DG Innovate (LON:DGI), the advanced research and development company pioneering sustainable and environmentally considerate improvements to electric mobility and energy storage, has announced the Company’s audited results for the year ended 31 December 2022.
Highlights
| • | Completion of acquisition of Deregallera Holdings Ltd and £4.6 million fundraise in April 2022 |
| • | Appointment of Peter Tierney as CEO in July 2022 |
| • | Award of £600,000 in grant funding from APC for the SUPAR project in September 2022 |
| • | Strategic update and publication of commercial roadmaps for EDT and EBT in October 2022 |
| • | Post year end subscription and broker option to raise total of £418,000 in January 2023 |
| • | Post year end Collaboration Framework Agreement with axle suppliers BRIST and BASE in February 2023 |
DG Innovate is an advanced research and development company pioneering sustainable and environmentally considerate improvements to electric mobility and storage, using abundant materials and the best engineering and scientific practices. DG Innovate is currently developing its products alongside a number of major manufacturers across the transportation and energy sectors, research institutions and the UK Government, and has filed 18 patents worldwide. DG Innovate’s current research and development activities are broadly split into two areas, focusing on novel electric motor technologies and energy storage solutions. Its two main products are:
– Enhanced Drive Technology (EDT) – High efficiency, cost-effective electric motors + power electronics; and
– Enhanced Battery Technology (EBT) – Sodium-ion batteries offering a sustainable energy storage solution at similar/greater energy density to incumbent technologies at a lower cost, increased safety with lower environmental footprint.
Chairman’s Statement
In April 2022, DG Innovate Plc (“the Company”) successfully completed the acquisition of Deregallera Holdings Ltd (previously DG Innovate Ltd) (“DHL”) which, together with an accompanying fundraise provided by existing shareholders, provided the enlarged group (“the Group”, or “DGI”) with a platform to develop DGI’s Enhanced Drive and Enhanced Battery Technologies (EDT and EBT) towards commercialisation. The Company changed its name to DG Innovate Plc to reflect the new group structure at completion.
In May 2022 the Company was delighted to announce the appointment of Peter Tierney as its new CEO. Peter took up his position on 1 July 2022, with his predecessor Christopher Theis stepping down at the same time. Peter brings a wealth of experience in building successful engineering businesses and achieving significant returns for investors.
During the following months we continued to make significant progress, including initial testing of our prototype 250kW Pareta® drives, the award of £600,000 in funding from the APC towards our SUPAR project and positive test results from our hard carbon anode material. Following an initial period of evaluation while working with the team at our premises in Caerphilly, in October 2022 Peter laid out his vision for the business in the form of commercialisation roadmaps for both EDT and EBT.
Post year end
In January 2023 we successfully raised an additional £418,000 through a subscription and broker option, in order to continue the development of our technologies. We were especially grateful for the support and faith of shareholders against a particularly difficult market backdrop at the time. I would also like to extend my thanks to Andrew Boughtwood and Sir Stephen Dalton, who stepped down from the Board at this time, for their contributions.
In February 2023 we were delighted to announce the signing of a Collaboration Framework Agreement with tier one commercial and off-highway vehicle axle suppliers, BRIST and BASE. This will see us work together to develop and integrate DGI’s innovative Pareta® motor technology into our partners’ range of axles, accelerate our joint activities in the retrofit and conversion market, and ultimately assemble a full electric drivetrain offering in the UK. This is a particularly exciting development, opening up a number or commercial opportunities with two very credible industry partners, and what we hope is the beginning of a long and very fruitful relationship for all parties. It is also complementary to our other existing relationships, which we hope to convert into commercial opportunities.
Outlook
On the ground, the hard work continues for both our electric drive and energy storage teams. For the former, our SUPAR, MTorX and Marine projects are underway, and we hope to test the next design iteration of our 250kW/400kW Pareta® electric drive in Q2 2023, in collaboration with Meritor. In terms of the latter, our Cap-Size feasibility study is ongoing, as is scale up and testing of our proprietary hard carbon anode materials, as we continue to work towards full-scale commercial production.
