Moderator: Welcome to the Itaconix plc 2026 half-year results investor presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen-only mode. Questions are encouraged, and they can be submitted at any time using the Q&A tab situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Simply type in your questions and press send. Before we begin, I would like to submit the following poll, and I would now like to hand you over to CEO John Shaw. Good afternoon to you, sir.
John Shaw: Thank you. We look forward to going through our results today and giving you some overview of what we've done and where we'll be going in the near term here. We started with a very good first half. Record half-year revenues, our fourth half of revenue growth, excellent commercial progress. But what's most exciting is we achieved our first half of break-even EBITDA profitability. We expanded our overall revenues to existing customers, we landed new important customers, and we achieved that break-even profitability while still investing in new applications, new products, and key operating improvements. We ended the half with $5 million to fund continued growth. If you're new to us on this call or want a quick refresher, we have a very straightforward business and value proposition. Itaconic acid is a natural metabolite found in our bodies and nature, safe and effective. It's produced at industrial scale by fermentation using plant-based feedstock from corn. We purchase it on the open market. We bring it into our U.S. operations to react it using our patented processes to produce a broad line of proprietary, safer ingredients that improve the performance, affordability, and sustainability of consumer products. We ship our ingredients either directly or through partners around the world to be used in hundreds of consumer products. Generating demand and revenues for our ingredients is also straightforward. Consumer brands are constantly looking for new competitive opportunities and advantages by formulating new products or reformulating existing ones. We use a range of direct and indirect efforts to influence brands to formulate or reformulate using our ingredients. When we're successful, we or a partner or distributor receive a purchase order to supply our ingredient, usually to a contract manufacturer that's making the end product for a brand. Relatively rarely, less than 10% of the time, the brands that we work with actually produce their own products. Very simple business on it. We operate in three segments. Itaconix Performance Ingredients are where we produce and sell our key products. SPARX Formulated Solutions is how we accelerate the process of influencing brands in North America to develop and produce itaconic-based formulations. Through that, we also sell some other ingredients to the contract manufacturers that need to produce our formulations and capture some additional gross profits from these sales to support our technical, marketing, and sales efforts. Our third area is BIO*Asterix, which are specialty itaconic monomers and polymeric binders used to make plant-based ingredients. Laura will show you how we are turning demand for our ingredients into attractive financial results. Our goal is to become a large specialty ingredient company. We started the 2026 financial year with record revenues and major profitability milestones. We are confident we will have the reorder rates from existing customers and new customers for a strong second half. Beyond 2026, we believe we have the ingredients and customer base to reach $30 million in revenues in the next three to four years, and we can do it comfortably with our existing U.S. operations. Beyond $30 million, we have broader growth opportunities in our core detergent applications, and we are progressing new potentials in crops and paints. We had a great first half, and we are just getting started. Let's have Laura get you into the financial details.
Laura Denner: Thanks, John. Hello, I am Laura Denner. I am the Chief Financial Officer of Itaconix, and I am delighted to share the exciting financial progress that we have made over the first six months of 2026. We did achieve $8.3 million in total revenue. This was an increase of 72% half over half. Again, the primary driver of this success was the Itaconix Performance Ingredients business. The Itaconix Performance Ingredients are those proprietary polymers that we manufacture and sell. The revenues in this business unit more than doubled to $6.7 million. This growth reflects both higher reorder volumes from existing customers and contributions from new customer wins. Gross profits increased as well by 74%. This contributed $3 million of overall gross profit. Our margins remain stable at 36%. Maintaining margins while growing at this rate demonstrates the value that our customers are putting on our polymers, as well as the pricing discipline that we do have. I think to John's point, the most important thing that we achieved this half was our adjusted break-even EBITDA. We did all this while continuing to invest in product development, commercial expansion, and production capabilities for our future growth. As we turn our attention to the revenue buildup, we saw our fourth consecutive half of growth. North American revenues increased by about 29%, half over half. EMEA grew at an impressive 166%. As a result, EMEA now accounts for approximately half of the group's revenue, compared to about a third in H1 2025. After many years of developing this market, the sales volumes in EMEA have hit that new phase of takeoff for us. This also is an important milestone because it helps reduce our reliance on any single geography and allows us to build a more resilient, broad revenue base. North America, our North American revenues, which are comprised of both our SPARX Formulated Solutions and our Itaconix Performance Ingredients, grew as we engaged with more customers to bring tablets and capsules to market. We expect to be able to achieve our near-term goal of 600 million unit dose detergent pods in North America in 2026. EMEA revenues, which are comprised solely of our Itaconix Performance Ingredients, showed significant adoption by our customers in that region. Our detergent polymers are providing those key claims that that market is looking for. John Shaw will go into some of the use cases shortly to show you those key claims that we can support. In 2026, we did land a new EMEA customer that has the potential to bring in some significant volumes. We are currently monitoring the reorder rates, but we are enthusiastic at the progress of this opportunity converting to a customer. Now that we have achieved growth in EMEA, we are looking at other markets to assess the progress that we can make in those geographies and for future expansion. This