Ilika plc (LON:IKA) Chief Executive Officer Graeme Purdy caught up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview to discuss their half-year report for the six months ended 31st October 2017.
Q1: You’ve posted some strong financials this morning, do you expect the uptick in revenue and the reduced loss to continue into the second half?
A1: Yes, so I think we were happy with our financial progress in the first half, the revenue increased from £0.3 million in the same period last year to £1 million and £500,000 of that £700,000 increase in top line found its way to the bottom line as a reduction in the loss for the period. We expect a similar sort of performance in the second half.
Q2: Could you outline the progress that you’ve made with potential Stereax commercialisation partners?
A2: I think we’re also encouraged by the commercial momentum and level of interest around Stereax. We’ve actually shared fairly detailed performance data with over 60 Stereax potential licensees and we’ve also shipped in the order of 10 sets of Stereax batteries to partners for detailed technical evaluation. So, that indicates a very high level of customer engagement in the product.
Q3: What are the specific Stereax projects that you’re involved in at the moment?
A3: We’ve got 3 significant programmes that are ongoing at the moment at Ilika and they’re actually in 3 different deployment environments.
The first one is the integration of the Stereax battery into a miniature medical implant that we’re doing together with a biomedical company.
The second one is an integration of the Stereax battery with a photovoltaic energy harvesting solution with a company called Lightricity which is a spin-off from Sharp.
The third one which we announced quite recently is a deployment programme with Titan Wind Energy which is actually China’s largest wind turbine manufacturer and we’re combining the batteries with strain sensors and pressure energy harvesters that are implanted in wind turbine blades for condition monitoring.
Q4: It sounds like China could be an important market for you?
A4: We were just out in China before Christmas and there’s quite some interest in industrial IoT deployments which are all about monitoring and management of the significant industrial assets that are deployed in that country. People are looking to increase their level of efficiency and monitoring capability of their factories and also their infrastructure and the Stereax solution is very suitable for a lot of those applications.
Q5: It sounds like there’s been an extension to Ilika’s Stereax roadmap, could you give some background on that?
A5: I think over the last 6 months we’ve seen a significant wave of interest in larger format solid state batteries. In The Times on Saturday they mentioned as part of their global effort to develop solid state technology for electric vehicles, I think electric vehicles are experiencing an upsurge in demand and people are looking to solid state as the battery format of the future. We’re one of the few organisations around the world who’ve got a credible technology position in this sector so the extension of our roadmap to large format batteries is really in response to that commercial interest.
