Cematrix Corporation

Well, good morning or afternoon, everyone, depending on where you are. And thank you very much for attending. We're still admitting people in the room here. Gentlemen, a heck of a quarter, record all the way around. The most welcome in this particular junior market environment. I'm going to turn it over immediately to Jeff Kendrick, President and CEO of The Matrix and Ranjumar. the CFO. So with that, Jeff, I'm sure you have some thoughts and remarks and definitely a moment to celebrate.

Well, thank you, Grant. And, uh, Yes, Randy and I want to welcome all of you either as a good morning or good afternoon and thank you for attending our third quarter earnings webcast presentation. Of course, you all know it's been a record year and to date a record quarter. If we sound giddy, we are. We're excited about how things are going at Simatrix and we want to share that with you. I plan to start off the presentation and cover some topics I want to highlight for you. Then I'm going to pass it over to Randy, who's our CFO. But I also wanted to mention that he's also managing our Canadian operation as well. So he's really not only in tune with the financial side, but also the operations, particularly on the Canadian side, but also learning a lot about the U.S. operation as well. So let's get started. Table contents, we'll just go over that quickly. We're going to go over the third quarter highlights, record-breaking sales, of course, a strong fourth quarter expected as well. Talk about safety and equipment, and it's a priority for us. We'll update you on the backlog and the sales pipeline growth. Talk about the million-dollar projects that we introduced at the beginning of the year and where they stand and how that is going. talk about million-dollar project locations. We're also going to talk about 2024, how excited we are about that. And then we're going to pass it over to Randy, who will go over the quarterly and year-to-date financial statements in detail with you. Then at the end, of course, Grant will come back on and monitor the question session and look forward to answering any questions that you may have. So first, the third quarter highlights, record sales. Quarter and year to date, and of course, we're already over last year's annual sales, which was a record year as well. Margins continue to improve. They're not all the way up where they could be yet. Still some lingering effects of the supply issues from last year. Return to quarterly profitability, which is very exciting. No significant safety issues even in this time where we've been extremely busy. Balance of the year looks strong. We've landed $30.2 million of new contracts since the end of the last quarter. And of course, we continue with a strong backlog in pipeline. There's many other highlights, but those are some of the strong ones for the quarter.

Jeff, you're still on the French line.

Well, sorry about that, everybody. Let me move it forward. Thanks, Jeff. So move on to the next slide. Of course, record-breaking sales continue. All-time quarterly record sales of $20.3 million. All-time nine-month sales of $33.7 million. And we've landed 51.9 million sales contracts since the beginning of the year. Tom Preston- Strong fourth quarter expected as well, you know fourth quarter is not usually as strong as the third. Tom Preston- Because we're heading into the end of the construction season but we're going to have probably a record quarter for the fourth quarter as well. Tom Preston- Those contracts are already in place of note, nine of the $15 million projects they're still going this year are they being poured during the year and completed or during the quarter and related. or started previous to the quarter and will be completed, or will be starting in the quarter and completed next year. So it's going to be a big quarter for us as well. And the balance of the quarterly sales will be made up of projects under a million dollars. There's many of those projects as well. With this busy time, we're incredibly stretched as a company. When you go from little sales to a significant amount of sales in a very Brett KenCairn, Quick point or amount of time. It always puts a strain on your people and your equipment. Fortunately, we have a great staff with us, and we have a great maintenance program. Our staff are well cross-trained, and they are always looking out for themselves and the safety of others. And of course, these maintenance programs that we have in place that we basically run all year round, but mostly during the wintertime, keeps our equipment running full-time, hence there have been no significant safety issues. and no significant equipment timeout. So that keeps us operating at full capacity. Our backlog. You would expect that this backlog, after putting $20.3 million in sales in the ground during the quarter, would have actually gone down. And it's actually stayed fairly consistent and strong as we continue to land more projects. Sales pipeline is also still up at $425 million. It usually goes down near the end of the year as a lot of the projects for the year that have come out have been contracted and are no longer in that list. But again, it's been added to all year and it stays very strong over $400 million. Million-dollar project changes. There were a couple of projects that, of course, got pushed into next year, which is kind of amazing with what we've been doing without them. One of them happens to be the North Carolina project that was partly scheduled to be done this year. What's really interesting is that we actually, in our original budget, $13 million related to that project. Those sales have been all pushed to 2024, but we've replaced that entire delay with other projects. And it's the great year that we're having. What's also interesting is that entire project has to be completed next year or they start to run into penalties. So this means that we'll have a very busy 2024 with respect to that project alone. We always like to show you where those these million dollar projects are now I got $20 million projects locations, because we have five new ones that have been announced that relate completely to next year. In addition to the ones that are either being completed this year or started this year and will be completed next year, so you can see that these projects are all over North America. And they pertain from projects to tunnel grouting, to MSC and overpass panel backfill, to road construction, to commercial and industrial construction. So it's been a very, very busy year for us right across North America. Then the other thing to keep in mind is besides the fact that we're having a great 2023, we've already got a strong 2024 already in place. I've announced in previous webcast and news releases that 40 million of the 75 million or the 70 million related to those larger projects that have been landed relate to next year. So we've already got a great start for 2024 in place. And the other thing to keep in mind too is that if we're doing 40 million plus and 30 million relates in 2023, that is, and 30 million relates to the larger projects, that means 25% or 10 million plus relates to these small to mid-sized projects. So when you add to that and continue to see the growth in that category to the projects that we already landed on from a large project perspective, we're looking at a good 2024 and beyond as well. That's really my section summarized up. I will come back again at the end to answer any questions that you may have. I'll now pass it on to our CFO and General Manager of our Canadian division, Randy Boomer.

