where we have great value in detergents. So And the scale inhibitors, what we need to be doing now is to expand from North America our success in North America to continue expanding into Europe. We are we are doing that. We're finding traction there, and our growth path is to continue that expansion to get our scale inhibitors to be standard formulations, standard ingredients in a wide range of detergent formulations, and that's our next stage of growth. We are also, though, however, investing in a new round of polymers where we think we can make, additional improvements, in our scale inhibitors to meet future needs and even bring better better polymers out. We think that's another two to three years out. So we think we're in a very good place. Scale inhibitors is going to drive our growth. It has driven our growth. It's gonna continue to drive our growth.

18:06 The next area where we need to perform is in odor neutralizers. We have an excellent odor excellent odor neutralizer. Odor control is getting more attention, as ever, particularly in fabric detergents. And as you can see with Croda, our new agreement with Croda, there's growing interest in getting better ingredients on the market for odor control. We have an excellent product for doing that. We are we've expanded our product line to include a dry form, and we're going to continue to push traction across, both through Croda and through our direct efforts across a wider range of applications on it. On formulated solutions, our SPARKS program is very important for us where we have identified certain specific product opportunities in in, in detergents, in dish and fabric detergents, where we believe both our own ingredient and other key ingredients available on the market are driving are going to drive success.

19:10 We've identified those. We've identified the formulas. We have them out in the market and are talking to brands about them. The brands that brings brands coming to us so that they can get a better formulation out on the market, and we do it so that they can get there faster and better through the innovation that we offer. We have over 10 we have over 10 relationships right now, in various stages of development across brands and detergent makers, that will have, we believe, 10 new products on the market by the end of this year. We already are probably looking at about another eight, for 2026. So we're very excited about the work that we're achieving, and what we're gonna be doing next year.

19:56 Finally, we're just starting our process of getting specialty iodiconic monomers out onto the market. We did launch our ecommerce site to make research quantities available to development labs in North America. We plan to expand the distribution of those monomers into Europe. Then we're also going to increase the volumes that we have available beyond the research quantities, and then most importantly is to find a partner to actually pull an end product through to the market, that is based on our monomers and our binders to show the value that they have. Exciting area along that'll be a long development range on it, but we started the path on it. In terms of questions that we think about for investors, one is the profitability.

20:50 We are, at, we've made a major step towards profitability, with the growth that we've had. I think, even more importantly, we have done work, to restructure our our customer base from where we were a year and a half ago when we decided we needed a better customer base and a more profitable customer base for our performance ingredients. We made a step, in that direction that resulted in a reduction in our revenues last year. But as you can see from the from the results of the first half, I think our efforts, have been highly successful to get a very broad profitable consumer, customer base, for our future growth, and we see the revenue potential in our pipeline to cross over into profitability. Regarding production capacity, we did complete improvements to our production line this spring to meet our needs for 2026, and we are working on improvements to our production line right now for to meet all our current plans for 2027.

21:49 We have we have mentioned that in the future, when we become a fully standardized scale inhibitor in detergents and we get into one of the one or more of the major players, the volumes are are far beyond what we think we would ever do here in stratum, and we also want to be able to have a second site. So a number of years out, it's you know, we have we're starting to look at it. It's not imminent on it, but we are starting to think about where and what we would do in the terms for that. We do not need, we do not need cash for that right now. When we do get there, we expect that we'll have many funding opportunities to do it, on it, but it is something we're starting to plan on because of the progress that our scale inhibitors are making into larger and larger accounts.

22:39 In terms of broader revenue opportunities, new applications, we're gonna stay fairly focused on where we are. We have some opportunities in in in sustainable leather. Those are in play, but we don't we are not expecting any major volumes out of those now. There are other some other small applications opportunities that are brewing, but our focus is on where we are right now. In terms of new products, we're going to focus on another generation of scale inhibitors, some improvements we can make that we believe the market will is looking for on it. But our other programs in terms of our superabsorbent program, as we've mentioned in the past, is there. We're continuing some work on it.

23:25 We do not see the the relative advantages that we can have in the marketplace for revenues, we think that the areas we're focusing on right now are better.

