BioLargo, Inc. (BLGO) Q2 FY2025 Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the BioLargo Annual Second Quarter 2025 Earnings Results. [Operator Instructions] Please note, this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Brian Loper, Director of Investor Relations at BioLargo. The floor is yours.

Great. Thank you, operator. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to BioLargo's Second Quarter 2025 Earnings Results Conference Call for the months ended June 30, 2025. By now, everyone should have had access to the earnings press release. This call is being webcast and is available for replay. In our remarks today, we will include statements that are considered forward-looking within the meanings of securities laws, including forward-looking statements about future results of operations, business strategies and plans, our relationships with our customers, market and potential growth opportunities. In addition, management may make additional forward-looking statements in response to your questions. Forward-looking statements are based on management's current knowledge and expectations as of today and are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that may cause the actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements. A detailed discussion of such risks and uncertainties are contained in our most recent Form 10-Q, 10-K and other reports filed with the SEC. The company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. And with that, I will now hand the call over to BioLargo's CEO, Dennis Calvert.

Brian, thank you very much, and thank you, everyone, for joining us. And we're excited to be here and share an update on the current events at the company. I want to also point out that most recently, we put out a press release just 2 days ago, that offers a brief summary of a lot of the content we're going to talk about today. And also just a few weeks ago, we put out a stockholder letter, which goes into a very deep dive. So those 2 pieces of information will be very helpful as you want to drill deeper into this presentation. Also, at the end of this presentation, we did some bullet point summaries of some of those key points. It's so much I really believe that we can lean on that as opposed to cover all that in this presentation. Okay. Innovation engine for a better tomorrow. We make life better, purpose-driven innovation, right? The pillars of our company rely on high degree of purpose, impact intact investments focused on the gaps in the market, cutting edge technology, highly qualified people. And we've been doing this for quite some time, and we're now at the point of, we believe, harvesting the fruits of our investments over an extended period of R&D cycle and investing. Who are we? Innovative scientists, passionate about sustainability and human health, driven by a purpose to make life better. It's a high calling, of course, best-in-class solutions. We don't believe it's number 1. We won't continue to invest. Number 1 is a big claim. It's always a debate. We understand it. And of course, when you look at each of these technical platforms, there's a myriad of claims associated with these technologies that we believe can make it number 1. For example, it works, but it's safer. Safety being a key feature, big claim in each of those, that requires discernment, but we welcome the debate, and we do believe they have a chance to really transform markets. Focus where there's a gap, gap in the market, not being filled by an incumbent and then aim for partnerships and capital conserving strategies, leveraging intellectual properties, supply chain, partnerships on really tackling a distribution challenge at a global scale. That's how we approach our business. In the portfolio, there's a number of commercial assets in each at different stages of development. At the parent company, of course, we've got our brilliant engineering team, seniors, it's a whole crew of people that hail from 25 and 30 years of experience at a global scale, very large, important projects, highly skilled people, R&D at the Campus University of Alberta, also an important component of our portfolio. These enterprises support the commercial activities. Remember, our structure, we form a subsidiary, we licensed into it. We incubate, if you will, these technologies for commercialization that allows for direct investment, it allows for partnership to be created and gives us leverage at the parent company to really focus on leveraging our core competency of science and engineering, the innovation cycle and supporting these commercial efforts. Ultimately, they are all for sale, important to also know. I like this next slide. It's important because what's often missing is the unseen value. When you're incubating when you're developing new technologies, that takes some time for adoption for commercial traction, regulatory approval, all the myriad of challenges that you must overcome to success, there's a reason. The reason is both impact and value, right, the unseen value. As they find commercial success, given our business model, our strategy, we believe the unseen value can be enormous. Especially when you position these products for adoption, where we might participate in a supply chain, partner for distribution, work to spread and also build equity value that creates an exit. Because we have a portfolio, the exit value is super critical. And it's often missed. It's a mistake to think of our company as a function of the revenue or earnings only. This equation has to go into the equation. It's hard for people to do that. We understand that. It's difficult because it requires a technical deep dive. It's not a drive by. You have to peel the onion, understand what Clyra is doing, understand what our PFAS solution means, understand what the battery technology means to the -- really the electrification of the world in a $1 trillion business. I mean it's an astonishing value proposition. In each of these, as we said, unmatched technologies capital conserving, HQP, highly qualified people driven on purpose. As we dissect those, the execution of that, of course, is the risk. We must execute, we must find the channel, get the regulatory burdens the Odor O&M is the most mature. We're going to talk about the bumps we've had in the last 6 months in some detail and the implications financially. We're still very hopeful about its future, by the way. So we'll highlight that. Clyra, my goodness, 13-year march to success, a significant investment, just