is really just an assessment phase, though. As we look more closely into where the growth is coming from, we use our land and expand strategy, and we are seeing some good results. A significant portion of our revenue growth came from existing customers increasing their order volumes. This is their products gaining wider distribution and greater market acceptance. These reoccurring orders are a key indicator of our sustainability for the growth that we are seeing. At the same time, we successfully added two new major customers during this period, one in North America and that one in EMEA that we just discussed. We also brought on 10 new smaller accounts. The combination of the expanding activities that we are seeing with existing customers and bringing new customers in gives us that confidence that we need for our medium-term growth ambition. How is the growth supported by our customer base? As the business continues to scale, we are seeing a broader mix of opportunities move up through the pipeline, from major customer wins to smaller emerging accounts. In the first half, two of our customers contributed over $1 million, representing about 40% of our revenues. It is important to note that these customers are contract manufacturers, and they are manufacturing for multiple different brands. There is that additional layer of diversity beyond the headline customer count. We are also seeing growth across midsize accounts that contribute between $500,000-$1 million, along with a wider base of smaller customers coming online. This broader revenue distribution reduces the concentration risk and demonstrates the increased adoption of our technology across the detergent sector. Taken together, our customer diversity gives us that strong foundation that we are going to need for a long-term growth strategy. As we continue to grow our revenues, this did translate into improved profitability. Gross profits increased by approximately $1.2 million during the period. At the same time, we did increase administrative expenses by about $1 million. This was to support future growth initiatives. Despite these investments, we did achieve break-even adjusted EBITDA. This is in comparison to the first half of 2025, where we had a $200,000 loss. Most importantly, what this does, it puts us on our track to achieving a small positive EBITDA for the full year. As we continue to invest in our growth, those administrative expenses that did increase by about 49%, half on half, to about $3.2 million. Much of that was an increase that is reflected at targeted investments. One, from additional personnel, two, product development initiatives. There were some transportation costs associated with the higher demand in EMEA that we saw. Finally, some commercial activities that we were doing. It is important to note that these costs are proportional to our revenue growth, so they are variable in nature, so they will scale alongside our revenues. As we talked about additional personnel, we went from an average headcount of about 26 employees to 33 employees. This was done primarily to support those volumes in manufacturing. We also were doing a lot of work at innovating new formulations for the detergent market, as well as developing some of those new revenue opportunities in crops and in paint. That is where a lot of our administrative dollars went. Alongside with the investment in people, we continue to optimize our throughput in the plant that we have here in our Stratham facility. We have done most of the improvements to date without a significant CapEx expense. That puts us in a good position. We believe we have all the infrastructure we need to make it to $30 million, which is our medium-term objective and beyond. One of the things that I do like to mention here when we talk about the Stratham facility is that we do have an exceptional metric that is way beyond our peer group. Our fixed asset turnover is 15x for the period. What our equipment can do out there is generate significant revenues. We expect that to continue to grow as we continue to scale the volumes in our facility. We believe that our existing facility has all the capacity that we need, and we can further leverage that asset base. Lastly, our balance sheet remains strong, giving us the flexibility to support all these initiatives that we are working towards. We did end the half with cash and investments of $5.1 million, compared to $4.4 million at the end of 2025. Working capital was about $4.4 million at the period end. We benefited from some lower inventory balances as a timing effect due to one large customer order leaving at the end of June. Inventories were slightly lower than our target. We probably will invest again back into working capital $300,000-$400,000. However, we left the period in a good cash and working capital position. During this period, we also did some capital spending to support the growth that we are looking to do. This includes the implementation of an ERP system. We are in process of doing that. We plan to have that live by the end of the year, and be utilizing that for the full year of 2027. We did some production optimization projects, and we did some capital work on developing those future applications. All that was capitalized onto our balance sheet. Overall, we left the current period in a great cash position with sufficient funding for our medium-term growth ambitions and beyond. I think what we have been able to achieve here in the first half of 2026 was an important period for Itaconix, and it shows some of the impressive metrics of what we can do here. We delivered strong revenue growth. We maintained stable gross profit margins. We achieved EBITDA breakeven for the first time in the company's history. All at the same time, we are using our land and expand strategy to continue to further our work with existing customers by increasing volumes. New customers are coming online, and there is a broader, more diverse base of customers across all geographies. What we are doing is we are continuing to invest in people, systems, product development, production capabilities needed to support that growth. We are all doing this within our existing infrastructure. Our Stratham facility has all the capacity that we need to support that medium-term growth, and we have those impressive fixed asset turnovers. Finally, we have the cash and investments that we need, leaving the first half to support all of our growth plans and to continue to invest in those future opportunities. Overall, these results show clear progress towards our goals of building a large, profitable, attractive specialty ingredient company. I am going to turn it back over to John Shaw to talk a little bit about our growth path and how we are going to achieve those ambitions.
