ITM Power: From Whitehall to NATO — The State’s Bet That the Market Can’t Yet Price

The British government and a German defence contractor have both placed their chips on ITM Power, yet the electrolyser maker’s shares continue to whipsaw as investors struggle to reconcile strategic backing with a balance sheet still awash in red ink.

The stock closed at €1.24 on Thursday, down 7.39% on the day and 51.86% below its May peak of €2.58. The annualised 30-day volatility stands at 99.80%, a reading that places the company closer to a speculative crypto play than a capital-equipment supplier. Even after the latest decline, the shares remain 71.05% higher year-to-date and 43.39% above where they traded twelve months ago — a trajectory that underscores how far the stock has swung in both directions.

An Unusual Shareholder Mix

What sets ITM Power apart from other clean-tech hopefuls is the identity of its largest new investor. Great British Energy, the state-owned British energy company, took a stake of just over 10% during the second quarter of 2026, injecting £40 million in fresh equity. That was followed by a £46.5 million grant from the UK Department for Energy Security and Net Zero to back the next-generation Chronos manufacturing line in Sheffield, announced in April.

The combined £86.5 million of public money is not merely a subsidy — it turns the state into a direct co-owner of a lossmaking AIM-listed company. Management argues that the arrangement lowers execution risk and provides a high-throughput platform for scaling. Whether that logic holds is precisely what the market is debating.

That debate has been joined by a second, very different partner. ITM Power has signed a strategic cooperation with Germany’s Rheinmetall to build a Europe-wide network for producing synthetic fuels for NATO forces, centred on Rheinmetall’s Giga-PtX project. CEO Dennis Schulz described the deal as creating “a repeatable application for large-scale electrolysers that directly supports sovereign fuel capability and operational readiness.” The involvement of a defence heavyweight adds a layer of demand security that few hydrogen peers can claim — but it has not insulated the stock from volatility.

Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying ITM Power?

Technical Signals Tell a Split Story

The chart reflects the market’s indecision. At €1.24, the stock trades 25.65% below its 50-day moving average of €1.67, indicating that the short-term uptrend is broken. Yet it still sits 14.86% above the 200-day average of €1.08, so the longer-term trend remains intact. The relative strength index of 37.5 suggests the stock is approaching oversold territory, but no bottom has been confirmed.

Analysts are as divided as the technicals. Berenberg sees fair value at 200 pence, while Goldman Sachs maintains a sell rating. The consensus target stands at just 131 pence, a spread wide enough to reflect the uncertainty surrounding the entire green-hydrogen sector.

More Than a Single-Company Bet

ITM Power’s portfolio extends beyond the Sheffield gigafactory. Together with Protium Green Solutions, it is developing the Cromarty project in Scotland — a 15-megawatt electrolyser capable of producing roughly seven tonnes of green hydrogen a day in peak operation, targeting industrial customers with high heat and power demands.

The company faces entrenched competition from Nel ASA, Plug Power, Siemens Energy, Thyssenkrupp Nucera and McPhy Energy, all of whom are chasing the same transition from pilot-scale to industrial-scale production. The entire industry labours under the same weight: expensive electrolysers, project delays, and the gnawing question of when technology leadership will translate into reliable profit.

For ITM Power, the answer may depend less on the next quarterly earnings beat than on whether state capital, defence contracts and grant funding can compress the timeline from promise to profitability faster than the private market could do alone. The share price suggests investors are still weighing the odds — and betting on both outcomes at once.