LONDON, April 27, 2026, 17:02 BST
ITM Power PLC shares fell 7.4% in London on Monday, pulling back after a sharp April run tied to defence-fuel hopes and new UK government backing for its hydrogen technology. The stock was quoted at 143.30 pence, with more than 13 million shares traded, after closing Friday at 154.80p.
The move matters now because ITM has quickly become one of the most closely watched clean-energy stocks on London’s AIM market. Interactive Investor listed ITM among the 10 most-traded shares on its platform on Monday morning, with buy trades making up 76% of activity, a sign that retail investors were still active even as the price slipped.
The pullback follows a steep rerating. ITM shares closed at 71.35p on April 10 and hit a 52-week high of 166.50p last week, according to share-price data, leaving Monday’s drop looking more like a break in momentum than a reversal of the whole move.
The latest corporate catalyst came on April 17, when ITM said it had entered a strategic collaboration with Germany’s Rheinmetall AG for the Giga PtX project, a plan for decentralised synthetic-fuel production plants for NATO armed forces. ITM said the project envisages several hundred plants across Europe, each with electrolysis capacity of up to 50 megawatts and annual e-fuel output of about 5,000 to 7,000 tonnes.
Chief Executive Dennis Schulz said the Rheinmetall collaboration “aligns the energy transition with national security priorities.” Rheinmetall’s Shena Britzen called e-fuels “a strategic necessity,” language that puts the deal closer to defence logistics than the older, broader hydrogen-transition pitch. ITM Power
ITM makes electrolysers — machines that use electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. Its proton exchange membrane, or PEM, technology is used to make green hydrogen from renewable power and water, with products including Trident, Neptune and Poseidon systems, according to Reuters’ company profile.
The Rheinmetall news came shortly after ITM said it had secured a £40 million investment from Great British Energy and that the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero intended to award a £46.5 million grant. The funds are meant to support a 1 gigawatt automated manufacturing line in the UK for Chronos, ITM’s next-generation electrolyser stack.
That funding is central to the equity story. Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said the investment would help rebuild energy security with “clean homegrown power,” while Schulz said government support marked a “pivotal step” for ITM in the UK hydrogen economy. ITM Power
ITM had already raised its full-year revenue outlook in February, saying it expected £40 million to £43 million for the year ending April 30, up from earlier guidance of £35 million to £40 million. The company said the change reflected recent contracts and project progress, as well as a shift to recognising revenue over the life of contracts.
But the risk is plain enough. A strategic collaboration is not the same as a booked equipment order, and ITM has not disclosed financial terms, a deployment timetable or a firm purchase commitment for the Rheinmetall project. The wider hydrogen equipment market also remains uneven: Reuters reported in March that Thyssenkrupp Nucera, a German electrolysis peer, cut its full-year outlook because of higher costs and weaker green hydrogen assumptions.
Competition is not just European. Reuters reported in February that industry executives warned Europe could lose ground to China in electrolysers unless public contracts and investment help local manufacturers scale faster. That is the larger backdrop for ITM’s rally: investors are pricing not only Monday’s share move, but whether the company can turn policy support and defence interest into repeatable orders.
