After several years of hiatus, London welcomed a new fuel cell technology group to its ranks this week. Loughborough-based Intelligent Energy Holdings (IEH) has raised nearly £72m from investors – including Singapore's sovereign wealth fund GIC – and listed its shares on London's main market.
But trading got off to an inauspicious start. The share price immediately dipped below the 340p offer price and at the time of going to press shares were changing hands at 293p on light volume. The IPO valued the heavily loss-making company at a remarkable £639m.
Yet this flies in the face of current market valuations for the half dozen other fuel cell companies listed in London – mostly on Aim – which have been unsuccessfully trying to commercialise their technologies for a decade or more. For example, Intelligent Energy's biggest London-listed competitor, AFC Energy (AFC), has a market capitalisation of just £50m. That said, in more optimistic times – say in 2006 – several fuel cell groups were similarly awarded multi-hundred-million-pound valuations by speculative investors.
| Fuel cell companies listed in London | |||||
| Company name | Ticker | Exchange | Revenues [past 12 months] (£m) | Market Capitalisation (£m) | Share price (p) |
| Acta | ACTA | Aim | 0.3 | 8 | 4.8 |
| AFC Energy | AFC | Aim | 1.1 | 50 | 22.5 |
| Ceramic Fuel Cells | CFU | Aim | 2.8 | 19 | 0.8 |
| Ceres Power | CWR | Aim | 0.9 | 49 | 9.1 |
| Intelligent Energy | IEH | LSE | 20.8 | 556 | 296 |
| Proton Power Systems | PPS | Aim | 1.1 | 45 | 7.0 |
Source: S&P Capital IQ | |||||
For all their promise, fuel cell applications still appear some way from being profitable endeavours. During the six months to 31 March, Intelligent Energy's group-wide sales fell sharply to just £3.5m. It also spent £22.6m on costs of production, research and development expenses, and administrative expenses.
Almost all of the company's sales currently come from automotive partnerships with major vehicle manufacturers, including Suzuki. But Intelligent Energy has also developed a few innovative consumer electronics applications – including a fuel-cell-powered mobile phone battery charger for use in remote locations – as well as fuel-cell powered generators for India's mobile phone towers. It hopes to grow sales from the latter two divisions soon.
