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spk03: Greetings. Welcome to the Pressure Biosciences Q3 and Year-to-Date Investor Call and Business Update. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Please note, this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Richard Schumacher, President and CEO. You may begin.
spk01: Thank you, John. Appreciate it. And thanks, everybody, for joining us. I know It's not as convenient as usual. This is a holiday week, and some of you may actually already have started your holiday, so I apologize that it ran into a holiday week, but we had a number of things that we had to get done with our auditors to make sure everything was in there, and we did, and we couldn't get it done, and I didn't want to file it on a Friday, so we filed it yesterday. So if I forget, I want to wish everybody a happy Thanksgiving and a happy holiday. Um, some of you, I know many of you personally, some of you know that I went through hell. Um, in August I had open heart surgery. Um, I had triple bypass and aortic valve replaced. And, uh, so for me, I have a lot personally this year, uh, in addition to my normal to thank, uh, to give thanks for. So I'm back. I'm at it. I've been at it for a number of weeks now. So don't take anything for granted. I'm a healthy guy. I walk a lot every day. But one day, my chest started hurting. And a month later, I was in for a six and a half hour operation. So guys, we all have something to give many things to give thanks about. And let's remember that on Thanksgiving, and every day. So I'm going to start by reading some remarks that we need to read up front. The following remarks may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risk, uncertainties, and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance, or achievements of the company to be material or different from any future results, performance, or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such factors include, among others, those detailed from time to time in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We expressly disclaim any obligation or undertaking to release publicly any updates or revisions to any forward-looking statements to reflect any change in our expectations or change in events, conditions, or circumstances on which any such statement is based. The agenda today is similar to the agendas of the past. First, I want to welcome back to the PBI Financial Review and Business Update, Jeff Peterson. Jeff is PBI's Board Chairman. Welcome, Jeff.
spk02: A pleasure to join you again.
spk01: For today's meeting, we're going to start with a very brief discussion of the 2023 third quarter financial results and year to date. As I mentioned before, The queue has been filed. The press release is out. We'll take questions at the end, but there's no need to really spend a lot of time going through the results because everybody has them. I think what's more important is to talk about the accomplishments that we've made and also talk about our goals for the fourth quarter and next year. A lot of very, very exciting things are going on. Some of you... that I talked to think we've had some exciting times in the past quarters, in the past year or two, and we have, but I think the best is yet to come. And there's a lot of very, very exciting things that are going on as we move further into commercializing Ulta Shear. So that's going to be, it's going to be a fun time for, I think, not only employees here, but also for our investors. And After we briefly go through the finances, we're going to answer a few questions that have been sent in, and we're probably going to build them into remarks that Jeff and I make. And if time remaining, of course, as always, we do our best to open up the phone lines. So first, I'm going to briefly talk about the financial overview of Q3 versus Q3 22 and the year to date You know, we look at this as a good, comparatively, a very good third quarter and, of course, three quarters to date. Basically, it matched our record of nine months to date that we've ever had. So it was a good one. But as we said and John said in the press release, it's not good enough. We're not happy with numbers being where they are. We want to see a zero or two after those numbers. And John's been working hard on what we've learned over the past year, nine months, and how do we really start to increase these revenues the way we all want them. And quite frankly, we know that a lot of it's going to rest on Ulta Shearer. And we just started shipping Ultrashear and taking orders in the summer and shipping on October 2nd. And so that is where a lot of this is going to happen. But, you know, because it's not happening yet, it's really our core business, our pressure cycling technology instruments. Even though we're not putting a lot of effort into them and a lot of focus on them, We're having we've had a terrific year so far with placing instruments around the world. We signed up with maybe the best distributor in India, which is a burgeoning economy there for what we do, what we sell. So our core business is doing well. And we say, wait until ultra sheer starts hitting. And this is not something that we believe is going to take years to hit. We think everyone will understand how big UltraShear can be over the coming few weeks and months. And so that's what's so exciting about it. So our revenue, our revenue in total instrument sales and consumable sales were all better than last year. And through three quarters, revenue, total revenue, instrument sales, consumable sales are all better than last year. And as I said, not just better than last year, but equal to or better than any quarter or three quarters that we've had in the past. So we're happy with that because it brings in cash flow, but we're not satisfied with it. And John is working very hard to do whatever it's going to take to continue to grow the core business while UltraShear starts to come on and come on strong in 2024 as we believe it will. A couple of important things on the financial end. The first thing is that we, and this is in the press release, hard to find it in the queue, but it's in the press release. Our cash burn was reduced by about 30% year over year. So in the third quarter of this year, our cash burn was 732,000 or about a little over 220,000 a month. 