Thank you, Jeff. If you could go to the next slide for me, that would be great. And then maybe one more. So these are just our financial statements. I won't go through these in detail. They're obviously public, released on our website and on CDAR. We've already talked about the quarter. If we go to the next slide, we'll pick out some highlights, some of the metrics that are important to us that we track and pay attention to. So obviously from a revenue perspective, 20 million in the quarter versus 11 million last year, 76% increase. Almost 34 million year to date versus 21 million last year, 63% increase. Gross margins are up. 4.6 million in gross margin, 23% this quarter versus 2.2 or $2.4 million improvement. Year to date, we're at 6.5 million, 19% versus 2 million last year. So four and a half million dollar improvement. So really significant improvement in gross margins. Operating income also up in very similar numbers, which makes sense because operating income really is just gross margins, less SG&A. Adjusted EBITDA, which is very important to us, up significantly as well. 3.2 million in this quarter versus 0.9 million last year, $2.3 million improvement. And on a year-to-date basis, which we're especially proud of, we're now positive 2.1 million year-to-date versus negative 1.9 million last year, so a $4 million improvement. Cash flow from operations, and this is cash flow from operations before working capital changes. Again, positive in the quarter, $2.2 million improvement versus last year. And year to date, $2 million versus $1.9 million last year. So again, $3.9 million improvement. So very significant. Cash on hand as of the end of September is $1.9 million. With our positive EBITDA and positive gross margins, we do expect to be generating cash, which should start showing up in our bank account here as we get paid for our work in Q3 and Q4. in early Q1 would be our guess. So overall, just a great quarter as you all know. So this slide we like to show basically because we are a specialty construction contractor. As a result, we are subject to the seasonality of the construction business and industry, especially when we work in the northern climates where much of our work is, especially in Canada and northern states. So Q1, Q2, on average tends to be about 35% of our revenue. Q3 on average tends to be about 35 to 40% of our revenue and Q4 is generally 25%. And you can see that trend in these lines from the previous four years. The other thing we're especially happy about is how we de-levered and simplified the balance sheet, really increasing the long-term survivability and sustainability of the company. The chart on the left shows our borrowings and as you can see back in 2020, Our borrowings of all types was quite high, over $20 million at one point. And now we're down under almost $3 million. Capital structure has also been dramatically simplified. And really, we just have the shares outstanding of around $134 million. And then we've got some options in RSUs outstanding associated with the equity program. So great income statement, profitable, cash flow positive, simplified balance sheet. strong balance sheet and also simplified capital structure. So we really feel like the company is poised for dramatic growth and we've set the company up to basically have the flexibility to be able to realize on that growth potential. And I think that's it for my section, Jeff.

Thank you, Randy. We'll pass it back to Grant and get into the question and answer session.

Thanks, Jeff and Randy. Again, congratulations on the numbers. They are outstanding. If you can, Jeff, maybe kill the presentation, and then we can see both of your beaming faces full on here. The Q&A button at the bottom, that's where you submit your questions. We have one, so I'm going to start with that. People sometimes just submit their questions. In regards to Glabel, if you can provide an update on that investment, please.