John Shaw: Thank you, Laura. What a great financial position to be in. To talk about our growth path, we are in a very strong position. We are expanding revenues from existing customers. We are landing new customers, investing in new products, applications, and production capabilities. What next? Where can we get to, and what do we need to do to get there? In the second half of 2026, we need to exceed $14.8 million in revenues and have clear EBITDA profitability. As Laura said, we need reasonable reorder rates from our new customers and to just keep doing what we are doing. Our next horizon is $30 million in revenues. Why $30 million? Because we think that is when you will see our full financial capabilities as the attractive specialty ingredient company that Laura just outlined to you. We have the valuable products, the existing customers, the pipeline of new customers, and the production capabilities to get there. You have seen how expansion and demand from our existing customer drives our growth. For $30 million, we need one more large EMEA detergent customer and success with purpose-driven brands in North America, and we are on it. Where do we get in three to four years? Not sure when we will get to the $30 million, but it will be three to four years, but we will get there. We are not here to build Itaconix to be a $30 million company. We are here to build it to its true potential of at least $100 million. That is going to take a while longer, but we are already working on it. We will get far beyond the $30 million within the detergent uses, and we are investing in developing new product opportunities in paints and crops right now, and paints and crops right now are leading the way to get us there. Our core product area is dishwashing detergents. There are 70 billion annual dishwasher cycles across EMEA, North America, and slightly beyond. Our high-value, plant-based, multifunctional scale inhibitor for dishwashing detergents is currently less than 4% of these cycles per year. Very small percentage. We have great opportunities. The number of laundry machine cycles is even much larger than dishwashing machines. People use their laundry machines more often than they use their dishwashing machines at home. Our high-value, plant-based, multifunctional odor neutralizer does not even register as a fraction of a percentage of these laundry cycles. Our path to $30 million and beyond will be driven by these core ingredients and applications. On top of these revenues are large new applications we are pursuing, the plant-based polymeric binders for paints and soil additives for plant health. Overall, the installation of automatic dishwashing machines is growing in the world, so the number of dishwashing machine cycles is growing. There is also demand for safer ingredients, first on regulatory bans on the use of phosphates, which our scale inhibitors replace, and there is also the consumer desire for safer chemicals in their home, and we are a safe chemical. The other key one driving our demand here is that global brands who we do work with are steadily advancing their performance. They have their own process of how they come up with next-generation formulations. But when they do come out and push formulations and cost better, all the remaining brands need to keep up with better performance and cost. That is where we work with brands. We start in North America working with these brands to accelerate their introduction of next-generation products with our SPARX Formulated Solutions and our deeperclean.com programs. Our Itaconix TSI scale inhibitor polymers manage the detrimental effects of water hardness and cleaning, particularly in dishwashing detergents. If water hardness is not managed, then you will have calcium and other minerals deposit as spots or film. Phosphates are used for spotting and filming. They were used but are increasingly banned due to the environmental damage they do when they cause in waterways. Our TSI products are gaining market share as leading replacements for the phosphates, and you can see the kind of performance that we can get in terms of managing spotting and filming with the best of them in both European formulations and North American formulations. Let us look at why we are so good as a replacement. Our TSI polymers reduce the overall product costs if properly formulated. You need less of our polymer, far less, because of their multifunctional performance. Compact detergents, less cost, less chemicals, same or better performance. This is why our revenues are growing and will keep growing. It is a great product. We are not just waiting for brands to figure out how to properly formulate with our polymers. We are creating our own next-generation formulations to bring to brands. We are patenting them, and we are collaborating with market leaders to get them out to gain market share for our customers and to drive our growth. Let us start with a new triple chamber pod that we have. There are two liquid chambers and a powder chamber. We have patented this. It is 3.3 grams less per dose than the super premium market leader in the United States. 3.3 less grams per dose, same performance. This is what our customers in North America are looking for to bring out next generation multi-chamber dish pods. But it gets even better. We knew we could push innovation even further using Bonals tablet presses to be able to go to an unwrapped, naked detergent tablet. By the way, Bonals knew it too. That is why we are collaborating of bringing a new generation of detergent tablets into North America. We have developed and patented an 8-gram dish detergent tablet using our Bonals development press line here in Stratham. No plastic wrapper, high plant-based content, super premium performance, 7.7 grams less per dose than the super premium market leader. Think about that, 7.7 grams. If we could do that across 70 billion dishwasher cycles, the annual savings in the chemicals used would fill up tractor-trailer trucks bumper to bumper from London to Edinburgh. That's how much 7.7 grams of savings can do in just terms of the volume of chemicals that could be reduced. That's what we do in dishwashing detergents. We know many of you have tried them at home. We've gotten some orders and delivered them into the U.K. Go to deeperclean.com and order some and try them in your home. They work great. Let's turn to the laundry machine cycles, which is a much larger market than dishwashing machines. Our odor neutralizers are easy to use and extremely effective on major classes of odors, and odor control claims are the next frontier in terms of laundry detergents, and we have an excellent product to do that. How