732 for the quarter, which was 30% less than the cash burn a year ago. And for the nine months to date, our cash burn was about 2 million, which compares favorably to 3 million last year in the first nine months of 2022. So we've taken it from about 335,000 cash required for operations in 2022 down to 220,000 in 2023. We're watching very carefully our cash. Some of the cash burn is because we have investors who are willing to take stock rather than cash, which is helpful to us at the moment. So the stock number of shares has gone up, but the cash burn, which is very important, has gone down. The other thing is operating loss. Our operating loss was down slightly in the third quarter of this year compared to the same quarter last year about five percent. But the operating loss was down significantly in the first nine months. If you take out the the one time one time charges that were in the third quarter that we don't expect to see again you take them out and our our cash our operating loss was down significantly. So we put together a number of accomplishments. We won't spend a lot. Jeff and I are going to talk about several as we go through, but in the press release we put together and in the queue we put together a number of accomplishments. I think the number one, and I've asked Jeff, who's very close to it, if he would speak to it in just a minute, but the number one accomplishment clearly was the publication in a peer-reviewed journal by one of the top cannabis and natural products groups in the country, a paper on our ultra-shear nano-emulsion of CBD. It was clearly the best thing that's happened to us in the quarter in terms of accomplishments, operational accomplishments. And Dr. El-Soleil talked about the unprecedented, you know, speed, efficiency, reliability, and primarily bioavailability. that he found in his animal study using our nano CBD. And I'm going to ask Jeff to go into that in a little bit more detail. And then if there's questions at the end, we'll take them. We also announced a distribution agreement with BioScreen, which is in a lot of people's estimation, the number one life science distributor in India. So we're very, very happy. They purchased one instrument to start training And we sent Jim Benke over to train them on it. But they're looking for, they're telling us they think they're going to have a lot of sales in 2024. So we're excited, very excited about that. We're excited that the veteran service team who gave us an order, an initial order for 500 bottles of nano CBD that they were going to white label, they increased it by tenfold. They multiplied it by 10 and said, no, we need 5,000 models. They have a relationship with the Mixed Martial Arts Velotor. If you go to their website, VSD, Veterans Service Team, VSD.org, you can both order the nanoCBD from them. And they decided that they're going to start it off selling it at a very, very reasonable price to try to seed the market and let people know what a good product it is. So vsd.org. Um, and so, uh, we got our first Canadian patent, which brings us up to 43 issued patents and eight issued patents in, uh, in ultra sheer, uh, and 17 more that are pending around the world and ultra sheer. So our IP estate continues to grow and grow in, in the right area, which is an ultra sheer. Um, There was a press release where we talked about the ultra-shear process nano-CBD being looked at as a way to extend the shelf life of fresh produce, fruits, and vegetables. There's a lot of data out there that true nano-CBD can, in fact, extend the lifetime. And when you look at things like strawberries that in five days are pretty bad. I saw strawberries in 15 days that were sprayed with nano CBD that looked like they were picked that day. So we're looking at this. We've had several people call us about this. And Ohio State, who is our partner, is continuing to publish and work on studies, particularly in the food and beverage area, about the uses of ultra shear technology. So those are some wonderful things that have happened in the third quarter and a couple of them in the year to date. But what I'd like to do now is turn it to Jeff and we'll try to be brief. But I, you know, this is my fourth publicly traded company. I've been in this arena for 30 plus years in terms of starting and running public companies. And And this is one of the most important press releases, announcements that I've had on any of the four public companies I've had. We've had great announcements before, but I'd have to put this in the top three in terms of what its impact will be. It hasn't had that impact yet. We're going to fix that. I was talking to somebody today who said, it's a shame that fell on deaf ears, Rick, but I have the ear of a lot of people, and I'm going to get the word out. So the world needs to know what Professor El-Sele found and what was in that journal article. So to do a short synopsis, Jeff, I'm going to turn it over to you.