I would like to offer my sincere thanks to our shareholders for their continued support. 2022 was a transformation year for DGI and we are excited for what lies ahead over the coming months and years.
Nicholas Tulloch
Non-Executive Chairman
27 April 2023
Operational Review
On 8 April 2022, the Company changed its name to DG Innovate Plc. It is domiciled and its principal place of business is in the United Kingdom and is subject to the City Code.
The Company was admitted to the Official List by way of a Standard Listing and to trading on the London Stock Exchange’s Main Market for listed securities on 30 March 2017.
During the year under review the Company was initially a cash shell, with its shares suspended from trading pending the completion of the all-share acquisition of DHL, the details of which had been laid out in a binding Sale and Purchase Agreement signed on 12 August 2021. During the period prior to the completion of the acquisition, the Company did not trade and its expenses related to deal costs, professional and associated expenses related to advisory and consultancy fees, and general administration expenses.
On 8 April 2022 the Company completed the acquisition of DHL, being renamed DG Innovate Plc. It concurrently raised £4.6m via a subscription and the exercise of existing warrants, to cover the costs associated with the transaction, settle historical debts and provide working capital for the enlarged group. Its subsequent primary business has been a continuation of the advanced research and development work historically undertaken by the acquired companies, with management now seeking to commercialise the nascent technologies being developed.
The period post completion involved the ongoing research and development projects across the Group’s electric drive and energy storage division. These included the ongoing Pareta® project to develop an integrated electric drive for bus and truck applications in collaboration with Meritor, with prototype drives continuing to be tested and a new design iteration expected to be completed in the coming weeks. In addition, the Group was awarded and commenced the SUPAR (‘Scale up Readiness Validation of Parallel Motor for Automotive Applications’) project, which will establish a pilot production facility to assemble drives, the MTorX project, which is exploring the potential of a motor design with no permanent magnet, and a feasibility study into a larger 3MW Pareta® e-drive for marine operations. While scale-up and testing of the Company’s hard carbon anode material continued, the £160,000 Cap-Size project also commenced, which will deliver a feasibility study on manufacturing the material at scale in the UK.
The Company announced the appointment of Peter Tierney as CEO in May 2022, with Mr Tierney taking up his post on 1 July 2022. His predecessor, Christopher Theis, left the Company on the same date. Following a strategic review of both DGI’s operations and technology, the Group announced a strategic update in October, targeting commercial sales of Pareta® during 2025 and the monetisation of EBT, either through manufacturing or licensing, within a 42-month timescale. The potential for aftermarket conversion revenues was also identified, and an ongoing focus on targeting commercial supply agreements through discussions with existing and new partners was highlighted.
Since the year end, in January 2023 the Company raised £418,000 through a subscription and broker option, to cover ongoing project costs and working capital. Then in February 2023, the Group announced a Collaboration Framework Agreement with tier one commercial vehicle and off-highway axle suppliers, BASE and BRIST. The agreement will see the parties develop and integrate DGI’s Pareta® technology into the current range of BRIST and BASE axles to provide a turnkey offering, focused on commercial vehicles, buses, coaches, military and specialty vehicle axles globally. It also envisages the provision of the Group’s existing vehicle control and torque vectoring system to the partners, a collaborative drive to increase joint activities in the retrofit and conversion market, DGI providing UK presence for sales and customer support and the establishment of assembly operations in the UK.
Financial Review
The financial performance and position of the Group during the year ended 31 December 2022 reflects the Group’s ongoing focus on the development of its electric drive and energy storage technologies, with the aim of progressing towards commercialisation. Nominal revenues were attributable to ongoing work for the UK Government, with the Group’s activities funded by a combination of new equity capital and new and existing grant awards. Increased general and administrative costs were incurred due to the enlarged group structure and corporate costs post the acquisition of DHL, with substantial one-off expenses associated with the reverse takeover process also impacting the P&L.
