CleanTech Lithium publishes 2025 annual report highlighting CEOL progress and strategic milestones

CleanTech Lithium 2025 annual report – why the CEOL and Laguna Verde progress matter most

CleanTech Lithium’s 2025 annual report is one of those updates where the headline numbers only tell half the story. The company is still loss-making and still reliant on fresh funding, but it has clearly spent 2025 getting its flagship Laguna Verde project into a much stronger position.

The big strategic shift is this: CleanTech now says it has agreed the terms for the CEOL – a Special Lithium Operating Contract in Chile – for Laguna Verde, and it has also published a positive PFS, or Pre-Feasibility Study. For a pre-revenue mining developer, those are the sort of milestones that move a project from “interesting concept” towards “something fundable”.

CleanTech Lithium key figures from the 2025 annual report

Metric	2025	2024
Administrative costs	£1.42 million	£3.69 million
Loss after tax	£2.81 million	£7.24 million
Total comprehensive loss	£2.26 million	£9.13 million
Cash at year end	£1.84 million	£0.13 million
Net assets	£19.39 million	£13.95 million
Exploration and evaluation assets	£42.11 million	£32.58 million
Loan notes payable	£3.09 million	£2.19 million
Deferred consideration	£21.71 million	£15.50 million

Laguna Verde CEOL approval and PFS publication are the real value drivers

If you strip away the accounting detail, the investment case is still centred on Laguna Verde in Chile. CleanTech says Laguna Verde has a resource of 1.9 million tonnes of LCE, which means lithium carbonate equivalent – the standard way of expressing lithium resource size.

The CEOL matters because Chile’s lithium sector is tightly controlled, so getting the right operating framework is not a box-ticking exercise. It is the difference between having a project on paper and having a route to development.

The PFS matters for the same reason. A pre-feasibility study is the stage where the company tests whether a project looks commercially workable before spending even more money on a Definitive Feasibility Study, or DFS. CleanTech says the PFS for Laguna Verde was positive and that its Direct Lithium Extraction, or DLE, process has demonstrated the ability to produce battery-grade lithium carbonate.

That is the upbeat part of this report, and rightly so. For retail investors, this is the first thing to focus on because it is what potential strategic partners and ASX investors are likely to focus on too.

CleanTech Lithium cut costs hard in 2025 – and it shows in the numbers

The company ran a full austerity programme during what management calls the “lithium winter”. Administrative costs fell by about 62% to £1.42 million, although management says the underlying reduction was closer to 19% once foreign exchange gains of around £1.6 million are excluded.

Either way, costs came down sharply. PR and investor relations spending dropped to £71,000 from £380,000, and travel costs fell to £99,000 from £211,000. That tells you management was in survival mode, preserving cash while waiting for the CEOL and PFS milestones.

There is a positive and a negative here. Positive: they were disciplined. Negative: early-stage miners usually only cut this hard when capital markets are tough and funding options are limited.

Why the balance sheet looks better – but still carries serious risk

Cash rose to £1.84 million at 31 December 2025 from just £134,248 a year earlier, helped by the year’s fundraises. Net assets also improved to £19.39 million from £13.95 million.

That sounds reassuring, but this is not a low-risk balance sheet. The group had £3.09 million of loan notes payable and a chunky £21.71 million of deferred consideration linked to licence acquisitions.

In plain English, deferred consideration means future payments still owed for assets already acquired. That liability includes current deferred consideration of £3.01 million due within 12 months and a non-current balance of £18.70 million.

Even more importantly, the company openly flags a material uncertainty over going concern. It says it is pre-revenue and will need external funding to continue. That is standard for a developer at this stage, but it still matters. If funding windows shut again, shareholders usually end up paying through dilution.

Licence dispute and legal overhang – the awkward bit investors should not ignore

This annual report is not all tidy progress charts and funding plans. There is a legal issue around the Laguna Verde licence purchase agreement that deserves attention.

The second and third milestone payments under that agreement remained outstanding at 31 December 2025. The vendors initiated a legal claim, and a judgment awarded a lien over the issued share capital of CleanTech Laguna Verde SpA.

The company says this does not affect its control of the shares, only their sale, and it is seeking to have the proceedings and judgment annulled. It also says the reversionary interest mechanism – which could award a 49% non-controlling interest if triggered from the third milestone payment onward – has not been triggered.

That is the biggest red flag in the report for me. Management sounds confident, but when your flagship asset is tied up in payment disputes and legal process, that is not trivial.

Funding, dilution and the ASX listing plan – what shareholders need to watch next

CleanTech raised £2.5 million in early 2025, then £4.3 million plus a £250,000 retail offer in August 2025. After the year end, it announced approximately £4.8 million in gross proceeds before expenses, followed by a further £0.6 million through a retail offering.

Some of that is subject to shareholder approval, with the General Meeting scheduled for 1 July 2026. The company also says the loan note holders agreed to convert outstanding principal and premiums into equity.

That is good for reducing debt pressure, but it also means dilution. The year-end share count was already up to 202,936,766 from 84,235,673 a year earlier, and there were 140,888,994 warrants and 6,537,840 share options outstanding at year end. That is a lot of paper.

The ASX dual listing plan is interesting because Australian mining investors generally understand lithium stories better than UK investors do. If management can pair that listing with a credible strategic partner process, it could broaden the shareholder base and improve access to capital.

My view on the CleanTech Lithium annual report

On balance, this is a better report than the headline loss might suggest. CleanTech has moved Laguna Verde forward in a meaningful way, cut spending aggressively, improved cash, secured CEOL terms, published the PFS and lined up the next financing steps.

That is the bullish case. The bearish case is just as clear: there is still no revenue, there is still going concern risk, there are still large payment obligations on licences, and there is a legal overhang tied to the core asset.

So what does it mean for retail investors? CleanTech looks more like a live development story than it did a year ago, but it is still a funding story first and a production story later. If the strategic partner process lands well and the ASX listing gains traction, this could look like smart survival followed by a re-rate. If not, dilution and balance sheet strain remain the obvious risks.

In short, the project has improved faster than the risk profile has. That makes this one interesting, but definitely not sleepy.