I'll handle that, Grant. So Glabel is, again, a private company. And like us, in the past few years, they've been affected by the pandemic. The COVID and the supply chain issues in developing their business. Right now, their sales are growing. They're struggling in growing their sales as we are. And partly because they only have one kiln in place, again, because of the COVID delays that caused that second kiln to be delayed. and um and because of the delays they're in the process of um you know working those things out getting the funding in place for the second kiln and and of course when they do that then they'll be able to bid into the a very strong growing infrastructure market that we are actually into as well and so that is hopefully going to happen within the next six months to a year um and in the meantime you know again because they're private can't say much more about it at this point in time because we're a 20 shareholder and i'll leave it at that great um got one here from uh

Andrew is a former pretty research analyst. It's a long question, so I'm going to break this up in different parts. First, he's congratulating you. He's very optimistic in the company. First part of his question is about gross margins in the bidding process, and he says, since you're the leader in cellular concrete, for the most part, you must be competing against the alternative to cellular concrete, which are more expensive, slower, harder to use, etc., So shouldn't there be room for pricing power? Could you capture higher growth margins on pricing? So let's start with that part of the question.

Okay, I think we are already. So yes, the answer immediately would be yes. But there are competition out there, right? He had mentioned one was other competitive products, so not other cellular concrete suppliers. And that's really critical. And really, the big part of our market, which is MSC panel backfill, which is replacing EPS block and the prices that they charge in doing so, that really sets really the price limit that we can go in from a market. We are still early stage. Remember, it is growing like crazy, but it is still early stage. And Many projects are still done with the old legacy products. And hence, we are still, again, developing markets. And you can really see that this year. Our backlog before discounting sales has actually grown by over 64%. And we see this continuing to grow, maybe not as strong as 64%. Last year was 36%. But what it is, we continue to replace these legacy products in these projects that are going forward. It doesn't mean we don't still compete with them on a price basis. What also is happening in the marketplace on the cyber concrete side is there's a few more competitors coming into the marketplace. They don't have the technology that we have or the capability that we do, but they're still out there bidding against us on these projects. Some of them bid on them even though they can't do the project. So pricing is always an issue. We are improving our margins, and our margins will continue to improve over time, but there will be a leveling off process where there's a maximum that we can charge in a particular field, and it all depends on the individual market and the products that we're competing against in that market.

The question was in regards to material cost changes and how much that has been affecting your

price that you have to charge the customer is on the last part in regards to the relationship with the suppliers, if there's been any changes there.

Well, there's no doubt that the material price increased by as much as 30% last year when we had the supply chain issues. Have they reduced the price from that because there isn't a supply chain issue there? No. But what we've done, everyone, is that we charge our percentage or the same margin on top of that cost. So our margins actually from a dollar perspective should increase because we're charging the same percentage on those same projects. Thus, the dollar part of that margin percentage should be higher because the project dollars value will be higher. We don't expect to see significant price increases on the cement side over the next year, but you will see inflationary pressures in other areas, including wages and things like that. The inflation is very strong out there still, and the governments and banks are doing their best to try to minimize the effect of inflation, but it still is affecting the marketplace out there. And our relationship with Lafarge continues to grow. It's strong. But one thing that we recognized during the supply chain issues last year is that we need to develop relationships with other cement companies as well. So 2023 was not only spent growing our sales base, but also in growing our industry. alliances with various cement companies that work in different markets that Lafarge is not as strong in, but also in the markets that Lafarge is in as well. Because last year, as you can remember, Lafarge wasn't able to supply many of our projects due to the issues they had with their plants and their supply themselves.

There are a lot of them already. I will try to aggregate one which are on the same topic still on margins uh great job uh given the size oh sorry are the margins a lot higher on the bigger project will there be a point in time that you would have minimum project size i'll let randy handle this one he's knowledgeable on this side too so

Yeah, thanks, Jeff. So definitely as the projects get larger, more and more of our competitors are interested in them and have visibility. So there's a lot of competitive pressure. So often the larger the project, the smaller the margin has to be in order to win that work. So there's definitely a balancing act there. And sorry, Grant, what was the second part of that question?

Before you reach a point.

Right.

where you will have a minimum project size. I believe what's being asked here is you will get so busy that you might very well say, well, folks, we won't bid on anything under a million dollars.