The Group’s consolidated accounts presented in the financial statements and associated notes within this report, and summarised here, are prepared under reverse acquisition accounting rules. As such, consolidated figures represent the enlarged Group from completion of the reverse takeover in April 2022 to 31 December 2022, and the DG Innovate companies acquired prior to this date (including for the comparable 2021 financial year).
Trading performance
The Group remained pre-revenue during the year, except for a small contribution from work for the UK Government. The Group made an operating loss of £2,615,534 (2021: £587,235). This was primarily due to increased administration expenses of £2,715,557 (2021: £1,529,089) and a share-based payment charge of £338,864 (2021: £Nil), which were somewhat offset by grant income of £433,989 (2021: £938,818).
A one-off reverse acquisition expense of £5,094,074 (2021: £Nil) was recognised, relating to the fair value of the Company at the time of completing the acquisition of DHL, under reverse acquisition accounting. Further detail is contained in note 26 of the Consolidated Financial Statements contained within this report.
Net finance costs of £67,873 (2021: £112,903) were predominantly due to interest on shareholder and CBILS loans, with the former settled on completion of the reverse takeover. The Group received R&D tax claims, resulting in a positive tax credit of £188,864 for the year (2021: £55,273). As the business is currently loss making, there is no corporation tax payable on earnings.
For the year ended 31 December 2022, the Group made a net loss of £7,679,512 (2021: £644,865). The basic and diluted loss per share for the year was 0.11 pence (2021: 0.04 pence).
Financial position
As at 31 December 2022, the Group’s non-current assets amounted to £5,298,683 (2021: £4,999,456), including intangible assets of £4,573,592 (2021: £4,139,805) and property, plant and equipment of £725,091 (2021: £859,651).
Intangible assets increased by £433,787 during the year (2021: £436,650), due to the capitalisation of internally generated development costs.
Non-current liabilities were £495,860 (2021: £1,148,103), including lease liabilities of £237,182 (2021: £256,803) and loans of £234,653 (2021: £880,675).
Group net current assets at year-end were £618,313 (2021: (£1,150,495)).
Cash movement
Group cash and equivalents at 31 December 2022 was £234,990 (2021: £57,454). Net cash outflow from operating activities for the Group during the year was £2,392,663 (2021: £501,906), and cash outflow from investments was £1,010,477 (2021: (£1,287,718). On 8 April 2022, the Group raised £4.6 million (before expenses) through the exercise of shareholder warrants and a subscription for new ordinary shares.
Post year end, in January 2023, the Group raised a further £418,000 through a subscription and broker option. These funds were raised to cover the costs of the DGI acquisition and to fund the ongoing development of the Company’s technologies towards commercialisation.
Key Performance Indicators
During the year, the Group progressed from being a cash shell targeting acquisitions to an advanced research and development company which is seeking to pursue commercial activities, alongside continuing to expand its intellectual property portfolio and technology offering. As noted in the Chairman’s Statement and Operational Review, the period post completion of the RTO was focused on the hiring of our CEO Peter Tierney, his subsequent review of the business and developing a strategy to deliver value for shareholders. Given this period of transition, we believe the nature and stage of the business will change significantly over the coming months and years, and the manner in which we measure our performance will also need to develop to remain fit for purpose.
While we present KPIs showing the progress we continue to make on our ongoing research and development work below, we have begun to identify a number of additional financial and non-financial key performance indicators, for both the near and longer term, to monitor progress on our technology commercialisation efforts and ramp up in trading. These will begin to be introduced over the coming financial year as well as subsequent periods, to ensure that the business is performing or to signal any problems which may be arising. These will include financial KPIs such as order book, sales revenue and volumes, which will be key to long-term, sustainable organic growth. Technical KPIs will benchmark motor, inverter and material performance, and patents filed/granted, whilst operational KPIs will include engineering hours worked, completed units produced and employee headcount. The Directors believe these will provide strong indications of the Group’s ability to secure a long-term sustainable competitive advantage.
| Key Performance Indicator | 2022 | 2021 | Change (%) |
| Patents held | 10 | 10 | 0% |
| Projects completed | 3 | 3 | 0% |
| Grant funding received | 433,989 | 938,818 | (54%) |
The grant award of £600,000 from APC for the SUPAR project in 2022 will be received in 2023 and 2024.