23:36 So our outlook remain for 2025 remains very positive. We had the revenue we have the revenues. We have the profitability, to meet all of our expectations, for 2025 and to be in excellent position for 2026, to meet our our expectations for 2026.

23:59 So in terms of of the overall summary of where we are, we are we are making we have an excellent proprietary technology platform that's gonna generate a broad range of valuable ingredients, that deliver performance, affordability, and renewability to a broad range, and growing range of consumer end products. We see very little competition and that we that we can now focus in on the areas that we have right now with low capital intensity to be able to achieve our near term and long term objectives to being a large specialty ingredient company. So, it's a very exciting time for us. I think the progress that we've made, over the last eighteen months, has put us into an excellent position for our next stage of development.

24:50 Thank you.

24:55 John, Laura, thank you very much for your presentation this afternoon. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions just by using the q and a tab situated on the top right hand corner of your screen. Just while the company take a few moments to review those questions submitted today, I'd like to remind you that recording of this presentation along with a copy of the slides and the published q and a can be accessed via investor dashboard. John and Laura, as you can see, we received number of questions throughout today's presentation. Can I please ask you to read out the questions and give responses where appropriate to do so? And I'll pick up from you at the end. Hi. So the first question that we have, that was presubmitted, the company had seen impressive growth over the past year. Does it still aim to reach a 100,000,000 in turnover? If so, what is the realistic time scale for this?

25:41 We have we are developing the product portfolio. We have the technology platform to be a $100,000,000. We are advancing products to be there, to be a $202,030.40, $50,000,000 product, I believe, with our scale inhibitors, and we are adding new products on top of it. So I think we have clearly a technology platform to do it. With our scale inhibitor, we have the specific product to get a major portion of the way there. With our odor neutralizers, we have a very nice addition to it, and now starting the path with our specialty monomers to compete in the butylacrylate market and the special needs of butylacrylate market. I think we now have all the product plays in place to get there.

26:29 The specific time frame, don't know. It's it's it really depends in terms of how long it takes to get our our monomers into use on it, but that's still our our growth and expectation. The next presubmitted question, please advice latest breakeven and profit timeline expectations. I believe I addressed that in the presentation. We are one more revenue step away, one more major revenue jump away, from from reaching that. We have those, opportunities in our pipeline, both for for expanding our existing customers and additional new opportunities. I can't give you the specific time frame of it, but I think we are we are approaching that threshold.

27:16 We're we're very much at the threshold of achieving that. Next pre submitted question was regarding CEO's recent quote. We have all the capacity we need to meet our needs over the next twelve, eighteen, twenty four months. That being said, we're going to start taking a look at our production footprint and what it could look like in the few years out based on some very sizable opportunities and projects in our customer pipeline. Is it possible to give some more insight to this segment of the business or the high growth areas? I think I've addressed some of this in the presentation. As our scale inhibitor advances to being a standard ingredient, and as we're working our way through the private label, formulators and the purpose driven brands, we are getting interest with the large global players.

28:06 And when we get there, those are very large volumes. When we get to those volumes, where we play you know, we we will need another plant, and where we put it, depends on exactly which player comes through when. But when we do get there, it'll be the types of volumes that we believe will be very easy for us to get financing for a larger plant on it. So the next presubmitted question. Despite a stellar past year, the share price is still subdued. What is the company doing to attract new private investors? We are I believe we we're exiting a period of restructuring where the the revenue decline that we had last year was concerning to people about the validity of our long term story.

28:56 With the results that we have out in the first half, to be able to demonstrate that we have, in fact, restructured our customer base to have a better customer base and more profitable customer base and a customer base that has all the revenue potential, to meet our our near and midterm objectives, I think we're now in a position to be, more aggressive at getting awareness out of exactly where we are and where we're going. Next presubmitted question is in regards to the OTC share trading platform. There has not been a trade on this platform since the 02/28/2025. What can be done, if anything, to raise ITACONIX profile and number of trades?

29:41 Friends, no director trades slash purchases since early twenty twenty four. Will this change? The OTC listing is very important for us, a a a large percentage of our shareholder base that are in The US. It does allow us to our US shareholders to hold their shares in their brokerage accounts and to buy and sell shares on it. That being said, our in terms of the dynamics of focusing in on our investor relations and what I just spoke about earlier about being in a position to get our story out, we are gonna focus in the near term on The UK market, but do see opportunities to start addressing the o t the the markets outside of The UK.

