ITM Power Talks Data Centres While Its Shareholders Wait for Signatures

ITM Power has moved to list 299,638 shares to satisfy options and bonus entitlements that have already vested, a routine administrative step tied to employee compensation rather than any shift in the company's commercial outlook. The request, filed yesterday, points to admission on 23 October 2026. It arrives alongside disclosures of fresh share awards to staff, and the timing has invited confusion between two very different events: the granting of a right and the delivery of shares against it.

A Bonus Plan With a Two-Year Hold

The newly granted bonus shares carry a two-year vesting period, which means the awards announced yesterday will not translate into tradeable stock for some time. Among the recipients are chief executive Dennis Schulz, finance chief Amy Grey and technology head Simon Bourne, all subject to the same deferral. The notifications therefore cover both the executive tier and the wider workforce, and they say nothing about new project wins or changes to guidance.

Worth separating from all of this are the share purchases the same executives reported on Tuesday under the monthly employee programme. On that occasion they bought stock themselves and received an identical number of additional shares. Those regular purchases are a distinct transaction from the deferred bonus awards, and the pending admission is a third, separate step again — the mechanics of settling obligations, not the creation of new ones.

Bullough Pours Cold Water on the Data Centre Story

Hydrogen's potential role in powering data centres has been doing the rounds, but ITM Power's Simon Bullough moved to temper expectations yesterday, telling media the theme is somewhat overhyped. The company is in dialogue with prospective end users about possible applications, yet talks of that kind amount to neither a confirmed order nor a definable revenue contribution. Bullough's remark is no rejection of the idea outright; it simply caps how much commercial weight the market should attach to it for now.

Against that backdrop, the preliminary figures for fiscal 2026, published on Monday, offer a firmer yardstick. ITM Power posted record revenue of £43.6 million. The adjusted EBITDA loss came in at £20.2 million, a 39% improvement on the prior year — genuine operating progress, though not yet profitability on that measure. A future data centre business belongs in the category of additional upside, not a substitute for execution in the existing order book.

Cash, Contracts and a Refinery Still Short of a Decision

The balance sheet gives investors something concrete to work with. At the close of the financial year ITM Power held £215.6 million in liquid funds, and its contracted order book stood at £144.0 million, of which 83% was profitable by the company's own account. Those figures carry more weight for valuation than the technicalities of the bonus plan, and the next dated item on the calendar remains the expected share admission.

How far a second business avenue has actually been sketched out is illustrated by the heads of terms that subsidiary Hydropulse signed with a European oil refinery roughly a fortnight ago. The outline envisages a 150 MW hydrogen project built on ITM Power's Alpha platform. Even that is not yet equivalent to a final investment decision: joint technical front-end planning is under way, with the investment call targeted for 2027 and production slated to begin in 2029.

The gap between the two opportunities lies in the level of detail. One comes with a stated project size and named milestones; the other consists of conversations. New applications may well add optionality over time, but they gain credibility only through firm project decisions — and in the meantime, revenue, loss reduction and liquidity already give shareholders measurable markers to track.