There were seven Innovate UK funded projects being undertaken in 2021, four of which completed during that year, with three which continued into 2022. Another three new grant funded projects commenced in 2022, although no grant payments were received during the year in relation to these new projects. Therefore, there was a significant reduction in grant income in 2022.
Directors’ Report
The Directors present their report and financial statements for the year ended 31 December 2022.
Directors and Directors’ interests
The Directors at the date of these financial statements who served during the period and their interest in the ordinary shares of the Group are as follows:
| 31 December 2022 | 31 December 2021 | |
| Number of Ordinary Shares | Number of Ordinary Shares | |
| C. Theis* | 60,995,589 | 60,995,589 |
| B. Fitzpatrick** | 57,336,875 | 57,336,875 |
| J. Allardyce | 6,000,000 | 6,000,000 |
| M. Boughtwood*** | 3,026,591,664 | – |
| T. Gabriel **** | 555,561,720 | – |
| A. Boughtwood | 75,758,416 | – |
* 60,995,500 Ordinary Shares are held in Mr. Theis’ self-invested pension plan administered by Hargreaves Lansdown.
** Mr. Fitzpatrick has an indirect interest in 6,015,000 Ordinary Shares which are registered in the name of Ocean Park Developments Limited, a company of which he is the holder of 100% of the issued share capital and a further indirect interest in 9,610,000 Ordinary Shares which are registered in the name of Pondermatters Limited, a company of which he is the holder of 10% of the issued share capital. 6,000,000 Ordinary shares are registered to Alexander Fitzpatrick (Brent Fitzpatrick’s son).
*** 3,026,591,664 Ordinary Shares are held by Deregallera Trust and its beneficiary is Martin’s wife, Denise Boughtwood.
**** 555,561,720 Ordinary Shares are held by Disruptech Limited owned by Trevor Gabriel.
Major interests in ordinary shares
Save for the interests of the Directors, as at 24 April 2023 being the latest practicable date prior to the publication of this Annual Report, the Group has identified the following holdings of Ordinary Shares which represent more than 3 per cent. of its issued share capital:
| Shareholder | Number of Shares | % of issued share capital |
| Deregallera Trust | 3,026,591,664 | 32.87% |
| The Bank of New York (Nominees) | 636,399,327 | 6.91% |
| Disruptech Limited | 555,561,720 | 6.03% |
| JIM Nominees Limited | 467,213,562 | 5.07% |
| David Williams | 436,280,093 | 4.74% |
| Cantor Fitzgerald Europe | 386,666,666 | 4.20% |
| ISI Nominees Limited | 384,647,257 | 4.18% |
Results
The Group’s loss for the year to 31 December 2022 amounted to £7,679,512 (2021: £644,865).
Managing business risk
The Board constantly monitors the operational and financial aspects of the Group’s activities and is responsible for the implementation and ongoing review of business risks that could affect the Group. Duties in relation to risk management that are conducted by the Directors include but are not limited to:
– Initiate action to prevent or reduce the adverse effects of risk
– Control further treatment of risks until the level of risk becomes acceptable
– Identify and record any problems relating to the management of risk
– Initiate, recommend or provide solutions through designated channels
– Verify the implementation of solutions
– Communicate and consult internally and externally as appropriate
The Board has carried out a review of the effectiveness of the Group’s risk management and internal controls systems, including financial, operational and compliance controls as is appropriate at this early stage of the Group’s business.
