Bienvenue sur Zoom. Veuillez saisir votre identifiant de réunion suivi du carré. By December 31, we just received yesterday our bagging line for the CAN blast abrasives that are made on the front end of that system. Our lightweight cat litter installation, that will occur before the end of the calendar year. Our automated valve pack line expected completion by February 28, and there's a million dollars of grant money from Fortis that we will receive once we complete that. And then our—sorry, pardon me—that is the fine grinding line. There's a million dollars of Fortis money for it, and the automated valve pack line again completed by February 28, 2027. Critical infrastructure: we've now—so absorbent spent minimally in infrastructure and equipment in the decade before acquisition. The company was for sale for many years before we actually completed the acquisition. The acquisition got delayed by about 2 years based on COVID, and so absorbent needed a lot of money to invest in upgrading throughput. And so we've significantly increased the capacity since the acquisition, and these investments are now in place: current capital program is committed, and on track for completion in this fiscal year. And any future capital allocation shifts will shift to growth and return-driven opportunities, and we'll talk later in the presentation about a focus on the U.S. marketplace. Press 0. To choose English. Press 0 to choose English. So commissioning underway now on the POS glass pilot plant. Our CAN blast abrasive line—we've been selling that for about 20 years—our brand, but co-packed by another company. Just received the bagging equipment yesterday. We'll have that up and running and be bagging 50-pound bags of sandblasting abrasives media so we'll be making our own by the end of October. And we will be commencing the production of POS glass powder, so the wet grinding in November. And we are now working with Amarise, formerly LaFarge Wholesome, for real-life projects with POS glass. April, May 2027 in the lower mainland of BC. So I want to talk about our research and development and our core business costs. You saw elevated spending in the last fiscal year, and again in the first quarter on the POS glass pilot. And I also want to talk about core inflation and how we've addressed it after Q1. So we received grant funding, which reimburses 49.86% of the POS glass pilot plant costs. We report that as grant income separately. From our core business. Under IFRS rules, which apply to us as a public company, development costs for a pilot plant can only be capitalized once the numbers specific criteria are met, and these are quite stringent. Vous n'avez saisi aucun numéro. Veuillez saisir à nouveau votre identifiant de réunion suivi du carré. Vous n'avez saisi aucun numéro. Veuillez saisir à nouveau votre identifiant de réunion suivi du And so many of our costs that normally could be capitalized are expensed with this pilot plant. And the POS glass pilot plant costs will scale back at the end of 2026 calendar year, so by December 31, 2026, as we move to operating the plant. I also want to talk about core business inflation. So we saw significant increase specifically over $400,000 increase in our freight. Now, part of that increase was an increase in the amount of goods shipped but there was a larger increase in the amount of freight than the growth of the company. But so we continue to see some margin compression in the short term. But we did implement a price increase in the current quarter; some of our customers take up to 90 days to accept the price increase, but we implemented a price increase in August and September, notification was given to our customers. So we will focus now with the automation and the projects that you've seen that I've just discussed, we're also putting a major focus on increasing our revenue per employee with these CapEx investments. So once you install an automated valve packer, you're not going to have the manual labor of manually filling the bags of Red Lake Earth geothermal grout, etc. So Q1, you see the two gold bars here because we celebrated Best Ever Quarter Ever in Q4 with 6.51 million and then we had 7.29 million in change rounded up to 7.3 million for Q1 of fiscal 2027. Now, there is some seasonality. In our business, if you look to Q2 for the last 2 years, you can see those numbers. And you can see that there is some seasonality. But we are very excited about the continued growth of the company. I just don't want everybody to expect that every single quarter will exceed the prior quarter because we do have some seasonality. In Q2, as we wind down, we have very, very prolific sales of Red Lake Earth and one of the main things it's used for is killing fire ants. And the fire ant season starts to wind down in Q2, so we do see a—we do see some decline in sales of Red Lake Earth, and that's part—and then, of course, in Q3, we start to see our cat litter ramp up again. So Q2 is typically a weak quarter for us. So I just bring that up to create realistic expectations that we will not constantly exceed every quarter with the—from the quarter directly behind it, we do have some seasonality. But we are seeing very strong momentum in all segments of our business. So again, highest annual revenue was 2026. Anybody that takes Q1 and times it by 4 would immediately see that we're trending to do better than that. But again, I caution that there is some seasonality. But also that we are seeing an uptick in all levels of