Yeah, so I would say that is possible in the future, but I don't see that in the near future. Right now, those small jobs help to keep our equipment and crew busy and keep the lights on while we wait for the bigger jobs to start. So I think those are still a very important part of our business model.

There are several questions all asking about 2024. You've already said you're set up for a great 2024. People are asking what you anticipate in revenue and potential margins for the coming year.

Mark Benthien, ECA- A 2024 is going to be good year but let's remember that 20 2023 was a remarkable year i've we've never seen this in the past, but projects actually moved up and usually they get delayed by six months to a year, but we've actually had some projects move from next year into this year so. Mark Benthien, ECA- we're going to have a good year. And we're not going to give any guidance right now. This is a very fickle early stage growth market. And because we're in the construction business, you see variability in the projects. Next year, we do have that $22 million North Carolina project to put in place. early expectations as they would like to complete it all next year. Do we have confidence that we'll all be placed next year? No, to be quite honest. So again, we have to be realistic. Let's look at this as two parts. 2023 is a great year, better than expected, and 2024 will be a good year, but it'll be hard to judge where exactly, how much better or similar it will be to 2023.

Even the size of the backlog, is this mainly due to the number of available projects or to cellular concrete being accepted or even more accepted as a viable solution?

It's both. There are certain markets that are already developed and growing, and then we're entering new markets and areas where we've started concrete has never been used before. So it's starting to be accepted more and more in other places and other types of applications too as well. I mean, one of the big projects we've done this year is a geothermal insulation project, something that we've never done in the past. And it's a very large project that's being worked on right now. So we expect that the sales pipeline or the backlog Will continue to remain strong, but it should slowly come down to you know one to one and a half times sales in the future. This is unusual that it's this high partly in part is people should know is that we have two large projects in there that were awarded in the past few years. that the one, both of them are not underway yet, but both of them are expected to be underway in 2024. So that will, as those start to go underground, assuming that we don't replace them with other larger projects, we may see the backlog come down.

Starting to see repeat business as you work with different contractors.

Absolutely. You know, without getting into detail, there are a number of occasions where we get called back regardless, and it doesn't go into tender for the second part of the project, or it does go to the tender and we may be high and we still get the project because the skill and the capability and the results that we've had with previous work with them. So lots of repeat business.

Congratulations on the excellent quarter in the year to come.

Then we'll talk about the Mastery Trends. How do you see Superstructure in 2024 and beyond?

Grant, I'm sorry, and I don't know if Randy heard you, but you came in very garbled on that.

Hopefully, I'm not breaking up. Congratulations on the quarter in the year to come. You talked about the Mastery Trends in your business. How do you see infrastructure spending in 2024 and beyond?

Randy, do you feel up to taking this one on or would you like me to?

I think maybe you take a first shot at it, Jeff, and if I have something to add, I'll tack on.

So, you know, just to go back to where we were and what people were talking about a couple of years ago was all of the infrastructure spending that has been planned across North America. And last year, Biden had approved a $6 billion infrastructure spending on infrastructure. And that was just a small part of what is required to bring the infrastructure in the U.S. up to grade. And so it just keeps getting worse. The funny part of it is we've never seen any of those projects going to the ground. Even our cement supplier, LaVarge, hasn't seen any of those projects. So we're not sure what is happening with them. But what it does tell us still is that there's a huge market out there that has of many different types of bridge and road and stuff projects to replace aging infrastructure that we will be part of. And we're not even seeing that yet. So all we're seeing is the growth in the just the normal markets, the normal annual replacement of bridges or new bridges, I should say mostly, and the repairs and maintenance of roads and highways and building of new highways. So once this infrastructure spending starts to take off in the US, which we expect, because it has to happen, it's certainly going to affect our markets and the overall conditions in the marketplace. I don't know if you want to add to that, Randy, but in other words, it's still a very strong growth market.

Yeah, I agree, Jeff. I would say just the aging infrastructure and the headwinds associated with that will drive it, less so about political announcements. And I would say the cycle between a political announcement and an actual project being thought about and then a project actually be delivered, that lead time could be years, maybe even decades. So often the work that we're working on now is stuff that was thought about 10 years ago and planned five years ago. So I think you nailed it.

Let's talk about buyback. Given that you are now catching positive, is there a desire to buy back shares? Management believes that the stock is undervalued.