30:28 It is relatively more expensive from an investor relations standpoint, to access some of those, but, the OTC listing did achieve our objective of being able allow a, the large number of US shareholders to be able to hold their shares, in the in their brokerage accounts like UK investors are allowed to do so that there's some parity and equality there. So one of the questions that came in from Alex a, why is Spark's gross profit margin only 13%? The Spark's program is a value is a formulation and value added reseller program where we draw we we draw brands into next generation formulations better and faster than any other approach we know of.

31:18 So 13% is a value added reseller. This is the margin that we're getting on our services and on the reselling of other noniconic ingredients into these formulations. It's a very attractive very attractive, and you can think of it as a very efficient and funded sales and marketing program. It's the best, fastest way that you can get brands to get better better consumer products that we that are ingredients enabled. It's the best, fastest way to get them out there, and it's been very successful at it. And we're generating profits by doing it. Another question on our sparks program from Kevin r. How are the 10 new sparks products due out this year progressing?

32:04 Some are already out on the market. We have some in the they're, in the dish area and in the laundry area. The 10 are either already on the market or they're going into production, and I think we've shipped I think we've shipped the ingredients already for those that make it out there. So there are fundamentally new are some new dish detergent applicated formulas out on the market, next generation ones, and also in the fabric area. We expect those to advance into some other areas early next year. Those are in process, but they are not ready to go into production. So the SPARKS program is doing everything that we want it to do, and we think it'll continue to do it well over the next two years.

32:52 Another question submitted during the presentation was from Sid B. Is ITACONIX targeted or suited for small brands, private label offerings, their cleaning and premium products? A major target for us and our customer base is built around right now is built around purpose driven and private label brands where we bring competitive formulations that they may not have available to them to allow them to compete against the the larger global brands. So that is the core target that what we do in both Europe and in North America is to give the the second and third tier brands all the competitive position they need to compete on the retail shelf.

33:42 So another presubmitted question. Can you advise on where we are in regards to staffing or filling of the current positions being advertised? We have we have expanded our organization. We've expanded our marketing capabilities, and we've added to our our research and development capabilities. But most importantly is our production staff. So we do run twenty four hours a day, multiple days a week, and we have two full production, crews for that. We are always advertising to add people to that, to make sure we're in a position. We always have staffing available. So we're in a pretty good position right now, but a lot of work was done over the last over the last year to rebuild the organization so we have reliable fulfillment.

34:32 One of the presubmitted questions, what sort of time scale are you looking at for the next edition of the BioAstrokes product range? How has the initial response been to the ecommerce site? The ecommerce site is doing everything we had hoped it to do, which is it's it's like paid adver it's like getting paid for advertising. It gets us out in front of a lot of universities, a lot of industrial labs. We got the first ship I think we got the first order within a matter of weeks of being out there. It is generating inquiries about, the use of iodiconate monomers on it, and, we see that continuing on. The next phase of development for us, as I mentioned earlier, is actually to drive is is to drive and is to partner with someone to pull a a bioastrous enabled end product onto the market so that the rest of the world can see exactly what you can do, the special things that you can do with our with our monomers on it. So that is probably the next phase for us is to is to find a partner and pull get a end product out on the market to energize the entire process.

35:50 Another pre submitted question. Can you advise on what impact the following will have on demand for ITACONIX ingredients? Increased revenue streams in 2026. From June 13 to June 2025, eight new cosmetic ingredients were notified with the Chinese National Medical Products Administration notification two two thousand twenty five zero seven. I'm familiar with the the very important step that we received in the beauty side of it is that our hairstyling polymer was listed on the China INKY list on it. So we had sodium polyateconate listed on the China ink. You the other ones in that, in in that release were not our products.