our business in all sectors. I want to talk about the elephant in the room I often get teased. It's one of my favorite sayings: the elephant in the room. So what is the elephant in the room for us? Well, it's inflation and increased costs. So if you look at the image to the left, you'll see the three SKUs. That we have—and we've done roughly $2 million in sales of those three SKUs since November 1. They've been phenomenal for us. We sell them in 2,434 tractor supplies. The 20-pound bags are made—they're co-packed for us by a family business in Eastern Oregon. And then we bring back bulk bags of that and we make these two products. You see the image and I'm also holding them up. Those are made—those are made in Canada, and so unfortunately, two of those three SKUs that are part of our booming new brand, Pure DE, they do cross the U.S. border twice. Once, when they come up to us, and secondly, when we bring them back for sale into the U.S. Our diesel costs, they're soaring. Freight costs rose. From $819 for the prior year, Q1, to $1.233 million. And I think most people recognize that globalism is in decline; there is strong incentives in the U.S. to make products in the U.S. that are sold in the U.S. So how are we going to address? So addressing the elephant long-term solutions. Over 66% of our Q1 revenue came from the USA. Freight costs decline if products sold in the USA are made in the USA. So we are searching for opportunities to process more product in the USA, specifically in the Pacific Northwest, and we are seeking to avoid two border crossings with our new product lines. Red Lake Earth stall dry. These products, activated burnt fresh, they will always be made with our Canadian DE; they are well-established brands that have a different color of diatomaceous earth. The Pure DE is a near-white and the Red Lake Earth, you know, it's not quite red, but it's that sort of salmon-colored material, and people know its color. It's very much part of its identity. So we are also receiving strong inbound inquiries to partner to onshore other industrial mineral-based products with very, very large third-party companies. We're getting inbound interest from Europe and Asia. So the European Union and Japan both signed new tariff agreements, which have fundamentally changed the profitability of legacy production of industrial mineral products in both Europe and Asia. And so our phone is ringing. From people wanting to discuss toll processing or partnering on onshoring. So as we look to move more production into the U.S., as you know, we've got very, very strong brand now with the Pure DE being sold in tractor. We are looking to establish bricks-and-mortar south of the border not only to manage our own business, but also to enter into the business of toll processing. So ultimately, we're looking to build a multipurpose processing facility in the Pacific Northwest similar to what we do in Canada. Share structure. We have just under 111 million shares. Just under 6 million options. Just under 117 million shares fully diluted. I want to talk about awards. These are third parties recognizing us and the awards that a lot of the value of the awards is gaining credibility with larger companies. It's pressing an interest in doing business with us. I think the one that's most near and dear to my heart is the Carbon Capture Canada. We won it September of last year. We beat multiple global players: Petronas, one of the biggest oil companies in the world based in Malaysia, was a finalist. For the Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage Technology Award of the Year. BASF, the biggest chemical manufacturer, in Europe was a finalist. We beat them. So these awards, and we continue to be nominated as finalists and stay tuned as award season is up and coming for the fall of this year. Investment highlights or profitable vertically integrated clean tech manufacturer focused on eco-friendly silicate-based products. We have robust cash flow funding our innovation pipeline. Very clean cap table. Patent pending solutions poised to disrupt the cement industry, getting ready to start deploying POS glass. The investments in upgrading Canadian operations are nearing completion. And we're now moving our long-term focus on growing business in the USA with more production, in the USA. And so that's it. Merton and I'll hand it over to you for any questions. Thanks, Steve. As a reminder, anyone with questions, please type them into the Q&A box in Zoom and we will read them out. Firstly, would plan help the co-packer buy new equipment so that you wouldn't bring the raw material to CAMLUPS? We currently have a wonderful relationship with a co-packer, but they have a very small building on site. This is the material that we procure from a third party in Eastern Oregon. That production facility is simply too small to grow significantly to enable us to do more at that specific production facility. Would we welcome increased involvement with this wonderful family business? Absolutely. But it still needs investment outside of the geographic location of the current production facility. All right. You are not providing official revenue guidance, but can you give a sense of what level of growth should we expect growth year over year on a quarterly basis while quarterly revenue may be seasonal? Should we generally expect growth from the prior year? Yes. I believe that we should expect growth quarter over quarter. For the next three quarters of the current fiscal