spk02: Thanks, Rick. So to set the stage for this, I think it's important for everybody to understand what the significance and the differentiation of the ultra-shear technology is here. There has been a considerable amount published over the years about the impact of nano emulsions in improving absorption and bioavailability of whatever active material in the oil is desired in that nano emulsion. And the critical issue is that as these oil droplets get incredibly tiny, below 100 nanometers, preferably maybe down to 50 nanometer kind of size, you're getting down to the size of an oil droplet where the active molecules that are oil soluble in that droplet just can't hide from the body anymore after it's gone inside. Traditionally, in emulsions with larger droplets, most of the active product just passes through the body and is excreted. So it's these tiny droplets and controlling the size of the tiny droplets so they're consistently at that size that delivers the impact and fast delivery and a full or nearly full load of the product for bioavailability to the the human or the animal or the plant that ultimately is consuming it. There are other nano emulsion technologies out there that have struggled with the ability to scale to industrial scale and serve customer bases adequately or that struggle with the heat exposure they give to the product that can damage the product or that are inconsistent in the size of the droplets and therefore you have an unstable emulsion and the droplets start to agglomerate into larger ones and the emulsion breaks down. So the critical benefit here of UltraShear is its ability to work at industrial scale, literally able to produce, you know, multiple liters a minute in our larger equipment on down to smaller R&D sizes that can do small batches effectively for partners as well. But it can do that at industrial scale and make very consistent droplet sizes that we can tune to where we need it, whether it's 80 nanometers, 50 nanometers, whatever. We're getting down to the size of large molecules or small numbers of reasonably large molecules when you're getting down to that size. So we have known just based on past literature that our UltraShear products were going to have unusual effectiveness. We were already receiving information on this in anecdotal accounts from various users of additional products that we were testing in the marketplace in different arenas, whether it was skin care or in the cannabis arena or in potential nutraceutical applications. So we were getting the anecdotal validation. ran some consumer testing that was further validating that for us. But what was really missing was to have a peer reviewed scientific study by well-recognized leaders that would provide that kind of hardcore validation of the technology. And Professor El-Soleil and his team were the ideal platform for us to do that. Dr. El-Soleil was the first person licensed by the U.S. government for marijuana, controlled marijuana growth sanctioned by the government. And from some of that early activity over 40 years ago, emerged to become one of the leading cannabis researchers in the world, arguably probably in the top two or three in the world. When he heard about some of the early results that we were receiving and what our process did, he stepped right up to want to do an initial preclinical study in rats. And they're an excellent platform for mimicking what can happen in humans and other large animals and so on. And basically, proposed a study in which they would have a control set of rats that received the product intravenously, and then another set of rats that would get it orally, actually straight down to the stomach, so you would have a gastrointestinal absorption path. And when he was planning this study, they originally were going to take the first data point at 30 minutes and then another at 60 minutes and so on. And we said, oh, no, no, we need to see this, you know, at least at, you know, the five-minute point and earlier points. And based on other work done in the past, they felt like, you know, that was going to be a waste of the money. And we said, no, we absolutely want it at five minutes. And sure enough, as they started doing the study, we came back and said, well, you guys were right. You know, we have measurable results at the very first five-minute test point. And they went on to, you know, complete this study, which revealed a number of really seminal important points for users and for our potential partners across many industries. And one of the most important points is today with CBD going down the gastrointestinal pathway The bioavailability in the bloodstream is in the 5% to 6% of the amount ingested arena. You can look that up in Wikipedia or various other journal articles. And using our ultra-shear nanoemulsified CBD via the gastrointestinal route, they achieved 25% bioavailability. So we're talking a 4% to 5% four to five-fold increase