to go about it? Let's go back to our 8-gram tablet design and use it for a laundry tablet. Make sure it has great performance, it dissolves in cold wash cycle, and that's what we've done. One 8-gram tablet is good for a lightly soiled load, two tablets for a regular load, and three tablets for a heavily soiled load, and you get outstanding cleaning performance. On top of the cleaning performance, you get outstanding odor control. Great performance and great performance against the latest and greatest detergent format being introduced by the global laundry detergent cleaner leader. That is a 23-gram unit dose product that is getting introduced across North America right now. I think a lot of brands are going to want to talk to us when we get this tablet launched in the first half of 2027. We have two ingredients that are enabling new generations of solid unit dose detergents in very large consumer product categories. They're cost-effective, plant-based, and safer for your family and the environment. I think we're going to be a large, profitable, specialty ingredient company with these two ingredients. Our ambitions are much higher than just detergents, because we have at least two more potential game changers in our Itaconix technology platform. First is our new class of safer paint. No emissions of volatile chemicals, less toxic ingredients, higher plant-based content. We have a patent on our plant-based binder that's used in the paint. We've also filed a patent for the paint formulation, and we've trademarked a name for this entirely new class of paints. We're collaborating with a leading paint company to optimize our formulations. It is a gradual, careful process to get it right, but we're making tangible progress, and we will get it right. Our second opportunity is plant nutrition. We have known for many years that our polymers might improve plant growth. We did a hydroponic growth study internally several years ago that showed we increased the number of blossoms on snapdragons by a dramatic amount. We found the opportunity beginning of this year, with the hiring of Nick Spoden, to go out into the field and start field trials in the U.S., and that's what we've done. We're on over 100 acres of row crops across multiple states in the United States. They are out there, they're performing, and we expect to have firm evaluations in hand of what happened out in the field by later this year, early next year. If these go well, we expect to scale this to at least 10,000 acres next year to expand the evaluation. Paints and crops, large, attractive new horizons for Itaconix. We have big potential in detergents, paints, and crops. What do these say about our outlook? We have a very strong first half. We are confident in our second half. We have very tangible programs in place for the medium term to three to four years to hit $30 million, and we have higher ambitions and efforts in place to go far beyond the $30 million. We are just getting started. Folks, I would like to say that Laura, Yvon Durant, our board, and really our entire Itaconix team and I appreciate the support and confidence from our shareholders, particularly our long-term shareholders, over the last couple of years as we structured the results and milestones to be able to achieve the results we have in the first half. We have fundamentally structured our customer base and our product line to succeed in the future, and we are just getting started. Thank you for all of your support over the last few years. With that, let us get to all your questions on it. We have had many questions on it, which we have consolidated.
Laura Denner: We received over 100 questions. We tried to break them down into categories and group questions that were similar in nature together. Our intent is to try to answer all of the questions that you guys have submitted to us.
John Shaw: What we will do here is, we have consolidated into major topics. We will go through. These cover the best we can the 100 questions we have. We will go back over the next two weeks and go back within the IMC platform and answer every single question that you submitted. We will get to everything on it, but we wanted to be as efficient as we could with the time we have available this afternoon.
Moderator: That's great, guys. If we just dive straight into the first group of questions, which is on financial performance. What are the commercial and operational needs for consistent profitability?
Laura Denner: I can take that one. I think we're very focused on our medium-term ambition of $30 million. We have all the capacity that we need here to achieve that revenue target. We have the people that we need. We'll probably have to scale a little bit as the volumes grow, just due to the number of transactions, but we have the infrastructure, we have the foundation in place. From a revenue perspective, I think John will talk a little bit more about it, but during the presentation, we really need one more major customer win in EMEA, and then we need further traction in our U.S. market on that unit dose detergency.
Moderator: Thank you, Laura. The next question here is does the company currently have any plans for its tax loss carryforwards?
Laura Denner: We do have some sizable tax losses. We have every intention of using these in the future to offset any profitability that we see. We don't see them expiring anytime soon, so we'll be able to utilize those in the future.
John Shaw: I'd say we don't see any special transactions. They're very difficult to use those within transactions anyway, so I think it's the normal course of business.
Moderator: Thank you. Moving on to questions on fulfillment operations. What facilities does the company currently use?
Laura Denner: We currently produce out of our Stratham facility, and we do use third-party warehousing. We have some facilities here on the New Hampshire seacoast that we store raw materials and some finished goods in. Then we do use third-party warehousing in Belgium to supply our EMEA customer. That's really the footprint that we use to make sure we can supply in North America and in EMEA.
Moderator: Thank you. Sticking with Stratham questions. What are the capabilities at Stratham operations?
Laura Denner: We are currently running 24-hour shifts. Once we are up and running, we continue to run our production process. We kind of moderate based on our demand. Right now we are running anywhere between three to four days to meet the revenue demand that we have. But within the facility, we are continuing to increase throughput, and we can increase the number of days we run. We have all the capacity that we need here at the Stratham location.