There's certainly, we've talked about it, but one of the things that's important to do here is to make sure that we have the cash in the bank to do that, right? So not only the cash in the bank to do that, but also the cash in the bank to manage our operations moving forward. As Randy mentioned earlier, we expect to generate strong cashflow this year, and because we're looking at a strong 2024, we'll continue to generate strong cashflow next year. So we'll continue with our current focus. What is, again, to... to pay back debt, put us in a strong position moving forward so that we can have decisions like potentially buying back shares to be part of our discussion in the future. That one was again garbled, Grant. Sorry.

I think you asked about the Ontario market.

Yeah.

Okay. That's much growth to be seen in road construction. Am I coming through okay? Yes. Okay. And has Ontario adopted the technology?

I would say we're getting there. It's been many years since we first got approval and then we started to put the product in the ground. So we're expecting good things for Ontario, but it's still early stage. And and we hope we are very hopeful that, you know, within the next year or two, that the Ministry of Transportation of Ontario will start specifying our product into more and more projects in Ontario.

I don't want to move too fast, right? Because of seasonality, do you think you can maintain profitability every quarter and the outstanding seasonality for 2024?

I'll let Randy answer this one.

Yes, it's a really good question. It's one that we think about quite a bit, actually, and we're working hard to develop markets and applications where we'd have a lower seasonality impact. For example, if we do work on the West Coast, the winter really doesn't apply out there. If you do a large tunnel growth project, often it's underground. So again, the winter is not a factor. So we're looking at ways to mitigate seasonality. But I would say, realistically speaking, unless we have a large project that goes in the first quarter or second quarter, we're likely not going to be cashflow positive or EBITDA positive in the first quarter. And then hopefully second, third, and fourth, we should be going forward depending on, again, it all depends on the projects, but that's our plan. So we're looking for ways to mitigate that impact, but realistically speaking, the first quarter is going to be tough for us. Well, you've got the mic. There was a question here about whether you're ready for share this quarter. I'm sorry. I missed that again, Grant. You're coming through garbled.

I have a question about what was the number in terms of earnings per share this quarter?

I don't have that off the top of my head. I know it's in our financial statements. I can look it up and get back. We can circle back to a grant. Okay.

How do your current staffing levels map to your future workload? Do you have the people to deliver what you're bidding on or would you need to increase staffing?

As we grow, Grant will have to add some people. You know, right now, again, we're going to be able to do 40 plus million in sales with the staff level we have. In order to do that, we hired two or three seasonal employees during the summer. Our key employees are trained well and cross-trained to break down, to do different teams for different projects. And we've done that this year and we'll continue to do that in the future. So we will have to add staff, but not significant. Each one of our large pieces of equipment can operate between three and five staff, depending on the type of project. And the smaller projects are usually, you know, two to three staff at the max. So again, one of our big pieces of equipment can produce up to 250 cubic yards an hour. So we don't need a lot of stuff to produce a lot of material. So it won't require a significant increase in operating staff, but it will require some increase as our sales grow.

Grant, sorry, you're not coming through again.

Okay. Obviously, I got a mic brought in here.

I can hear you now. Okay. Are you expecting to conduct further acquisition lease in fiscal 24?

and with a low cash balance currently do you plan any further fundraising next year um

No, we're not planning any acquisitions in the short term. I think we've explained to our shareholder base and the audience that we put a hold on that for now. What we're focused on is achieving. And when we achieve, we're going to generate cash flow and put the company in a better position, not only to grow, but also to be able to do different things to look at potentially acquisitions in the future. Because we're generating significant cash, we will not be going back to the markets to raise funds in the short term. So we're in a good position moving forward. As Randy explained earlier, we've delivered our balance sheet. We have very little debt. We're generating cash. Our sales are growing dramatically. Our margins are increasing and we're making money. So we're pretty happy and excited about that. And for now, we'll focus on those things.

Besides Wired, someone was asking me about, is there any concern about the matrix being acquired because the stock is nearing a short game and then potentially could be at risk of a sell takeover or a loan get offered. And what, if anything, has management done to prepare for that good that come or come to pass?

We are concerned about it. It always is a possibility and we have discussed and met about it, but it's very difficult to protect us from that particular situation other than we have a strong base of key shareholders, right? If you put them all together, we're probably at 50% plus. So again, maybe not that high, maybe it's a little bit lower than that now with the the $23 million raise we did in the past couple of years, but we're in pretty good shape moving forward, but we can't stop something that may happen in the marketplace. We can only do the best we can to protect ourselves and just move forward with the operation of the company.