As part of the reverse takeover of DHL the Group’s Financial Position and Prospects Procedures Board Memorandum (FPPP) and all internal policies were overhauled. This was to ensure that they remained appropriate for the enlarged Group. These documents lay out all controls and procedures relating to finance, reporting, systems & IT, disclosures and corporate governance.
Taxation status
DG Innovate was not a close company within the provisions of the Corporation Tax Act 2010 and this position has not changed since the end of the financial period.
Future developments
Information about the future plans of the Group is covered in the Strategic Report.
Dividends
The Directors do not recommend the payment of a dividend (2021: £Nil).
Capital structure
The Group’s issued share capital consists of Ordinary Shares (100% of total share capital).
The ordinary shares shall confer upon the holders the right to receive dividends and other distributions and participate in the income or profits of the Company.
Financial instruments
Details of the use of financial instruments by the Group are contained in note 23.
Environmental Reporting
Under the Companies (Directors’ Report) and Limited Liability Partnerships (Energy and Carbon Report) Regulations 2018, we are mandated to disclose our UK energy use and associated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Specifically, and as a minimum, we are required to report those GHG emissions relating to natural gas, electricity and transport fuel, as well as an intensity ratio, under the Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting (SECR) Regulations.
Emissions data
The Group’s Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions are limited to those associated with business travel and electricity consumption at the premises in Caerphilly.
Standard conversion rates used in this report were obtained from the UK Government. The energy data used in this report relates to invoiced consumption against specific meter points for the specified period and has been qualified by the suppliers of the invoices. Transport and supplementary fuel data was provided directly by the Company, together with the selected intensity ratio metric and the supporting intensity ratio data.
Summary of usage
The Group’s Scope 1 and Scope 2 Emissions are summarised in the table below.
| DG Innovate Plckg CO2e | Subsidiary Companieskg CO2e | Totalkg CO2e | |
| Scope 1 – Business Travel | 1,873 | 1,266 | 3,139 |
| Scope 2 – Energy Usage* | – | 26,377 | 26,377 |
| Total | 1,873 | 27,643 | 29,516 |
*provider SSE Energy Supply Limited
The Group has taken steps to improve its CO2 emissions as follows:
– Installation of EV charging points at the company premises for use with the company vehicles which are now electric. The electricity is generated onsite from the solar panels.
– A review of the buildings energy rating has been carried out and improvements are being made to the air conditioning and heating systems, ensuring that the building is only heated when it is occupied, thus saving energy.
– We have reorganised our office space to reduced energy consumption for heating and lighting.
Donations
There were no charitable or political donations during the current period or prior year.
Post balance sheet events
Post balance sheet events are discussed in the Chairman’s Statement on page 3 and in note 28.
Going concern
The financial statements have been prepared on the assumption that the Group will continue as a going concern. Under this assumption, an entity is ordinarily viewed as continuing in business for the foreseeable future with neither the intention nor the necessity of liquidation, ceasing trading or seeking protection from creditors pursuant to laws or regulations. In assessing whether the going concern assumption is appropriate, the Directors take into account all available information for the foreseeable future, in particular for the twelve months from the date of approval of the financial statements.
The Directors consider the use of the going concern assumption to be appropriate. At the latest reported date of 31 December 2022, the Group had cash and cash equivalents totalling £234,990 and net current assets of £618,313.
On 8 April 2022, the Group successfully raised £4.6 million (before expenses) through the exercise of shareholder warrants and a subscription for new ordinary shares. Post period end, in January 2023, the Group raised a further £418,000 through a subscription and broker option. These funds were raised to cover the costs of the DHL acquisition and to fund the ongoing development of the Group’s technologies towards commercialisation.