in bioavailability in the circulating blood feeding the tissues of your body over what current technologies can do. More importantly, there was a fascinating and critical other conclusion, and that is they measured not just the CBD, but the metabolites of CBD, And what people may not realize is everything absorbed through the gut into the bloodstream is not going in a vein to the heart. It goes in a vein directly to the liver. And most of the CBD is very readily metabolized in the liver. So that's one of the reasons you see such low levels circulating in the blood. But he showed that 80% of the CBD was absorbed in the gut. So the vast majority got metabolized in the liver and only 5% was circulating in the blood in a normal case or 25% in the case of Ultrashere. So we were so effective in getting 80% of the Ultrashere absorbed that 25% was available in the circulating blood. What that really tees up for us, for potential consumers and for partners, is the potential to not go through the gastrointestinal route. Use the CBD and a spray into the cheek, under the tongue, rubbed into the skin, and there are other routes available. And by doing that, you don't go directly to the liver upon absorption. You go directly into the circulating bloodstream, feeding the active material to the body, which then only has a percentage of the blood going through the liver and being metabolized over time. So that was just a screaming important result that came very clearly out of that study. And we're very appreciative of that. And although not everybody just reading the study, you know, at a consumer level may put, you know, two and two together to get the 10 out of that. It is something that we've been able to share with a variety of major potential partners that has quickly led us into meetings, discussions, and potential strategic outcomes that are actively developing that Rick alluded to. So we're very excited about it, and that peer-reviewed journal article was a key addition into our arsenal in terms of how we accelerate the company forward. Rick, I'll go back to you.
spk01: Jeff, thank you. I think that's very clear and hopefully gives some of our participants maybe a different idea, a different understanding of how important this is. It's extremely important. And I'll add one more thing to what you said in that this is all about CBD, but the problem with bioavailability is in any oil-based active ingredient. So if there's an active ingredient in oil, we believe that Ultrashere can make it more bioavailable, more stable, more essentially water-soluble. We've done pharmaceutical What's that? Faster acting as well. Faster acting, yes. And we've done pharmaceuticals, we've done nutraceuticals, we've done agrochemicals, we've done cosmeceuticals, and not a lot, but a couple in every category. And what we know, which is amazing and very good for us as shareholders, is that the ultra-shear process does not adversely affect. So far, It has not had any adverse effect on the active ingredient, no matter what it is inside the oil. What we do is very different. We tend to tell people that we are using physics, not chemistry. Chemistry can be bad. It can be good, but it can be bad. You're ingesting this material that people are putting, whatever chemical they're putting into whatever food or beverage you're eating, you're ingesting that chemical. we are using all natural, all plant-based materials and the important thing is that the active ingredient in any category is not harmed but becomes much more soluble and much more, as Jeff says, fast acting. Our sites are on many things. CBD is just the beginning. We've done some THC work and to prove the point by, if you guys will remember, three different studies that we published on in press releases showed three to five minute effects where individuals using a spray were feeling the effects of THC, which is unheard of. I had a conversation over the weekend and someone said, fast acting THC is 15 minutes. And I said, how about three to five? What this means is whether it's vitamin D3 or curcumin or prednisone or neem oil or whatever astaxanthin, which is the world's most potent antioxidant, we're going to get it in the bloodstream very quickly in a spray under the tongue or in the back of the cheek. And so it opens up a lot of doors. We're talking to a number of people, as Jeff said, not just about CBD, but about many other active ingredients that might be used for enhancing sleep and enhancing immune response and things like that. But we're going to put a lot of effort into CBD because it is a growing market. It is a multi-billion dollar market. And there is only one drug on the market. And this drug is used specifically for mostly children who have have epileptic seizures related to two different diseases, and this CBD concoction stops not ours, but the one on the market has the ability to stop those seizures, and other drugs don't. We've been approached