Can you talk a bit about any additional traction in using cellular concrete as a road base? I know you have Those studies going on with the University of Waterloo. I think adoption of the product as a road base could be one of the bigger growth areas for you. How many projects have happened in this application and are you seeing any activity?

Yes, I mentioned that we look at the Ministry of Transportation Ontario starting to approve our project. or product for more and more projects in Ontario over the next few years that will include road bases. As part of the University of Waterloo research project, which is complete now, there were a number of road bases that were done and tested. They all came in, the results were very good. And now engineers are starting to use that knowledge to design roads and projects for the future. As Randy mentioned, You know you start designing them, they may take two or three or four years to start rolling into place and that's reality of. Getting approved finally getting specified it doesn't happen overnight, because a lot of these are very large projects. But it is moving forward that Waterloo project or university Waterloo research project was extremely successful and engineers are now using that knowledge in order to design future roads.

congratulations on the great quarter uh two parts part one please comment how working capital requirements are expected to change with substantial growth and revenue bernie do you want to answer that one sure yeah i think like any business when you experience uh growth and revenue like we have there's going to be a draw on working capital and we definitely saw that in the third quarter So despite being cashflow positive from operations, we were cashflow negative from working capital. But as those revenues get collected over time, that will turn into cash in the bank, especially when we hit our slower period in Q1. So Q1 is really when we expect to accumulate the cash that we've earned. in Q3 and Q4. And then if we can be profitable overall, that cash stays in the bank and helps us fund the working capital requirements in the future. And we also have the CIBC credit facility in place, which was put in place for the specific purpose of helping to manage working capital. And we haven't had to use it yet. So I would say, Grant, it's kind of the working capital increase to summarize as expected. And if we are profitable overall, that will turn into cash in Q1, which will help us manage our business going forward.

The second part of the question is you expect the bidding process to become less competitive as cellular concrete becomes better known as an efficient green alternative.

Are you saying the bidding process would become less competitive?

I think what is being asked here is as cellular concrete becomes more accepted and it's a more viable and it's greener let's put it that way than some of the competitive materials such as you know yes the block the styrofoam block it's always a sense of things we anticipate that less of that material would be used and on the other side there'd be more and more demand cellular concrete yes there definitely will be more demand you know as

People get used to using our product and the benefits, not only from an environmental, but from a price, from a placement, from a strength, from a longer lasting, all of these benefits that become part of the cellular concrete story will mean that we will displace more and more of these legacy products. And you can see that in the US already where the market is about 10 years ahead of the Canadian market. And even in Western Canada, where we started to develop in the market, we're seeing significant growth in our markets out here in Western Canada. And we're seeing strong growth continuing across the US. And all of that growth is really replacing legacy products in the projects that used to use them, right? So yeah, the answer to that question is a yes.

$40 million in contracts, which you talked about for next year. Does that include all of the $22 million North Carolina jobs? It does. Okay, that's to the point. Congratulations on the great quarter. Can you speak about what specifically is being done in the market matrix as an investment? So a question in and around, how are we going to get the stock price up? And I would just note that last time I looked, which was about half an hour before we started this webinar, that we were closing in on about 900,000 shares. And there was a lot of very good turnover. The volumes have come up. It's a combination of spectacular results. And people should know that we now have grown the registered list for Sumatrix to over 3,000 people. And that's crippled. in the past year. So there's a lot of eyes on this story, but I'll turn it over to you folks now.

Well, I think that the main thing is to really succeed. So we're putting the product into place, making the sales, generating the profits, generating the EBITDA. That's first and foremost, it has to be done. Hard to tell a story when you're not achieving. So not only we have achieved, but as Randy mentioned earlier, and we've talked about before, so we've delivered the balance sheet. Like we're in really good spot going forward. We're generating our own cash, we're growing in sales, we're growing in business. And now we've got something to tell. So the past few years, there hasn't been a lot to tell. We've been talking about COVID, and we've been talking about supply chain issues. Forget about all those things now. We'll talk about success, putting the product in the ground, and we can start to tell that story. And the story doesn't end with 2023. We're going to see it continue to grow through 2024 in the future. So that sets the basis for the future. The other thing that has to happen and the thing that's really hurt all of the microcap stocks in this world is that the microcap market has to turn around. And it doesn't matter what we say out there or what we do, if the microcap, people don't start investing again in this microcap, it's going to take a while. for it to turn around. Now, we all know that this goes in cycles and we expect that this market will turn around. But until then, it's going to be up to us to continue to succeed, continue to tell the story, continue to get to our story in front of new eyes, and again, prove it out by making money and generating cash flow for all of us.