36:39 The sodium polyatomic was ours. That was a very valuable step. We spent a considerable amount of effort to get onto it because the global companies really don't wanna look at your ingredient unless you have a China inky name on it. So even immediately after getting that, I think we got an order from a distributor out of Europe because we're able to achieve that. So but it was just one product. The other ones were not ours. So in the last person another presubmitted question. In the last presentation, you talked about the current superabsorbing ingredients we have available with the comparable market performance, but the cost was an issue. Can you elaborate on why it is so more costly, and are you looking for ways to remedy this?

37:28 The as a company, what we look for is is when the the two carboxylic acid groups that you have from itaconic acid bring some value beyond the single carboxylic acid group that acrylic acid has. That is extraordinarily true in the performance ingredients that we have. It is also, true in certain aspects, when you get into paints and coatings. Superabsorbance is the last big segment, within the acrylic acid market, and the two carboxylic acid groups, we do not believe brings any additional value. So we're on a straight chemistry to chemistry basis. As I've spoken about before, our underlying monomer, the raw the the pearl, is produced by fermentation.

38:18 Acrylic acid is produced by synthesis of fossil fuels. Fermentation will always be more expensive than the than, chemical synthesis from a fossil from a fossil fuel. Second of all, from the polymerization process, our entire polymerization the entire, potential for itaconic polymers comes from how difficult itaconic acid is to polymerize. Acrylic acid likes to polymerize, so it's a faster it's underlying faster process on it. So we have a more expensive pearl and a more expensive process to to make a string of pearls on it. So we we never expect our superabsorbent on a on a straight cost basis to compete against an acrylic a a fossil fuel based acrylic acid superabsorbent.

39:11 What there is is a there is a small segment of the market that's potentially to access to be able to do it, but for right now, relative to the opportunities that we see for unique functionality that we can use in paints and coatings, and in, water solubles, we're focusing there. We are continuing to work, though, to find that one, one or two brands, within the superabsorbent size and purpose driven brands that would be able would be willing to pay a significant premium over for a superabsorbent over what you can do with a acrylate based superabsorbent. We continue to look for that. When we find it, we will pursue it, but we're not there yet. And our focus right now is on being profitable and working on areas that we think have the best best opportunity for us to be to grow in the next eighteen months, twenty four months.

40:09 Another presubmitted question. ITACONIX was a project partner in a funded grant looking into new branched polymers. Can you advise on this, and if there is any potential future commercial advantage to this research or any further progress in this area? This is a UK based research project that was run out of The UK some number of years ago. There is no there is no activity in that area nor are we pursuing anything in the drug delivery area. Another presubmitted question. How are the ITACONIX products going down with the new customers? Any chance of getting some feedback with testimonials?

40:55 The best testimonials is is is to see them show up on ingredient lists, and they show they are showing up on more and more ingredient lists. One of the difficulty we we have, in our investor relations is that every one of our customers thinks that, you know, we're the special sauce, and they don't really wanna let other people know about it. It's been a ongoing problem when you have a great specialty ingredient. So, we are looking to that, but, to date, our, brands are reluctant to to, advertise, what their special sauces. Another prescriptive question. Any interest back from agricultural fertilizer companies who can use itaconic acid in maize or rapeseed?

41:44 Crop micronutrients is an area that we've looked at. It's a fairly, long path to do it, so we're we are not pursuing anything in crop production right now. I've worked in that area. In North America, you need to go state by It is a state by state regulation process to get into, into crops on it, and, it's a very long process and a very dedicated effort. For right now, we're focused on becoming profitable at a $2,030.40, $50,000,000 company with the, products that we have right now. It is a great opportunity, in the future, but for right now, we're gonna we're focusing our resources on being profitable and hitting our near term, revenue potential. Another presubmitted question. Any update on sustainable fashion?

42:35 We have a number of customers that have have used and are looking to use our polymers in sustainable leather. That is we we work with them. We don't have as much line of sight into what their activities are in the marketplace, but there clearly are formulations that they have that they are promoting to their customers on it. In terms of the specific dynamics of what's going on in end markets for sustainable leather, we don't have that insight on it, but we have well established we do have customers that have well established formulations for more sustainable, tanning, processes using our product, and and we're ready to serve them as soon as those formulations go into commercial use.