John Shaw: Yeah, I think our operations team has done a tremendous job of increasing our hourly throughput, and we think we are going to continue to get advances on it. They have guaranteed Laura and I that they will on it. It is great progress there.
Moderator: Thank you. How is the company mitigating risk from potential plant disruptions?
Laura Denner: A couple of things that we mentioned. We do warehouse materials off-site. We do have backups for key pieces of equipment here for any minor breakdown in the plant facility. That's how we're mitigating currently having one facility. We have warehouses off-site that hold sufficient inventories to meet near-term customer demands, and then we can get up and operating pretty quickly on any key piece of equipment.
Moderator: Thank you. Next one here is: When do you anticipate a need for an additional production operation?
John Shaw: Right now, within our medium-term ambitions, we have all the capacity that we need on it. For right now, we're all set in terms of that. In terms of additional operations, we will be increasing our production capacity here in Stratham.
Moderator: Thank you. Following up from that, where do you expect to locate such an operation?
John Shaw: That's going to take some time to figure out exactly where. A lot of it's going to depend on where the demand develops. It will be outside of the U.S. It'll depend on the concentrations and the best supply chain we have. We have not made any determination right now where to place it.
Moderator: Thank you. Last question from this section is how do you expect to fund the development of such an operation?
John Shaw: I think that's something we'll look at in the future. The company will look dramatically different once we reach that stage. Our financials will look significantly different, will be $30 million and plus, and with many different options of how we can do it. We can partner with people, we can collaborate with people on a site. The main thing, we don't really want to use our equity, particularly where we are now, at all to do that. So, no plans to dilute our equity at all where we stand right now. We will look dramatically different as a $30 million company, both our debt capabilities and our ability to collaborate with people.
Moderator: Thank you. Moving on to questions on the supply chain. Do you have alternative sources of itaconic acid other than from China?
John Shaw: Itaconic acid is only produced in China right now. There are multiple producers there, and there are no alternatives to it. That is the case with itaconic acid, but you have to understand that for detergent producers and our customers, many of the ingredients that they use are dependent on China. It is not just us. It is an industry situation, it is not just specific to us. We are very comfortable with the capacity and capabilities of our Chinese suppliers. We have very close relationships with them. We do not see any issue with the supply of itaconic acid right now.
Moderator: Thank you. Understood. How is the company managing fluctuations in shipping costs, shipping times, and tariffs?
Laura Denner: We work very closely with our suppliers, and they help keep us updated. We are also monitoring just what is going on in the business. When we do see those pricing increases, we will review our current prices by account, and we will see if there is a need to increase prices. We do some selective price increases. Sometimes we will do a surcharge if the nature of the increase is temporary. For example, the current tariffs in July that were just announced, we did do a small surcharge to some of those customers. Hopefully we can remove that when the tariff situation normalizes, and we can determine whether it is permanent or just that temporary in nature.
John Shaw: We're very confident, though, in maintaining our overall margins in it. I think we're very diligent, Laura, the operations are very diligent of coordinating what our cost position by account with what our profit margins are.
Moderator: Fantastic. Thank you. How is the company mitigating potential risks from raw material supply disruptions?
Laura Denner: We have very close relationships with our suppliers. We first of all maintain a certain level of raw materials here in our third-party warehouses and on site. Then we do work with our suppliers to maintain inventories at various warehouses so that we can pull on them for various surges in demand that we see. We have kind of multiple layers of making sure we have the right raw materials that we need.
Moderator: Thank you. Switching gears onto sales expansion, is the recent volatility in oil prices creating major new urgency for brands to switch away from fossil-based ingredients?
John Shaw: Well, it creates interesting discussions. People do come back and ask whether our pricing is still the same for the pre-Iran prices that we gave them. Overall, I mean, our core value is cost and performance always. We do not need external forces like changes in fossil-based ingredients to create demand for our product. Also, you have to be careful that formulations do not react quickly. From the beginning to the end on a formulation change, that can take a year or more. I can assure you, when we have control over the formulation like we do in our SPARX Formulated Solutions and our deeperclean.com and everything we develop, we have already maximized the amount of plant-based ingredients we can get in there for the performance and cost that we need. So we are showing customers how to get there with plant-based ingredients. I think that is one of the effectiveness of our formulation work and our deeperclean.com work.
Moderator: Thank you, John. Next question here is, do you expect any of your new detergent customers to become your largest customer in 2027?
John Shaw: The progression to being the largest customer takes a couple of years. Our largest customer right now, really where most of our growth is coming from customers that we started in on a couple years ago. The new ones that we see now, they will be significant parts of our revenue. I think even more exciting is how big they will be for us three years from now, as you just do that steady progression and size on it. I think our current customers will continue to be our major source of revenues.
Moderator: Thank you. Next one, what are your plans to expand sales beyond EMEA and North America?