year, if the current trajectory remains consistent, we've introduced a new product line in the, you know, we only started doing sales in November of the Pure DE. We're seeing growth in our geothermal grout. And we are seeing general increase across all of our business segments. Sir, you said you're expecting quarter over quarter growth for the next three quarters. Do you mean like Q2 will be bigger than Q1? I mean Q2 versus the prior year, Q2. Okay. Q3 versus prior year, Q3. I believe we will see. Of course, the only thing that is constant is that there's no constants right now in North America. So there are things that can you know, if we are all of a sudden tariffed, currently we are not. So I can only comment that in general, we are seeing an uptick across our business lines and I expect continued to see that uptick. All right. Your margin compression, is that all due to rising costs or are you facing pricing pressures as well? Rising costs. We are not customers are not asking us to provide cheaper prices. On the contrary, we're able to get through most of the price increase that we implement. We only do price increases once a year. We just did them. The bulk of them coming in September. But the margin pressure is very much on inflation. And it's not just diesel. Plastic bags cost more. Paper products cost more. Now, the other thing we are doing to mitigate that is, you know, looking to grow our revenue per employee with the investments in automation. So in particular, the automated valve pack is one and we continue to continuous improvement is part of our DNA. You saw the margin grow in this company over the last three years. So we will continue we will continue to focus on continuous improvement, but one of the biggest things for us is a real focus on revenue per employee and the investments that we've made enable us to grow our revenue per employee per employee with automation. And we just implemented in the last year the new robot that can feed two lines at once, but we haven't seen the benefit because we're still the second line for us, our valve pack line is still manually fed. So at the point that the automated valve packer works, our robot can work at full capacity stacking two lines at once. With the bottleneck being currently the manual filling of the valve pack bags in that second line. All right. You're the CAN blast line is expected operational by the end of October. Lightweight cat litter by the end of December and then the valve pack in February, March, I guess, of next. Year. Will those have impact immediately on efficiencies? I presume how long will they impact the revenue or the revenue potential and how long will that sort of growth potential take to be to show on the financials? So there's two things you need to grow. First of all, you need to have the new sales. And secondly, you have to be able to produce the product and not grow your backlog. If you grow your sales, but you just grow your backlog, as you grow your sales and don't increase your production, then you don't increase your revenue. So we changed two years ago the compensation structure of our sales team and that is now worked out very well. You know, when you introduce a new product, it's typically 9 to 12 months before that goes into a company. Sometimes six months, but it's certainly not instant. But the other thing is that the fourth capital project the air sweat mill the fine grinding that will increase our throughput by a factor of 10. So currently, we produce a bunch of chipped product. So small little chips of DE or of bentonite clay. And then we have byproduct powder. That byproduct powder has to be ground smaller to have finished powder products. And we have for the last 30 years not been able to make fine powder as fast as we generate coarse powder. So then we're subjected to going through a secondary step where we wet that powder extruded under pressure, press it back into rocks, goes back to the dryer, crushed and screened again. And that's a significant cost for us. With the introduction of the new air sweat mill or the fine grinding line and this is the one where we've got a million dollars coming back from Fortis BC when it's complete and it's target date is February 28th. We will now be able to produce fine powder products as fast as we generate the coarse powder. So we can keep up because we've increased the throughput of that mill by a factor of 10. So all things all of the powders are produced on the valve pack line. And the valve pack line currently is manually someone literally picks up a bag and puts it on a spout. When it fills, they take it back and then they put it onto a line where it goes over to the robot. So there were two things holding up this the all of the products going through the valve pack. First of all, we couldn't make fine powder fast enough. That is now changed. With as of February 28th, when we finish the fine grinding line and secondly, we'll be able to bag it significantly faster because it's no longer manually a human putting a 40-pound bag putting an empty bag and then taking a 40-pound off and then placing it in line to go to the robot. That's all done automatically. So the answer to your question is a qualified yes. We still have to go out and get more sales. But we have the ability to produce and as you're aware, our business is on an uptick. We are growing. So qualified yes. Okay. So your salespeople are incentivized to generate the new sales to coincide with the ramp up of production. Correct. And