Ceres Power Share Price Halves From Its Peak: What the Fundraise and Financials Reveal

The Ceres Power share price has shed roughly half its value since the start of June, pulling back to around 450p after touching a 52-week high of 873p in May. For a stock that traded at 80p a year ago, the round trip is a reminder of just how compressed the risk-reward can become when momentum and fundamentals diverge.

What the £103 Million Fundraise Actually Tells Us

The immediate trigger for the correction was a capital raise. Ceres Power (LSE: CWR) issued new ordinary shares of 10 pence each at a placing price of 570p, raising £103 million gross. According to the company’s own regulatory announcement, the new shares represent approximately 9.2% of existing issued share capital, a non-pre-emptive offer that bypassed existing shareholders’ rights to subscribe pro-rata.

The institutional tranche, as reported by Sharecast, placed 17.79 million shares with institutional investors at 570p, raising approximately £101 million; a separate retail component accounts for the difference between that figure and the £103 million gross total cited in the company’s announcement and by Yahoo Finance, which puts the total new share issuance at 18 million shares. Sharecast noted the offer price represented a 6.5% discount to the prevailing market price. Net proceeds are estimated at approximately £100 million after fees.

The company said it needed the additional cash to ‘establish the right balance sheet to drive growth and enable selective investment to support partner scale-up.’ The fundraise was led by Berenberg and UBS, and was oversubscribed, suggesting institutional appetite remains intact even after the dilution.

The awkward context is the underlying financial trajectory. For the year ended 31 December 2025, Ceres Power reported revenue of £32.6 million and an operating loss of £47.6 million. A year earlier, revenue had been £51.9 million, with an operating loss of £31.3 million. In other words, revenue fell by more than a third while losses widened materially.

The H1 2025 interim results add colour here. Revenue for the six months ended June 2025 came in at £21.1 million, down 26% from £28.5 million in H1 2024. The adjusted EBITDA loss widened to £11.3 million from £9.0 million. One partial offset: operating costs (before exceptional items) fell 6% to £35.6 million, following a cost rationalisation programme announced in 2024. Cash and short-term investments stood at £104.1 million at June 2025, up marginally from £102.5 million at December 2024, reflecting a positive cash inflow of £1.6 million in the period.

On gross margin, the interim results show 79% for H1 2025. The snippet cites 70%, likely reflecting a different period or basis. The company’s own filing is the more recent figure.

Doosan in Mass Production: The Ceres Power Share Price Thesis Takes Shape

The bear case is straightforward: a loss-making company with declining revenue and a market capitalisation approaching £1 billion is asking investors to fund a future that remains unproven. That is a legitimate concern, and the share price reaction reflects it.

The bull case rests on the licensing model and its economics. Ceres licences its solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) technology rather than manufacturing product itself. The gross margin of 79% illustrates how capital-light the model can be at scale. The £110,000 first royalty received in 2025 is a token amount, but it marks the moment the royalty stream moved from a slide in a presentation to an actual line on a cash flow statement.

The Doosan partnership is where the thesis becomes most concrete. Ceres and Doosan signed a Collaboration and Licensing agreement to jointly develop SOFC distributed power systems for the Korean commercial building market, with Doosan taking a system licence for Ceres’s SteelCell technology. The original contract, disclosed in October 2020, was worth £30 million over three years with a further £7 million contingent on performance milestones. Crucially, as of July 2025, Doosan’s factory had started cell and stack production, making Doosan the first Ceres partner to enter mass production using SOFC technology. That is an operational milestone, not a commercial promise.

The data centre angle adds a second demand vector. The power density and efficiency characteristics of SOFCs are attracting attention from operators looking for alternatives to grid connections that are increasingly constrained. Centrica is among the named partners. If that market develops at pace, the royalty pipeline widens considerably.

For now, the stock is caught between a deteriorating revenue line and an early-stage licensing model that could, in time, become highly profitable. The placing at 570p gives institutional investors a cost base well below where the stock peaked, but still above current levels. Their next decision point arrives when Ceres reports on whether Doosan’s factory ramp translates into royalties that move the needle beyond six figures.