West Hill is delighted to report that rapidly growing technology and manufacturing portfolio company, Clean Power Hydrogen plc (CPH2), has raised £30 million in an Initial Public Offering, with the Company’s shares admitted to trading on AIM on 16 February, valuing the Company at £119.4 million. Backers in the IPO include strategic investor Kenera Energy Solutions (part of KCA Deutag the leading drilling, engineering, and technology company) and a fund linked to one of CPH2’s key customers. The Company’s nominated adviser and broker is Cenkos Securities.

The funds raised at IPO will be used to scale rapidly to meet substantial international demand for the Company’s patented Membrane-Free Electrolyser, to produce green hydrogen at scale, in a simple, safe, and sustainable way. The Company’s technology has the potential to bring about a step change in efficiency, longevity, and cost, in an addressable market forecast to reach €10trillion by 2050. 

The IPO valuation represents a multiple of 22.5x (before tax relief) for West Hill SEIS/EIS investors in 2017, 9.0x for EIS investors in 2019 and 3.0x for EIS investors in 2020. West Hill investors, including members of the West Hill team, collectively invested £10.4 million in the IPO round.

Marquee portfolio company CPH2 has developed a unique Membrane-Free Electrolyser that has the potential to produce green hydrogen more efficiently than leading systems, that are marketed by businesses with unicorn valuations. The Company’s products can deliver hydrogen as an energy source, pure hydrogen, hydrogen as a process and medical grade oxygen. 

Some of the benefits of the Membrane-Free Electrolyser include: the ability to produce extremely high purity hydrogen and oxygen, cheaper to manufacture than existing systems, a longer (25 year) life span and no degradation of the stack due to the lack of a membrane, which is a costly, common point of failure in incumbent systems. 

Following a decade of research and development by some of the most highly respected engineers in the industry, CPH2 is now successfully delivering on orders to blue-chip utilities and oil & gas companies, as well as various government owned entities. 

There is an opportunity for CPH2 as a fast follower to potentially overtake the market leaders and management is aiming to become the dominant provider of the most competitive electrolysis technology in the world.