ITM Power’s Insider Divide Highlights the Bet Behind the 400% Rally

CTO sells £1.4mn stock while CEO ties shares to milestones; subsidy ruling and MSCI inclusion set for late May.

The technology chief sold nearly £1.4mn of stock. The chief executive has tied his entire 1.3mn shareholding to a successful factory ramp-up. Inside ITM Power’s C-suite, the signals could hardly be more divergent — and they underscore just how much rests on a pair of late-May deadlines.

Simon Bourne, ITM’s technology officer, exercised options over 1.33mn shares at an average price of 32p each, then sold roughly 873,000 of them at an average of 157.44p in what the company says was a routine sell-to-cover operation to settle his tax bill. The move pocketed around £1.37mn after the exercise cost, but the timing — with the stock sitting near 163p and two make-or-break events looming — has not gone unnoticed by investors.

CEO Dennis Schulz is taking the opposite approach. His 1.3mn shares will only vest if ITM secures profitable contracts and the Chronos production line comes online as planned. No profit, no equity.

Two Catalysts, One Fortnight

That line, the centrepiece of the company’s expansion, requires a final go-ahead from the UK’s Subsidy Advice Unit. The state body is due to publish its verdict on May 26 on a proposed £46.5mn grant from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero. The money is earmarked for a new automated manufacturing line in Sheffield that would give the site a capacity of one gigawatt a year. ITM’s next-generation electrolyser is expected to triple output while slashing production costs by 40%.

If the ruling is positive, Great British Energy — which already holds a stake of roughly 10% in ITM via a £40mn investment — will see its bet validated, and the management has said it will take a final investment decision on the factory in June.

Just three days after the grant decision, on May 29, ITM’s shares are set to enter the MSCI UK Small Cap Index, a mechanical rebalancing that will force passive funds to buy stock regardless of valuation. MarktBEobachter expect a transient volume spike, but with short interest holding steady at 2.92% of the float, the rally so far has not triggered a broad short squeeze.

Financials: A Cushion, but No Profit Yet

The company’s balance sheet provides a comfortable runway. Cash reserves stand at roughly £198mn, with no debt, giving ITM what Jefferies estimates is enough liquidity to last until at least 2028 without needing fresh capital.

Revenues, however, tell a mixed story. In the first half of the 2026 financial year, ITM delivered record turnover of £18mn and raised its full-year guidance to £40–43mn. Its order book stands at £152mn, with 71% of contracts now profitable — a marked improvement on the loss-making legacy deals that weighed on earlier periods.

The pre-tax loss for the year to April 2025 widened to £45.4mn from £27.1mn a year earlier. Jefferies does not expect a positive EBITDA before 2028. Morgan Stanley takes a more optimistic view, seeing operational breakeven in that same year on revenues of £169mn — a figure that is 54% above the current consensus.

Analyst Battle Lines

Morgan Stanley upgraded the stock to “Overweight” with a 170p target, citing improving cost of capital and a friendlier policy backdrop. Jefferies followed with a 200p target but cautioned that the risk/reward profile is asymmetric: in a negative scenario, the shares could fall 52%, while the upside is capped at 37%. UBS remains the most sceptical, rating the stock “Neutral” with a 60p target, arguing that the valuation has run far ahead of the fundamentals.

Expanding the Business Model

Since the start of the year, ITM has struck two notable partnerships. A strategic alliance with engineering group Worley aims to integrate ITM’s Neptune V electrolyser into mid-sized hydrogen projects. Separately, a tie-up with German defence contractor Rheinmetall — the Giga-PtX programme — plans to build “several hundred” decentralised green hydrogen plants across Europe, each with roughly 50MW of electrolysis capacity. The ultimate goal: produce up to 7,000 tonnes of NATO-compatible fuels.

The outcome of the subsidy ruling and the subsequent factory investment decision will determine whether the narrative of operational progress and political backing can sustain a stock that has already quadrupled in the past twelve months — or whether the rally must find a new floor.