okay. With the potential US expansion, could this be achieved through an acquisition or would this likely be done through a brownfield or greenfield investment? All of the above. We're evaluating multiple opportunities. That would we are considering all opportunities. And obviously, I've been talking about this for maybe nine months now. So this is not a new topic. Stay tuned as we progress with this initiative to produce more in the States. But all of the above are options for us. Margin hit in Q2 amounted to about 400 basis points. Due to all the factors you've discussed, do you see it stabilizing at this level? Could it improve or could we see some additional weakness? What I don't know is what the price of diesel is going to be. We see anecdotal evidence that crude oil is moving through the Strait of Hormuz at even higher than pre-war levels. But diesel production has seen you know, we've seen destruction of processing capacity in Russia as well as in the Middle East. And you know, US and European and Asian diesel production is running at greater than 100% of nameplate. You cannot do that forever. Without damaging your facilities. We run industrial processing. We know a little bit about running at excess capacity. I cannot predict the price of diesel. So I do see continued inflation right now. Because not it's not just the production of diesel. It's also the production of plastic, which is again a petroleum product. And the price of plastic is increasing. I do envision that we will have continued inflation for the next 6 to 12 months. Even if everything ends tomorrow, there's a whole bunch of capacity that needs to be rebuilt. So I do see increased inflation for manufacturers as a whole. We have put through price increases and we are investing and are nearly complete in the automation efforts. But I do not see margins rising significantly. With respect to what the other side is, it's a little bit of a crystal ball. I will say that the majority of our costs are own products and we own our own minerals. So we don't see inflation on the raw materials that represent the bulk of our products. Which we own, which are our DE, our bentonite clay, our zeolite, quarries. We own those. For people that buy those commodities from others, they are subject to more risks than us. So we do have some protection, but the price of chemicals and we buy two chemicals, we buy food grade citric acid and we buy soda ash. As well as the price of plastic and paper packaging and the price of freight, I don't see any relief in those in the very near term. Are you running 24/7 at the facility? For the last couple of weeks, we're back to 24/5 and we moved to 24/7 when needed. All right. We did have a significant backlog that we were able to work through and our backlog is more manageable. We have flexibility as we as we go through large seasonal demand. We can move we can switch back and forth readily between 24/5 and 24/7. And we are doing that. We don't run 24/7 when we don't need to, but it's very easy for us to switch back and forth. How does heat recovery return to the dryer? That's a very specific we do not do that. We have some grant money from Fortis to implement that project. We are still deciding whether we're going to proceed. But we do not have any heat recovery in our core business right now. The Calgary R&D facility. How is that progressing as a revenue-generating operation? And can you give us a general update on that facility? So the core function of that facility is to work on commercializing our second cement, which is Planet LCD. We've done significant work on improving that recipe. We have now successfully replaced 50% of Portland with Planet LCD and exceeded the compressive strength well over 100% at 28 days. As well as we've in my opinion, we've perfected a plasticizer to work with that. So we are starting to evaluate a location for a pilot plant in Alberta for progressing Planet LCD. There is some revenue. I'm not going to get into the specifics. I never comment on the individual lines. For competitive reasons, we just don't do that. We share our margins as a whole, but we don't talk about what we do for any line of the business. And I'm not going to start that now. For the pause glass pilot plant, are what specific regulatory or occupancy permits remain outstanding for phase one? We're still waiting on an occupancy permit. It I will get an update. I just got back to the office today. As soon as I finish this call, I'm sitting down with the process engineer for pause glass. We do not have it today, but I believe it's imminent and as soon as we have it, we'll put out a release announcing that. But we are working with our with the commerce to Schweppek who are our landlords. We're on their First Nations land here. But I believe it's imminent, but I don't I don't have an exact date. When do you anticipate Amarise or Lafarge that could begin taking initial volumes of pause glass? So we've got a very well-planned deployment. I'm not prepared to release powder to them until we've done about a dozen compression tests on different batches to ensure the quality is there on the day after day. And so I envision starting to give them five-gallon buckets of material in January and then February perhaps a little larger. But we are looking realistically at major pours in the lower mainland of ready-mix concrete utilizing pause glass in April and May of 2027. Recently you announced Dave Barnett joined your board. He's got an impressive