and we've talked to other pharmaceutical companies or whatever that saying, well, this, you can scale it. It's very active. It's more bioavailable in the conclusion section of Professor Elsley's paper. He said that historically he's done Epidiolex, which is the drug that's on the market. And he found us to be, our nano to be two to two and a half times more bioavailable. So if you're interested in getting a drug that's more bioavailable, then we have a method. We think it's the best in the world, best in class in the world, of delivering a nanoemulsion with those characteristics. So we're talking a number of people. So it's exciting times for us. And we are happy that the paper's out. And we're going to be working with others for additional papers and additional studies. So I want to talk about another thing that people have written in about and said, please talk about your facility. Six months ago, we talked about a short-term solution because the facility here, we're about 30 miles south of Boston. We're in an office park. We're in an office building. It's not conducive for large-scale manufacturing. We can make it work for the orders we've taken so far, but this is not a place we want to be in 2024 when we believe we're going to be getting a number of orders, big orders, and that's just for CBD, let alone the fact that we want to start working with vitamins and supplements and many other things. So we're looking at other spaces. We've given notice to our landlord here and our landlord north of Boston where We have a small footprint with our R&D lab. We're going to combine the two somewhere in between the R&D lab and us here in Easton, Mass. And we have three or four places. We have one place in particular that we like a lot. And we got some very encouraging news Friday from the landlord. And we think that it'll be followed up with something in writing today or tomorrow. And This is a facility that has, for manufacturing, my guess, it's got more than 10 times the amount of space available for manufacturing. It's not 10 times the total space, but here, 90% of our space here are offices, and 80% or 90% of the space in this building we're looking at is really meant for manufacturing. So we're excited about about this, we're already starting to look at the move. We don't want to have a lot of downtime. So one of the ways that we're going to get around that is I visited another site in Massachusetts with several of my team members yesterday. I talked to the gentleman today. This is a group that has a license to prepare CBD in the state. I also have a license for THC in the state of Massachusetts. They have a lab space that is open. They have very good, strong, technical people on staff. They wanted to use our material anyway, and they are game to have us, instead of moving our equipment to the new lab and having it sit there until we build it out, we're thinking about moving it to this person's extra lab space, and we might be down only instead of being down longer period might be down for just a couple of weeks and we'll be back up at you know in the middle of december uh cranking away at at this facility being able to supply cbd through his people and his license so uh we're excited about the new space because it'll give us room to grow well beyond just cbd and we've developed an interim plan that is looks like it's going to work quite well to allow us to be down for a very short period of time, only while we move the instrument and train the folks at the other place and be back up in the 10th or 15th of December making product that can be shipped. So we were asked about that because a lot of people knew that our lease is coming to an end at the end of December and that we were given notice at both sites and so the hopefully the best of all things will happen. Not only will we get a site that will work with us for as we grow multiples of what we are now, but also we have an interim solution. So we're not going to be down for more than a week or two. We're talking versus which could be much longer. So I wanted to I wanted to mention that I wanted to mention the patent. We continue to file patents. We have in Ultrashear, we have 43 total patents in the company. Eight of them are issued in the area of Ultrashear. It's an amazing technology our guys have developed. But we have 17 patents that are pending. And we have more patents that'll be going in. So we're going to build this picket fence around this technology so that if we take it, the drug route and go to FDA and and find a partner and get this thing approved. We hope to have enough patents to protect us. And if we continue, which we expect you to make it available around the country and around North America for use as an edible or a topical, we'll have the space to do that too. So that's very exciting that we're able to uh, have all of those options available to us. Um, so, and the last thing I'll mention, go ahead, Jeff.
