Ceres Power Share Price Slides 37%: Two Fundraisings and Falling Revenue Explain the Rout

The Ceres Power share price has fallen close to 40% over the past month, making CWR the worst performer on the FTSE 250 during that stretch. By lunchtime on 17 July the stock was down a further 5% on the day, yet the company had issued no stock exchange announcement to explain the move. The silence is itself part of the story.

A Second Capital Raise Compounds the Pressure

Just over a month before the latest leg down, Ceres surprised shareholders with a placing that raised £103 million through the issue of 18 million new ordinary shares on a non-pre-emptive basis, with settlement completed on 12 June 2026. The offer was oversubscribed, and the company said ‘the new funds present a clear opportunity to capitalise on commercial momentum for Ceres technology and ensure we are well placed for the future.’

The placing price was 570p per share. With the stock now trading roughly 58% below that level, anyone who bought into the raise is sitting on a loss inside six weeks. That overhang matters even if the institutional book was well covered at the time.

What compounds the picture is that the fundraising appears not to have been a one-off. A regulatory news item on the London Stock Exchange dated 9 June 2026 references a proposed second capital raise of approximately £100 million, separate from and subsequent to the June raise. Two rounds of dilution within a short window is the kind of capital rhythm that tests institutional patience, particularly when the underlying financials are deteriorating.

Ceres Power Share Price Reflects a Deteriorating Financial Backdrop

The full-year 2025 figures, published on the Ceres Power investor page, show revenue falling to £32.6 million from £51.9 million in 2024, while the adjusted EBITDA loss widened to £(32.5) million from £(22.3) million. Gross margin compressed from 77% to 70%. Cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments stood at £83.3 million at 31 December 2025, down from £102.5 million a year earlier, even before the June 2026 raise replenished the balance sheet.

The half-year results to 30 June 2025, filed in Ceres Power’s interim results, showed a loss after tax of £19.6 million, up from £12.6 million in the equivalent period of 2024. Research and development expenditure held steady at £48.6 million for the full year, a commitment that is necessary but expensive for a company that is not yet generating profits. The cash outflow from operations, though improved year-on-year at £(19.2) million versus £(37.5) million in 2024, still represents a meaningful annual drain.

Sector-Wide Scepticism on Adoption Timing

Ceres is not alone in its difficulties. Bloom Energy and FuelCell Energy in the United States have also sold off sharply since June, and ITM Power has faced similar pressure in the UK. The common thread is investor impatience with the gap between the technology’s promise and the pace at which commercial customers are actually signing contracts.

The demand case is not in dispute. Ceres has cited forecasts of solid oxide fuel cell demand reaching 22 gigawatts a year by 2030, and positions its technology as a credible solution to the power gap for data centres that the existing grid cannot fill. The capital-light licensing model, which sees manufacturing partners carry the operational risk, remains intact in principle. But the June 2026 raise included plans to develop a component supply facility, a step that edges Ceres towards greater direct operational involvement than the pure-licence model would imply.

Progress on the partner side is visible. Doosan formally started production of stacks and fuel cell power systems based on Ceres technology in July 2025. Delta, meanwhile, announced in the same month the purchase of 112,000 square metres of land and factory facilities in Taoyuan City, Taiwan, for approximately NT$6.95 billion (around £170 million), with the site expected to focus on large-scale manufacturing of hydrogen energy solutions using Ceres’ solid oxide technology for data centre power and energy infrastructure. These are real milestones. The question the market is currently answering, and not favourably, is whether they will translate into royalty income quickly enough to offset the ongoing cash consumption.

Ceres was spun out of Imperial College in 2001. The technology has taken a generation to reach commercial production. A further fundraising, beyond the two already in the frame, cannot be ruled out if partner sales take longer to materialise than management expects. That is the binary the next set of results will need to address.