I am slightly dumbfounded by the analysis.
WAE / BMS
WAE was set up to support the Williams Racing team, so it didn't start up to be a vibrant, international business. With the need to find further work, it started courting mining companies for business under electrification. Remember, WAE's tagline on acquisition was, "We are electrification" -
Fortescue acquired WAE because of its BMS as it was seen as fundamental to decarbonising Fortescue. While it's a best in class BMS, it doesn't have a moat, and can easily be overtaken by someone like Google, Tesla, BYD, etc. It was significantly overpaid for because of this fundamental belief.
WAE's CEO was recently replaced with someone who has never run a company, and they booted the old CEO who had all the industry connections.
Andrew Forrest
Andrew Forrest has had one success - Fortescue. He's not a genius entrepreneur - look at RM Williams, Squadron Energy, Wyloo. Squadron overpaid for CWP Renewables, and they replaced the CEO (shifted to Fortescue) with an actual renewables CEO from CWP Renewables. (CWP Renewables is not CWP Global - the shareholder in Australian Renewable Energy Hub)
Fortescue
Fortescue has made one company acquisition - WAE. It made an asset purchase in Xergy in the US, which was run out of a shack in the middle of nowhere Delaware. Again, they overpaid for a bunch of patents that are useless, and brought on board a few staff members who have never made anything commercial. It's made equity investments in other companies with very little to no return.
The FIDs were two R&D projects and a commercial project. The reason that Fortescue hasn't published an ROI is because none of these projects are economic - occam's razor.
Gibson Island has followed Bell Bay. First, you need access to sufficient power and water, and second, it needs to be economical. You cannot tell me that a company that claims to be a leader in green hydrogen didn't know how much power was going to cost - and the impact on the power price on hydrogen production.
It's hydrogen production systems (i.e. electrolysers) don't work, and their factory is not producing anything. There isn't even a hint of an order book or backlog. Yet they're taking Australian and Queensland public funds for this white elephant. They've opened up an R&D centre in Delaware - yet when you look at where the activity is for electrolyser development, manufacturing and supply chain - it's nowhere near where their new facility is located. They will need to spend a significant amount of money to make this economic. If Plug Power is anything to by, it's likely to be over US$1b. Fortescue has publish the capex costs for the facility, but working capital will be eye-watering if it's ever operational.
Their Green Pioneer is a joke. Damn thing runs on ammonia and diesel. If this technology is implemented into Fortescue's ships (part of their Scope 1 and 2), they will not reach "real zero" by 2030. Let's face it - there is a reason they're narrowing down what's within the scope of "real zero" by 2030.
How Mark Hutchison keeps his job is beyond me. We will look back on the FFI experiment, and realise what a massive opportunity was missed because of poor leadership and management.
Dino has his work cut out for him to keep the mothership afloat without the drag of FFI.
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