Significant progress is being made, with a final design iteration of the Group’s Pareta® drive due to be tested during Q2 2023, in collaboration with major Tier 1 axle supplier Meritor. In addition, the Group announced in February 2023 that it had signed a Collaboration Framework Agreement with Tier 1 axle suppliers BRIST and BASE, representing DGI’s first commercial partnership. The parties will work together to develop and integrate Pareta® into the current range of BRIST and BASE axles to provide a turnkey offering for commercial and military vehicles globally. Furthermore, DGI will provide BRIST and BASE its existing vehicle control and torque vectoring system to allow the partners to accelerate the penetration of the product in the market sectors identified, the parties will work together to accelerate activities in the retrofit and conversion market and DGI will provide UK ‘in country’ presence for sales and customer support. Ultimately, the intention is for DGI to assemble BRIST and BASE axles within the UK in due course, with the partners to support the establishment of operations when demand requires. As our first “commercial” agreement we believe this has scope to result in significant revenues across a number of different business models. The Group also continues its work with the UK Ministry of Defence.
In line with all pre-revenue companies, further funding will be required as the Group moves through the development phase. The Board have considered a number of detailed cashflow scenarios and have identified a further funding requirement from mid-2023. As this falls within 12 months of the date of this report, a material uncertainty exists in relation to the ability of the Group to continue as a going concern.
The Directors would note that the previous fundraises in March 2021, April 2022 and January 2023 were predominantly made up of the same small group of investors, who remain supportive of the Group’s strategy. The Directors therefore believe that a further equity fundraise would be well supported. The Directors have also progressed discussions with lenders regarding debt facilities, should it achieve material customer orders post-testing. Taking this into account, the Directors have formed the opinion that there are adequate arrangements in place to enable the settlement of their financial commitments as and when they fall due.
For this reason, the Directors continue to adopt the going concern basis in preparing the financial statements. While there are inherent uncertainties in relation to future events and ultimately no certainty over the outcome of matters described above, in the opinion of the Directors, the newly formed group will be a going concern for the next 12 months.
Research and Development
DG Innovate is focusing on advanced research and development of sustainable and environmentally considerate improvements to electric mobility and energy storage, Enhanced Drive Technology and Enhanced Battery Technology
Enhanced Drive Technology
The Group’s electric drive technology platform, Pareta® consists of a motor, high power inverter and control electronics, with a novel ‘multi motor/inverter’ architecture and a number of fundamental and patent pending innovations. This technology has been developed over a number of years via the Group’s ongoing work to build ultra-high performance and durable electric drives for the UK Ministry of Defence, with the resulting product family currently in its third iteration.
The Pareta® platform has most recently been extended to deliver its associated performance and durability parameters at a competitive cost point for volume manufacture for commercial electric vehicles, initially for the Company’s collaboration partner Meritor, the US-headquartered global commercial vehicle components company. The advanced prototypes produced in a scalable 250kW/400kW format, aimed at bus and HGV applications, have already shown good performance versus electric motor systems from global motor manufacturers.
To develop this new offering from its current advanced prototype phase to final product release and volume manufacture, the Group plans to take a staged approach. Having successfully produced an advanced prototype design, work is now ongoing to progress to a final design prototype.
The Group is undertaking a phase of preparing for pilot manufacturing with the financial support from the UK Government’s Advanced Propulsion Centre (“APC”) through their Scale-up Readiness Validation competition, part of the Automotive Transformation fund, in parallel with completing the final design prototype. Further prototypes will be followed, enabling the design to be optimised, particularly regarding performance and costings, in order to progress to the production stage.
The Group has also commenced a feasibility project under the competition of “Clean Maritime Demonstration Competition Round 2 – Feasibility”, to define an innovative multi parallel design for 3 MW marinised fuel cell systems encompassing highly redundant end-to-end whole-ship energy efficiency design and integration. Enabled by novel motor, drives, and power electronics, the modular marinised fuel cell system will deliver more than 3 MW power.
