This marks a key milestone for Ceres, as it signals the first royalty-generating manufacturing of its high-efficiency fuel cell stacks in Asia.

Before the sale, Bosch held 33,790,880 shares, or approximately 17.4 % of the company. After the transaction, it will retain 27,396,115 shares, equivalent to 14.1 %, with the retained portion subject to a 60-day lock-up period unless waived.

This project is significant because it brings cost-effective green hydrogen closer to commercial reality, with Ceres still targeting a production cost of USD 1.5/kg by 2025.

With their 2024 financial results freshly published and a pivotal year behind them, we interviewed Patrick Yau, Director of Investor Relations at Ceres, to explore the company’s evolving strategy, commercial vehicle ambitions, and whether their “asset-light, IP-heavy” approach will carry the day in a volatile green energy market.

A key driver behind this performance was a record order intake of GBP 112.8 million, fuelled by agreements with two new manufacturing licensee partners, Delta Electronics and Denso, and an electrolyser system partner, Thermax Ltd. These strategic partnerships signal strong future revenue streams for Ceres.

Bosch announced its decision to discontinue collaboration on solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) technologies with Ceres and to consider selling its 17.44% stake in the company which led to a sharp decline in the British firm's share price.

This deal will create significant revenues for Ceres through licensing fees, royalty payments, engineering services and hardware over multiple years. The majority of the revenue generated will come through royalty payments on any hydrogen delivered to the end customers.

The aim is to target a module level of efficiency of less than 36kWh/kg and drive down the price, making it much more competitive as an alternative fuel/energy option in sectors such as heavy transportation.

This, according to Ceres, will help lead to the scale and speed of the development of new zero-emission technologies and help the company develop its fuel cell technologies for power generation and electrolysers for green hydrogen.

The 2023 strategic highlights include the second-generation stack design, offering performance improvements. Furthermore, a megawatt electrolyser demonstrator completed testing in Germany and has arrived at partner Shell’s R&D centre in Bangalore, India for further testing.

Costing GBP 100 million, the two-year demonstrator project of a one-megawatt SOEC system will be undertaken in 2024 at Bosch’s site in Stuttgart, with the aim of proving that the technology is both cost-effective and highly efficient in helping decarbonise industrial operations.

Ceres will be piloting a solid oxide electrolyser - which uses a ceramic as the electrolyte in the process of splitting water molecules to produce hydrogen gas - at Shell's R&D centre in Bangalore.