spk02: Rick, I was just going to say, you might add a relative to the facilities and capacity side of this, that we're also, um, working with a partner in California, um, to have capacity serving the cannabis industry, um, both on the CBD and the THC side. So we're, we're looking for a, uh, a two-prong approach in terms of having capacity in place and as we have more equipment available to extend our footprint here in California to be able to serve other markets with R&D development, formulation optimization, tool manufacturing and so on so that we have two footprints around the U.S. for that kind of servicing of clients as we grow and move toward our lease and license model downstream.
spk01: Absolutely. Great, great, great opportunity in California. Obviously, cannabis has been there and licensed longer than almost, maybe longer than any state in the We have great people that we're working with that Jeff knows quite well and has helped set all of this stuff up. And my big disappointment is I only have one instrument right now, and that instrument can be loaned part-time to this other place in Massachusetts, but it needs to come to our new facility in January. And if we had more, we'd be shipping one to California and leaving one in the site in Massachusetts. But we are building a second one. We're not that far away from having a second one done. We've purchased the most expensive parts over the past six to nine months. And now we're ordering the remaining parts. And we're also building three of our first generation instruments that are small benchtop instruments, which we have one in California that's been used quite effectively. And we'll probably send a second one out there. So they have not only a backup, but double the capacity. So all of this is being done concomitant with everything else that we're doing, making sure that we're always going to be able to make product and ship product. So building these instruments, the extra instruments is very, very important. The last thing I'll mention, and then I might ask Jeff to talk about something. The last thing I'll mention is that we do, we've talked before about several companies that we work with that are multinational billion dollar companies that are intrigued and working with us. I got an email earlier about an hour ago from one of them and it's one of the largest companies in the world and it's business and talking about setting up something for maybe next week for the next meeting. So our goal and expectation is that two or three of these are being worked on, at least one, maybe two, in 2024, and it could be in January, it could be in December, we're pushing for January, February, is going to turn into from a pilot production R&D into where we become a vendor of theirs, or we bring an instrument in there later in the year. so that we not just do it here, but they can do it themselves, the nanoemulsification. We continue to work with two or three billion dollar companies that have a need for what we have and push them to the point where they can start paying big dollars for us supplying their material or setting them up with instrumentation and having a lease and license with them. The last thing I would mention is that Jeff talked before in the past about complementary technology that could be part of a creative merger acquisition or roll up. It could be part of maybe selling off some of our non-core businesses. I get a lot of questions from investors about this because This is certainly a good way to, non-dilutive way generally to bring in money. So, Jeff, I don't know if you want to, you've been involved in some of these discussions. If you want to just take that for a second. Yeah, I'm happy to, Rick.
spk02: So, the challenge for the company in its course over this last couple of years is we've been developing UltraShear and bringing it to market and getting the initial studies done as we've talked about some. A critical part of our challenge has been just the funding of the company in order to scale to serve the emerging opportunities we have. We've been very limited in terms of our financial capacity to literally order all the product that we need to make equipment and serve the opportunities that we're developing. So it's been been frustrating for the team and frustrating and pacing some of the advancement. And to address that, we continuously review the opportunities at hand, either to sell a non-core asset or otherwise, you know, partner it and turn that into a cash-generating opportunity to help the company advance faster in other areas. And we've certainly given evidence of some of the progress being made in the other sectors. In Barofold, we've talked about how a major leader in the biopharmaceutical contract manufacturing space has uh purchased equipment after uh successful early phases of r d programs with us in using the barrel fold equipment and has signaled interest in potentially getting equipment into multiple other sites um the and that that may be measured in tens or dozens of other sites um that in itself would be a major opportunity for us but the potential to work with partners of that scale in a potential deeper strategic arrangement, whether we sell off an asset or partner it in a fashion to generate cash for the business is an attractive opportunity for us. Certainly, possibilities of doing that within the PCT pressure cycling technology area or subsets of that with partners that have the capacity to do something at a strategic relationship level remains of interest. And of course, with BarrowShear and UltraShear, the opportunity now being accelerated by the publication of the peer reviewed article, the opportunity for us to enter into some strategic partnerships and or merger acquisition arrangements with some significant players across any or many of the fields that we've been talking about, whether it's the cannabis, CBD, THC arena. Our interest in the THC arena is really to keep that at arms like separation from the mainstream activities of the company and to use more traditional licensing structures there. But certainly, CBD, other nutraceuticals in the skincare and cosmetics arena, potentially in the pharmaceutical arena, the impact of this in the pharmaceutical arena, as we alluded to earlier, can be, you know, so large and affecting products that are, you know, billion-dollar-plus products that as this sinks in for the prospective partners and users, you know, or even folks that see this as something that could be competitive to their interest in the pharmaceutical market, there are a number of drivers that could, you know, be behind the decision-making processes, but the opportunity for a strategic acquisition merger activity arising out of that remains high. And we're actively pursuing a number of avenues there. So, I just wanted to reassure our listening investor audience that we continue to examine these strategic options, you know, regularly and diligently.