John Shaw: Well, we do sell globally. We are in formulations throughout Asia and Pacific. We are across the Americas, across Europe on it. Some of that is directly in some specialty applications. A lot of it is also through our global collaborations with Croda in home care and Nouryon in hair styling. They are effectively taking us everywhere. We are in foot odor control in India. We are in fabric sprays in China. We do have a global footprint with our current demand. What we are doing is careful work when you look at the following. We are going to follow automatic dishwashing machines around the world, and we are going to follow increased usage of automatic dish machines around the world. We are studying specific segment regions where we think there are new opportunities for us. What is nice when you get into those territories is it is less of a battleground against the global. The brands we could get to work with, it is less of a battleground against the global players, relative to what it is like in North America and Europe on it. We do think we will follow the non-phosphate solid unit dose detergents around the world. Remembering that a lot of parts of the world do still allow phosphates, and if you are allowed to use phosphates, that is always a cheaper solution than the safer formulas that we have.
Moderator: That is great. Moving on to questions on intellectual property. Are you working on additional intellectual property or are you covered now?
John Shaw: Well, we have excellent coverage with our patents, our know-how, and increasingly, as we mature as a company, using more trade secrets, particularly. We are always assessing our patent portfolio and areas we are developing. A lot of it is not as much on the key core processes and the core compositions and chemistries, as is making sure we are protecting formulations that our product would go into to make sure that we maintain access to the commercial market and do not get blocked with any formulation patents.
Moderator: Thank you. Next one here is, global brands are filing patents to reference itaconate polymers. Do you see any risks or opportunities in these patent filings?
John Shaw: Well, we do monitor patent filings to maintain freedom to operate, and that we have access to customers. There are no patents we know of that are limiting our ability to operate. We did find one that was going to be issued in Europe, that sat on top of an existing patent and we went back and contested that over the last 12 months, and just a couple of months ago, confirmed that we were succeeding in having that patent withdrawn. We are very diligent about it. What you will see, there is a lot of. There is particularly some global players that love to file patents and throw all sorts of technology and polymers in there and list sodium polyitaconate freely in it. It does mean that they probably have been evaluating our products and understand the value of our ingredients, and that is why they would bother doing it. It does not necessarily mean that any revenues are imminent on it. Then there are other times they are actually doing another type of polymer and they just throw every other polymer that is like it into the patent just to try to do it. But they do file patents that may mention itaconic technology because they think there is clear value to our chemistry, but we do not see anything limiting it, nor is it necessarily an indication of imminent revenues from them. One question on regulatory approvals. Does the company have approvals for its ingredients in China? We have made some excellent progress there. We already had full approval for our copolymers in home care. We did have some limitations on the personal care side because, particularly if you are in hair styling or any other personal care product, the global players want to make sure that they can sell in China, so we needed approval for our personal care products to be listed on the International Nomenclature of Cosmetic Ingredients list. We did achieve that with our sodium polyitaconate in the last year. That was an important advance for us, and we think that will help our volumes in hair styling polymers some on it. I think we have done well on regulatory approvals. Really globally, I think we are in a pretty good shape on regulatory approvals.
Moderator: A few questions on research and innovation. Is the company considering higher investments in staffing and equipment to accelerate the introduction of new products or applications?
John Shaw: I think we have enough. We are investing at a rate that I think we are driving those opportunities as quickly as they will go. Investing more money in the investment of crops or paints would not necessarily make the progress any faster. I think we are investing at a pretty significant rate, and we are progressing those opportunities as quickly as they will go.
Moderator: What is the outlook for commercial progress in paints?
John Shaw: In paints, I think as I referenced earlier, we are progressing formulations and optimizing formulations for a paint. It is a deliberate process that we are going through. We are working with an outstanding partner to help us optimize those paints on it. I still think we are a little ways off. Sometime in 2027 where we will be comfortable that we have an excellent paint and that we are achieving all the claims that we want to get. I think what is most exciting is right now we are meeting our desire for a no VOC claim. We already know we have high plant-based content on it, and we have some base performance. We want to make sure we leave very few gaps in the market in terms of performance. That last bit of performance will take a little bit more to go on it. But we are progressing it. I am very pleased with what we are doing in it. Particularly we have our patents and our trademark in place.
Moderator: And on crops?
John Shaw: We are on 100 acres right now across multiple states. We will have test results on that, evaluations on crop yield improvements by the end of the year, early next year. What we are measuring is what the cost is per acre to apply our product relative to the increase in crop yield on a per acre basis on it. Farmers want to see that if they spend $10 per acre on applying a material, that they are going to be able to make $20, $30 more per acre in terms of increased yield. That is what the test results we are going to look for is those yield improvements, and we will have those on multiple test plots across multiple states. Our initial results look good, so we are already preparing to scale it up to at least 10,000 acres next year. This is on row crops like corn and soybean across multiple states on it, and we will continue to scale so that we just continue to progress from 10,000 acres to 50,000 acres to 100,000 acres year to year. It is a slow progression on it, but if you get the efficacy that we are looking for, we are looking for a favorable growth pattern to it.
Moderator: Thank you very much, John. Why is the company holding off further development work on its superabsorbent?
