Ceres Power PLC’s (LON:CWR) appointment of Warrant Finegold as its new chairman has been welcomed by broker Liberum.
The fuel cell specialist announced yesterday that Finegold would take over from Alan Aubrey with immediate effect.
Finegold has been on the board as a non-executive since March having previously been at investment bank UBS’s technology team and 10 years at Vodafone, where he headed up group strategy and business development.
“We think this is a sensible development as Ceres moves into the commercialisation phase,” said Liberum, which is a fan of the AIM-listed business.
In a note in March, the broker raised its price target to 540p highlighting Ceres had two licence partners (Bosch and Weichai) that are major strategic investors, while new opportunities had emerged in electrolysers and higher power cells.
The broker retained its 540p target and ‘buy’ rating following Finegold’s appointment.
Major partners
Weichai is China's largest bus and truck engine maker, and collaborating with Ceres on a 30kW fuel cell system for a China electric bus where the fuel cell supplied by natural gas will be a range extender.
Bosch plans to use SteelCell stacks to provide distributed power for small city power stations factories, data centres, and charge points for electric vehicles.
Elsewhere, Doosan is partnering on a 5-20kW power system for the Korea commercial heating market while Miura has integrated a Ceres stack into a small commercial heat and power boiler system marketed in Japan, said Liberum.
Shares rose 2.7% to 520p.