spk01: So, Jeff, I hear a lot that that that a lot of our investors that we hear from a lot understand that we have tremendous technology and and maybe don't understand why we haven't turned that into zillions of dollars so far. It takes time. It takes a lot of things. And if there's a scale out there of importance of of of information getting out there and the reaction to it in our stock i don't know if there's anything that's a better display of of how disjointed it is than the paper that was published that paper is enormously important and and it did not have an effect on the stock but doesn't mean it's not going to have an effect on the stock it doesn't mean it hasn't had an effect on our on opening doors and opening opportunities for us and it's only been two weeks And I can assure our listeners that the value of that paper goes so far beyond. It's very short-sighted for someone to look at the stock price and think, oh, it didn't have an effect on the stock. That paper is going to have an effect on this company for years to come. And it's already started. We've had people calling us, taking our phone calls, having meetings that we could only dream about three or four weeks ago. So we need to let everyone know that that paper is immensely important for a number of reasons, many of which you went through, Jeff. And it's important, you know, the old tip of the iceberg. We saw the first inch of the iceberg. That paper is going to have some enormous impact on us every day, every week, every month going forward. And we even use it for non-cannabis. We use it for showing people how effective our system is, whether it's cannabis or a nutraceutical or a pharmaceutical. So I'll leave it at that. But I'm hoping that investors that listen today or hear this today will understand that it was very difficult to get one of the top people in the world to do this And to have the data that were published in a peer-reviewed journal be as strong as they were, that impact is a tiny, tiny impact so far compared to what it's going to be a month from now and a year from now, in my opinion.
spk02: I think the results will be manifest in further news developing and coming out over the next several weeks, I think.
spk00: Yep.
spk01: Yep, I agree. So, yes, I'm glad you point that out. I think it's important to say this is not something where, you know, investors and listeners have to say, OK, so I heard what Schumacher said and a year from now, let's see if it happens. Now, we this is there isn't a day that's gone by where I haven't had some interesting happening that related to this paper. Someone calling me. I didn't expect a meeting. someone taking a meeting that we couldn't get before someone calling saying hey did you ever think about doing this and and the fact that it is got a strong set of patents and and and many more coming is is is also extremely important here so we have time for a question or two and so I want to open it up John to to the floor if there's anybody there that would like to ask something. It's 55 minutes in, so we only have four minutes left. We're not going to go over an hour.
spk03: Absolutely. At this time, we'll be conducting a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. Pressing star 2 will remove you from the queue should your question be answered. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment, please, while we pull for questions. First question comes from Rory Jensen, private investor. Rory, please proceed.
spk04: Hey, guys. Can you hear me?
spk01: Hear you great, Rory.
spk04: Excellent. Well, it's glad to hear you, Rick. I'm glad your health is good now, and you sound good and strong, so that's great. That's all that matters, you know, at the end of the day. I keep going back to the agrochemical. I want to say in 2020 we put $1.82 million into this cog. What was this on this queue? $15K for the revenues on the agrochemical. This total addressable market in the U.S. is absolutely enormous. And This isn't going to be one of your assets that you're going to potentially look at to get rid of, are you? Are you still looking at the agrochemical as a huge revenue stream?