John Shaw: Superabsorbent is a huge potential market for us. It is about a third of the acrylic acid market is used for superabsorbent that go into baby, adult diapers, and other hygiene products on it. We believe we have the low-cost plant-based superabsorbent, and it's significantly lower than what other approaches will be. We have good performance out of it. It's still significantly more expensive. It does not have any fundamental performance advantages over a fossil-based acrylic superabsorbent. I would say right now, relative to the other advantages that our ingredients are bringing to applications like crops and paints, and the value we're bringing there, and our need to focus our investments in time and effort on it, we just don't see it as attractive right now. But it's still there and we can always go back to it.
Moderator: Thank you. What are the prospects in sustainable leather?
John Shaw: We put a lot of effort into that. I'd say I'm a little disappointed in the results that we had. I think we do have a performance advantage that we bring to leather, and we also bring a plant-based content to it. The structure of the market, though, is accessing and getting into those applications and generating demand has not given us the results that we hoped. We did work with some very large players. They ordered some product. They tested it, they liked it, but actually turning those into reorders has been difficult on it, and at this point, I think we have much better opportunities. Part of maturing as a company is to focus our efforts and focus our operating expenses and capital spending on areas that are going to generate revenues faster for us, and we just didn't see it.
Moderator: Thank you. What are the prospects in hand soaps and hand gels?
John Shaw: I noticed that we had a question because you see some, particularly brands in North America and elsewhere, that have been in maybe the detergent space, going off and buying companies in the hand soap or hand gel area. There is a big difference when we talk about water and solid detergents, all those are at relatively high pH 9, 10, and 11, to get really good cleaning. That is when you need our scale inhibitor in there. When you get down into hand soaps and hand gels, those are at skin pH. They are lower pHs where we just do not bring as many advantages to it. We are in some bubble baths and some body washes and areas like that. But we do not see that as a major area that we are investing in right now. We just do not see the revenues relative where else we can go.
Moderator: Thank you. Of course, a question here on AI. How is the company using AI to speed up development?
John Shaw: Well, we are actually looking at it across all of our businesses on it. I think not as much in R&D, but it is more opportunities in some of our administrative tasks.
Laura Denner: Yeah. AI is a wonderful tool, so we are looking to implement it prudently. But we do have some utilization in the administrative side, as well as making some efficiencies in some of our operating capabilities. We want to make sure that no proprietary information gets out there, so we are making sure that we are doing our homework before we just implement a new tool. So we are looking at it and we are using it where it makes the most sense.
John Shaw: In the R&D side of it, if we thought it would accelerate anything, we would use it. We have not found it yet on it.
Moderator: Fantastic. Thank you. Moving on to questions on corporate development, to what extent would the company consider being acquired? We are not currently looking at being acquired at this time. We are continuing to focus on our growth path, being that large specialty ingredient company. But if we are ever propositioned or there is a proposal out there, the board will do its work to make sure it would be a good fit if it ever came to light. But as of right now, we are not looking at any acquisition prospects.
John Shaw: The growth that we have in front of us is tremendous on it. We see much more value to the shareholders of continuing the path that we're on.
Moderator: Understood. Thank you. To what extent would the company consider a strategic combination with a complementary specialty ingredient company?
John Shaw: You're always looking at opportunities, and it's a fairly common area to look at as a strategy. The idea of doing it versus the reality of doing it sometimes don't align. Laura and I are very familiar with the combination of two specialty ingredient companies because Itaconix Corporation combined with Revolymer PLC, and we know on a day-to-day of what happens. The concern you have is that you think, well, there's all this opportunity, but once you get a consolidated company, you find out you put all your chips on the best opportunities. For us right now, the opportunities that we have in our company, we have the resources we need, we have the capabilities we need. We have tremendous growth opportunity to it. Right now, the idea of trying to grow faster by combining with other companies, it's a very hard proposition, and it's far riskier than anyone can imagine. We've been there and tried that. In my career, I've done it a couple times, and it always sounds good, and then three years later, you go like, "Why did we do that?"
Moderator: Thank you very much. Next question is, how does the company expect its range of new products and applications to develop? If you could just touch on the 8 gram dishwashing detergent tablets, 8 gram laundry detergent tablets, BioVail GRZ, BIO*Asterix monomers and binders.