Enhanced Battery Technology
The Group’s proprietary energy storage technology encompasses a family of hard carbon anode materials produced from a sustainable bio waste product, specifically developed for use in sodium-ion batteries, with potential applications in existing lithium-ion battery production. Sodium-ion batteries offer an attractive alternative to lithium-ion batteries, using materials that are more abundant, with lower carbon footprints, and which circumvent natural resource constraints involved in the production of lithium-ion batteries.
The Group believes that its battery partners consider the Group’s technology to be a disruptive alternative in their aspiration to reduce dependency on hydrocarbon-derived anodes for both sodium and lithium-ion battery technologies. The Group’s hard carbon anode materials have already demonstrated commercially attractive performance characteristics, particularly enabling significant energy densities, in line with the best performing sodium-ion batteries currently available, in battery cells manufactured at a small scale in the Group’s own facility.
Further scale up of material production will involve an iteration of process engineering to maintain the desired performance and material characteristics in high volume. Additionally, integrating the material into commercial scale battery cell production will require a parallel process of optimising cell design and large-scale production engineering.
The Group intends to primarily pursue a licensing model to bring its battery technology to the market, through licensing to sodium-ion battery manufacturers, with the potential for in-house material production should that prove commercially attractive. Whilst there is currently limited volume sodium-ion battery manufacture worldwide, a number of large global battery manufacturers have recently announced plans to establish substantial sodium-ion battery manufacturing capabilities. As global sodium-ion battery production increases in the coming years, the Group believes there will be a substantial addressable market for its technology.
The Group commenced a feasibility study under Innovate UK’s competition “Automotive Transformation Fund Feasibility Studies: Round 3” for the evaluation of manufacturing its sodium-ion anode material at scale in the UK, in particular to enable the Company to refine its economic and technology model out to 10,000 tonnes-per-annum production of the Company’s hard anode material.
Statement of Directors’ responsibilities
The Directors are responsible for preparing the financial statements in accordance with applicable law and regulations.
Company law requires the Directors to prepare financial statements for each financial year. Under that law the Directors have prepared financial statements in accordance with UK-adopted International Accounting Standards (‘IAS’). Under company law the Directors must not approve the financial statements unless they are satisfied that they give a true and fair view of the state of affairs of the Company and Group and of the Statement of Comprehensive Income of the Group for that year.
In preparing those financial statements, the Directors are required to:
– select suitable accounting policies and then apply them consistently;
– make judgements and estimates that are reasonable and prudent;
– state whether they have been prepared in accordance with UK-adopted IASs, subject to any material departures disclosed and explained in the financial statements; and
– prepare the financial statements on the going concern basis unless it is inappropriate to presume that the Company and Group will continue in business.
The Directors confirm that they have complied with the above requirements in preparing the financial statements.
The Directors are responsible for keeping adequate accounting records that are sufficient to show and explain the Company and Group transactions and disclose with reasonable accuracy at any time the financial position of the Group and enable them to ensure that the financial statements comply with the Companies Act 2006. They are also responsible for safeguarding the assets of the Company and Group and hence for taking reasonable steps for the prevention and detection of fraud and other irregularities.
Website publication
The Directors are responsible for ensuring the annual report and the financial statements are made available on a website. Financial statements are published on the Group’s website in accordance with legislation in the United Kingdom governing the preparation and dissemination of financial statements, which may vary from legislation in other jurisdictions. The maintenance and integrity of the Group’s website is the responsibility of the Directors. The Directors’ responsibility also extends to the ongoing integrity of the financial statements contained therein.
Directors’ responsibilities pursuant to DTR4
The Directors confirm to the best of their knowledge:
– the Group financial statements have been prepared in accordance with UK-adopted International Accounting Standards (IASs) and give a true and fair view of the assets, liabilities, financial position and profit and loss of the Group.
– The annual report includes a fair review of the development and performance of the business and financial position of the Group together with a description of the principal risks and uncertainties that they face.
The Directors’ Report was approved by the board of Directors and signed on its behalf by:
Peter Tierney
Chief Executive Officer
27 April 2023