Just to add to that, just so people know, We're not just sitting around here. There's a number of initiatives that are starting. One that will start soon is the focus that's targeting new investor groups, utilizing the online version of the Financial Post, so strategic advertising and placements and a number of other things because you have to build a large audience because at any one time, only a small percentage of those people will know enough to go ahead into the market and buy, you need to grow that audience. And certainly it makes a huge difference with the spectacular results that you folks have delivered. And you're set up great for 2024. So that'll just continue to build on itself. Back to the question, does The Matrix have any competition for cellular concrete in Canada?

We have a couple of small competitors. They really don't. We don't even see them bidding against us in many spots, but there's a small player in Vancouver area. There's another small player in Southern Ontario, a couple of small players, but they're focused on other businesses and they really don't affect our market at all.

Cash flow. Now that you are cash flow positive, positive for the future, did we expect possible uplifting to the CSX?

We certainly will consider that for the future, as we've discussed. And our focus right now is having a strong year, and the timing of that will be dependent on how things progress for not only this year, but also 2024.

It's clear to me the cash balance is low, in brackets, because of the increase in working capital, which you've addressed. My question is, what is the expected time frame to collect your receivables, and are there any holdbacks?

Will it be pulled back in six projects next year? Randy, if you can take this one, that would be great.

Mostly our credit terms we aim for is net 30. Sometimes we get net 45. Sometimes we're pushed into paid when paid. But essentially, on average, we're getting paid within 60 days. On any large construction job, there's always a holdback percentage. And so that will definitely apply for all the large jobs that Jeff talked about. um sometimes those holdbacks can be collected quite quickly and sometimes they're outstanding for years depending on what the final completion date is of the overall project so that's something that we manage quite closely and i think if you look at in our notes in our financial statements you can see the aging of our receivables and i think that would give everybody a lot of comfort that we are on top of collecting receivables and we're doing a good job of it

I think the individual is getting at here is what is the equipment utilization rate? How much of the time is it sitting there and then how much we've seen an increase in the utilization of that equipment?

Well, you know, there's different types of equipment that we have. And you all know that we've acquired Pacific International Grout a few years back. And they have equipment that's specific to the tunnel industry. And so we have four large dry mix units as part of that acquisition that are dedicated to the tunnel industry at any one time. Sometimes all four of them can be busy, but generally two or three of them we've got going, and then one is kept in reserve, basically. So that's from the tunnel side. In the US, in our geotechnical business, which is really a mix on site out of Chicago, they are busy, busy, busy almost constantly. So their equipment utilization is high and growing. In Canada, we're getting in new markets here. It's taking time to develop those markets. Western Canada, right now, all of our equipment is outpouring projects. And we're getting busy in Ontario too as well. So utilization has some room to grow. And that's why we talk about our capacity is very good. From a business perspective, we still got a lot of room in that equipment, but it's not utilized fully. Part of it is to have machines and backup, just in case there are issues. And part of it is dedicated towards regional growth in the southern U.S. to also help with seasonality of our business.

Thank you to all those people who submitted questions. They were good. Very good questions. Randy, any closing comments? Randy, do you have any?

No, I just the only thing I would say is, you know, we're shareholders to Jeff and I. We are aligned with you guys. We're working hard to increase the share price. We firmly believe that the best way to do that is deliver on the business results. And then that makes everybody's job that's trying to get the share price up easier. And so that's what Jeff and I are focused on. And I mean, laser focused on it. So we're with you guys and we're working hard to get the job done for you.

As a care holder of 12 years, I agree with that. And just to add to that, I mean, one of the reasons that we're still here and able to do that and able to commit to you is that you as shareholders have kept us going. It's taken 20 years to make this a viable business. And, you know, we've gone through a lot of hiccups and company ending situations along the way. But we really believed in this product and our shareholders did as well. And because of that, we're in a very good position moving forward. But we wouldn't be around today without you. And we thank you for that. And thank you for your continued support. And we look forward to a great balance of 2023 and 2024. And we look forward to telling you about it in the new year.

Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you to everyone who attended. And with that, we'll be releasing more news for year end. Thank you very much.

Thanks, Ryan.

Thanks, Randy.