resume. Can you describe in which ways his skills most benefit the way his skills most benefit plan and your plans for growth? For sure. We you know our CFO is a has a similar level of education, a chartered business valuator and a CPA Chris Halsey-Brandt. And then Dave's got a chartered financial analyst. Chris had a little medical issue and we expect him back in two to three weeks now. He's recovering nicely. But that whole incident forced me to look at redundancy in those skill sets. And Dave was a pesky shareholder that and I say that tongue in cheek. He's probably listening and laughing. I've got to know him very well. He does an exceptional amount of due diligence before he invests. And you know he's got a very meaningful share position. So he started coming to our plant on multiple occasions asking questions. Immediately prior to becoming the CEO of Z-Test and that's a pub code that I'm a director of. So I also got to get to know Dave through a Z-Test. Dave worked in the insurance industry and he would go on site to various large businesses and assess risk for underwriters of large insurance premiums, you know, premiums that could exceed $20 million in cases of big businesses. So Dave would assess business risk, generate a written report for the insurers and actually bring them on site many times for site visits. So he had an exceptional understanding of business operations probably the most respected designation in financial circles is chartered financial analyst. You simply cannot fluff your way through these exams are incredibly difficult. I believe Martin you're a CFA. So you could probably speak to that. So he's got the CFA designation, had the experience, and was also a major shareholder. Dave also has been an exceptional micro cap investor. He's shared with me his 10-year returns and I'm not going to I'm not going to talk about the actual numbers, but he's an exceptionally astute long-term investor. And so for capital allocation, we now have a business that's running well that's generating significant margins. We've made major investments in capex to increase our revenue per employee. To allow us to grow. The most difficult decisions that we will make and that will build shareholder value going forward is how we allocate capital. And so looking for the right acquisitions and having another bright financial mind other than Kyle Dixon, CPA, and Chris Halsey-Brandt, CPA, chartered business valuator, we've now got Dave Barnett, CFA, as well. So just adding to that internal financial expertise at a time where capital allocation is going to be how well we allocate capital will dictate how well we perform as a company long-term. That was a long-winded answer. That was a good one. That was a good one. You recently the there's a $4 million BDC pivot to grow loan facility. How will this cover all your capex needs and spending needs for the next 24-month interest-only feature on the loan without additional equity dilution required? And what are the general expected uses of this $4 million facility? So we're expecting about $2.8 of that to be advanced for projects we've already deployed capital. And then there's $1.2 for new. So $2.8 will recharge the Treasury with cash. When the government looks to support Canadian manufacturers, and they offer you money at 4.55% with 12 years to repay the principal and interest only for 24 months, those rates are just on heard of. I received an email. I went to an investment conference and I received an email from a CFA yesterday offering to lend money debt at between 10 and 15%. So when we're offered money with those types of coupon rates, we take it. And we take it gratefully. And it's there for a reason. And that's to support Canadian manufacturing. So with respect to use of proceeds, $2.8 will be advanced in the next two weeks and we'll go direct to our bank account. We'll put it in short-term treasuries. And then there's $1.2 available for new projects. We have other unused facilities as well operating lines, etc. We do not currently need to go to the market for a placement. If we find a significant acquisition opportunity and we're focused stateside, then at that point we would consider. But at this point in time, we have no need for conducting a private placement. All right, Steve. That wraps up the question session. Any final comments or words before we wrap the presentation up? We are a company that I challenge anyone that's an investor or considering to be investor. Look at any 36-month period and see what we've accomplished. I welcome doing a Teams call to present our case as a long-term investment. Stay tuned. We're busy. We have our eyes on expanding I know that we need to create a new location to manufacture outside of Kamloops to grow this into a $100 million company in revenue. We can't do that just staying in Kamloops. So I still feel very healthy and young at heart. And I have no plans to retire. And I'm looking at working for another 13 years or so. And eventually calling it quits at 70. And so very, very focused on the next round of growth. We've made all the investments that we need to make in the short and intermediate term in Canada. And now we're looking for growth opportunities. You saw that 66% of our revenue is stateside. And we're looking to reduce our costs by finding opportunities to produce more in the states and, of course, to sell more in the US. Steven, thank you very much. And thus concludes the Q1 conference call. We will now end it. Thank you. Thank