John Shaw: I love the detergent tablets. The 8-gram one is very exciting for us. We have a pilot production press here that we've developed the tablets on. We have a dishwashing detergent tablet. We will have a final laundry tablet in the next couple of months. We are already rolling out the 8-gram dishwashing detergent tablet. We introduced it at the American Cleaning Institute Innovation Showcase, got a lot of press on it. We were highlighted in the C&EN News profile on growth of solid detergents, and we can do small-scale production there. We can probably do 10, 20 million tablets on it. We have signed our first supply agreement to supply them in bulk to a major brand. They're a little delayed on getting their packaging together, so the actual deliveries on those, having nothing to do with us, we'll maybe just squeak it in this year if they get their packaging sorted out on it. That is going to draw more attention. We have lots of inquiries about it. The ultimate step is that we are working with contract manufacturers to install a high-speed Bonals press that goes much faster, much lower cost to it, to meet growing demand in it. We are in active discussions with contract manufacturers who would be interested. They all want to know, it's like, well, do you have the volume to make sure that we put this machine in, it's going to be running a lot. There's a little balance there that we're using our development machine to generate assurance that yes, in fact, there's going to be volumes there. Not only the dishwashing detergent, but then when we bring the laundry detergent out, that'll even give a higher certainty that if someone installs a high-speed Bonals press, that they'll be able to run it and run it effectively. That's what we want is somebody else to be running it. It's a delicate balance going back and forth on it, but when you have a great product that brands want, we're going to maneuver through that. The BioVail GRZ on the crop side of it, I think I described that, is that we have all the production capabilities we need for it. We do need some regulatory approval, there's some state-by-state regulatory registrations to expand. That's why we're going after corn and soybean. I can tell you there's 180 million acres of corn and soybeans in the U.S. We think about 40% of them is addressable at 60 million. You pick any state and any of the large states, and there's more than enough crops for us to grow a nice business on it. Again, we're going to continue to get evaluations to show what we improve in crop yields on it. We have the production capabilities to deliver for it and just expand it out to more and more farmers next year and the year after. On the BIO*Asterix monomers and binders, we are focusing on that end product paint, starting with an artistic grade paint on it that I've described. We're advancing and optimizing it. We think more in the early part of next year, we'll be able to go out and start field testing it and start finding ways to start generating demand for it.
Moderator: Thank you very much, John. Moving on to the last group of questions here is, can the company provide quarterly revenue updates?
Laura Denner: I think the desire is for more communication from Itaconix. We are not really in the position to do quarterly revenue updates because there is some, like as in January 30, we had a large shipment go out. Providing quarterly updates would not necessarily provide the full story. There sometimes can be a little bit of lumpiness, especially due to the size of the shipments that we are shipping out at any one time. But what we are trying to do is get more RNS reaches out, connect more through our LinkedIn, make sure that we are getting all that exciting progress that Itaconix is doing out and to our shareholders, get that information out to them as quickly as possible so that, as we grow the company, you guys are aware of all the exciting things that we are doing here.
John Shaw: Yeah. I agree. I think the quarterly ones, boy, it will raise more questions than concerns relative to what is actually happening in the business in terms of the lumpiness of what actually goes out the door on it.
Moderator: Fantastic. Thank you. Will the company consider a share split to keep the share price within range for retail investors who would like to own part of Itaconix?
Laura Denner: We are not currently considering that. I know we did a stock consolidation a few years ago. Right now, we are just working on driving that share price up. Doing a stock split is not something that the board is really considering at this point. But we will continue to monitor that kind of situation for the future.
John Shaw: The share consolidation was important for our prospects in the U.S. market. You need to be over $1 a share or else brokerage firms will not carry you. So actually, as our share price increases, we are going to attract more people in the U.S. market on it. And I think at 200p, 300p, 400p, that is still very reasonable, I think, for the U.K. market. If we ever get to 900p, well, we will go back and start thinking about that again. But for right now, when you are in the 200p, 300p, 400p, 500p range, relative to what it does for us in the U.S. market, I think that is a reasonable range, but we will always keep track of it.
Moderator: Fantastic. Thank you. The last question for today is, has the situation with Octopus Investments Limited changed regarding divesting additional shares?
John Shaw: Well, we have regular dialogues with our shareholders, smaller shareholders, larger shareholders, U.S. shareholders, U.K. shareholders, to understand what's going, what their concerns are, what the opportunities might be. We are not aware of any change with Octopus Investments Limited on it. We, like you, can see that there's been a little bit of dribbling out of shares on it. We don't believe it's any change in the fundamental sentiment about the company. And certainly our current share price, we're not aware of anyone changing their position. Everyone right now is pretty happy, and all we want to do is make sure they're even happier 6-9 months from now on it.
Moderator: That's great. Well, look, John, Laura, you have covered a lot of ground there, so thank you very much for addressing those questions. As mentioned before, we will publish these responses on Investor Meet Company platform where appropriate to do so post the meeting. John, before I redirect investors to provide you with their feedback, which is particularly important to yourself and the company, could I please just ask you for a few closing comments?
John Shaw: I'm just very happy with where we are. We're very happy with the support, appreciate the support that we've received from all of our shareholders as we've restructured our business for the path that we're on right now. It had some challenges to it, but we knew what we needed to get done, and I think we're getting it done, and you can see right in front of us. But we really appreciate all the patience from all of our shareholders and the confidence that you showed that Laura and I and the company and the board could redirect our business on the path that it's going right now. We look forward to giving additional updates. We're on a great path. We know what we need to do, and we're going to go do it.
Moderator: Fantastic. John, Laura, thank you once again for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors now to close this session, as you will now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback, which will help the company better understand your views and expectations. On behalf of the team, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good afternoon to you all.