43:26 We've had several questions about the share price. With the share price so undervalued, what do you anticipate the company moving to a profitable position to turn the share price around? Our focus is on profitability. We believe that when we get into profitability, that we will open up the potential for a wider number of institutional investors to look at us. We have come through a a difficult period in '9 in 2024 with a down year on it, so we have rebuilt it, and we're ready to go out and tell a better story our story to it to a wider audience. I do think profitability will open up a broader range of potential investors.

44:15 So during the presentation, ENT asked three customers cover 49% of turnover if I read it right. In some industries, that can be dangerous. A loss of one or two of these would be hurtful. Are you sure you are using keeping these three customers? You did let go of a major customer last year due to smaller gross profits on these sales. If these sales were still profitable, albeit at a smaller percentage, would the overall result have been better and bring you closer to breakeven? We are achieving 45% gross profit margins in our performance ingredients. That's well I mean, that's a very attractive performance ingredients business.

45:01 We were not there a couple of years ago on that. So the customers that we have now are allowing us to have a overall 45% gross profit margin on it, and they have pricing that we've you know, stable pricing we've given to them. So we do not we think we're in a fundamentally different position than we were two years ago with our customer base on it. It's not we believe we are gonna keep those customers. More importantly, to look at is what a little sliver they were three, you know, three quarters ago. They were a little sliver of our revenues, and they've expanded to that. Remember, in our existing customer base right now, there are some slivers in our first half revenues, similar slivers that we expect to expand into similar percentages. So on a percentage basis, as we grow, we think that that 14% of revenues will come down to it depends on any one customer, but that's because what it shows is we land and expand, and and that and there are there are lots of little slivers in our, first half, revenue results that we expect to expand.

46:20 Submitted question by Sid B. Do you see ITACONIX becoming a reliable partner to the world's largest cleaning brands, or do you see ITACONIX sticking to the tier two, three brands? Oh, we very much want to we very much have a significant calling effort on the global leaders. They they know about us. They know about how our chemistries work. They can see that our chemistries are working in the marketplace. We have we have projects progressing, significant sized projects with them. It just takes them out it takes time. The the reason to focus on these smaller brands is to get to a profitable stage and to get, your your ingredients ubiquitously out onto as many product labels as possible so that, you know, there's high certainty that your product's gonna work, that you've been delivering and fulfilling customer needs for multiple years, and that your product works on it.

47:19 We are absolutely going after, we're absolutely going after the larger players, and I think, over time, we will be successful. Our scale inhibitors are that good. Tony p asked during the presentation, any markets beyond The US and Europe? We are approaching global markets. We do have Croda working in odor control around the world. I believe they have revenues in Asia, Europe, elsewhere. We do have Nurion working on hairstyling. They have they have revenues around the world on it. We have started serve we have serviced a detergent customer in Australia. We believe we'll start expanding into parts of Asia with some, revenues.

48:07 So, yes, the the issue with the scale inhibitor, remember, though, is that we are a replacement for phosphates. In other parts of the world, if you're if if regulatorily you're allowed to use phosphates, a lot of times people are using them. So so we need to make sure that people are trying to move away from phosphates because that's where an alternative. But we definitely are we've ex as we've spoken in prior presentations, we've we've expanded our regulatory footprint to cover the world. We have China, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Japan. We we have the global footprint that we regulatory footprint that we need, and we are we are active. But from a resource standpoint, we still wanna make sure we reach the next level of revenues, and it's gonna come in North America and Europe.

49:04 Another presubmitted question. So it'd be, can the remaining 5,700,000 in cash equivalents takes ITACONIX to cash profitability? Yeah. We believe we have all the resources we need to reach profitability. I think that's it for questions. Excellent. John Lower. Questions. Thank you thank you, everybody, for submitting those questions. Happy to answer them, so you understand in-depth, what a great position we're in on it, and really appreciate your support, particularly over the last twelve to eighteen months where we did go through that difficult process of restructuring our our our customer base.

49:49 We're in an excellent position and look forward to reporting, great results to you in the future. John, Laura, thank you for updating investors today. Can I please ask investors not to close this session as you'll now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that the management team can better understand your views and expectations? This may only take a few moments to complete, and I'm sure will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of ITACONIX PLC, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good afternoon to you all.