spk01: I have to say nothing is off limits. I say that a little tongue-in-cheek because I can't imagine – If someone wants to pay us what we think Old Brashear is worth, then we'll listen, but it's going to be a very big number. So we're going to look at everything, Rory. I'm not going to be specific here. Agrochemical, airfold, pressure cycling technology, all of these are, they all have a great future, but none of them, none of them, as big as agriculture is, None of them are as big, in our opinion, as Ultrashear because it just flows into so many food, beverage, pharmaceutical. It's just so big. So nothing's off limits. But right now, our focus is moving this company in the next 45 days and getting ourselves up and running with Ultrashear.
spk02: I'll add to that, Rick, that Agrochem certainly is one of the sectors of strategic interest to us for Ultrashare and for Ultrashare to have transformative impact within that industry. And there's a number of just outstanding fits for Ultrashare there. But in the order of priorities that we look at in front of us, the profit margins in Agrochem are quite a lot lower than we're dealing with in nutraceutical, pharmaceutical, you know, and some cosmeceutical spaces. So our priority focus is really on those arenas first. But we think agrochem is a large opportunity for Ultrashere going forward as well.
spk04: All right. I have a follow-up. That's what I was curious about. I mean, because we've got a lot of product on shelf ready to ship. and it's now shipping. So if we could ship it to somebody that wants it, that would be great because that was a large investment with little to no return on it. Yeah, and then the Canadian patent, Rick, do you see that? Are you getting much information from that? Preventional, would that be... per providence or license per each providence, something of that nature. Are you looking into that part?
spk01: No, no. Rory, maybe we can get one more question in. I'd just say that it's our first Canadian patent. It's in all the provinces. It's a Canadian patent and for all this year. So right now, we're focused on the US. It's a lot easier to do that. We have our eyes on Canada next year, and now we have some protection. Okay.
spk04: Okay. Very good.
spk01: Let's try. Is there one more question there, John?
spk03: Yes. The next question comes from Kurt Treiber. Kurt, please proceed.
spk00: Hi, Rich. Rich, I just wondered what was going on with our state licensing efforts that we projected. I think it was around April of this year. I just wonder where we stand.
spk01: Yeah, it's it's still in in progress. And one of the issues, of course, is and, you know, we've been we've been we made it clear that we've been working under someone's license, someone else's license. And I already mentioned tonight that we have a gentleman yesterday we met with that that will take the equipment and run it as if we're running it under his license. We have to move hurt. So once we get moved and settled in, which I don't think will take much more than the month of January and very much time we'll be making product elsewhere in Massachusetts. We'll move the instrument and, uh, and we'll deal with it at that time. But it's, it's right now, it's not stopping us from, from doing anything.
spk00: I w I was basically referring to monies that we thought we would be getting in that we're going to be very helpful with respect to the state license. Yeah, weren't we going to try to get five state licenses and sell them for a million dollars?
spk01: Oh, that's different. I apologize. I thought you were talking about us getting our state license. No. We did not have a lot of takers. We didn't have any takers, obviously, in selling the state license. I think that might change based upon what happened in the peer-reviewed journal, you know, 10 days ago. Good. Okay, thank you. You bet.
spk03: We have no further questions in queue.
spk01: That's good because we have no further time in queue. I appreciate everybody. Again, happy Thanksgiving. Everybody needs to remember that none of us are guaranteed anything in life. And so I found that out firsthand. And the doctor said I should have had a heart attack while I was walking in August. When my chest blew up and I waited 15 minutes for it to calm down, he said, you're lucky. That could have been your death. But I had collateral blood flow. So I learned a lot. Guys, hug your husbands and your wives and your kids and tell them you love them and enjoy your Thanksgiving. And then we are going to do it here, but we're going to come out firing on Friday and thereafter.
spk02: Thanks, everybody.
spk01: Take care, everyone.
spk03: Thank you. This concludes today's conference, and you may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.
spk01: Thanks a lot. Bye.
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