under $20 million total invested capital. now poised for significant success with distribution partners of global acclaim as well as regional and 2 product categories going to market, significant investment in the last 12 to 18 months in preparation of a launch of significance, dramatic significance. And we're preparing for that as soon as possible, we'll talk about the time lines I'm sure that would come up with the Q&A. Just want to remind you the details on all these are in the appendix of this presentation, which we'll just mention and then share in writing, so people can go back. PFAS, long slug, lower margin, very difficult market, strategic for both the United States and industrial nations on a global scale. We are the cutting edge. We believe we're #1 in that space, and we're going to win. Battery tech. Battery tech is a big deal, right? Don't sell batteries, sell battery factories, a pretty basic business model. I'm going to detail some of that briefly because it's an incredibly exciting component of our business and we've been marching towards success for a number of years. I think our total invested capital is somewhere around $2.5 million to get to where we're at. Now that's a dramatic number. It's dramatic because if you showed me a company that had a breakthrough technology for battery tech with prototypes in hand and basic proof of claim on the technology as we have, right? And that was published just a couple of months ago, third-party validation. Those companies probably spent either a career or $25 million to $50 million. And we've done this with a couple of million, $2.5 million. It's an astonishing achievement with such low capital. It is slow. It's taken some time. It took us a while to redesign, revalidate and improve upon the work that was done by the original inventors and we're fortunate to have one of the co-inventors on our team and we're marching towards success. The business model itself is really critical. We present a breakthrough technology for long duration. Long duration storage is the idea of green batteries that are grid scale on a fixed site that can be used to balance the grid, offload renewables, provide emergency backup for mission-critical like data centers or the fastest-growing segments in the world. And then arbitraging energy, right, from the time you buy it to the time you use it, you buy when it's low, you use it when it's high, you use the battery technology to store that energy so that you can arbitrage the spread. All of those need applications are expected to grow to approximately 4 -- between a $3 trillion and $4 trillion market over the next 15 or so years. That was published by The Economist in September of last year. Just 2 weeks ago, an article came out from Fortune Magazine, talking about the next $1 trillion investment cycle. And that's in energy and energy storage, combined with big data, data centers, AI driven, AI driven. This is a tool that has an insatiable demand. And with that demand, we believe the thesis is pretty basic. If you have a good battery and even if you have a better battery like we do, a good battery by the time you get to scale, you can sell all you can make before you can make them. As so with that premise, we're out recruiting partners to form joint ventures to create battery manufacturing facilities, we'd indicated in our prior disclosures, we've executed 4 MOUs for a myriad of clients, but I want to go up to a little bit higher level and share that with you real quick. There's really 3 categories that are sort of shaking loose on that business deal making, right? One would be impact. So what does that mean? Impact. People that want to see employment, they'd like their 500 to 1,000 people employed in their community. That's one. workforce development, workforce training, high-tech job creation, right? This initiative to bring back high-tech manufacturing to the United States of America to support this global transition right, to the demand to supply an energy real time all the time with resiliency to back up the grid, to back up the emergency use and the need to be live real-time all the time, right? That's resilience redundancy is what that's called. When you look at the impact there's people that want to see that happen that are willing to put financial resources available to see these factories come to their community and solve some of those big problems. What's fascinating is, over time, it begins to look very much like a real estate. Of course, it's manufacturing, it's got some high-tech component, but there's basically project-oriented financing. And we believe that the public funding available in both states, regional, national, international is substantial because people want the answer. It's part of a national agenda. And we can see that as evidenced by historical tax credits and many incentives to bring these high-tech jobs to a community, to a country, to a region, right? So our plan is well designed to leverage that type of financing, that's impact financing. The second would be financial opportunity, right? Developers think about developers, they build, they develop, they create equity value and they sell. That's a developer mindset. There's a whole world of developers that want to see, want to leverage -- have the opportunity to leverage the kind of opportunity that we bring for selling battery factories, not batteries, right? And then finally, the third, which we call more of a strategic. So who would be a strategic partner? Well, energy companies, data center developers, big data, people that are really in the business of providing AI. They have such significant capital base and high growth trajectory. I would argue, and it is an argument, we're actually working on some article to this effect. But I would argue that -- if you listen to the financial news regularly and you listen to all the chitter chatter about AI and data centers and this exploding industry and the demand, you're going to notice the caveat that they always -- the CEO will always say, and he says, if we can get enough energy or enough storage to meet our demand, then we can meet our target. Then we can meet our target, okay? And when you go into this industry and you peel back the onion on supply and energy and access to the grid and this issue of resiliency and redundancy and access to storage that cannot catch fire. That can be drawn upon for a long extended period of times. Because the grid is unable to meet the insatiable demand for energy. That's what we're talking about. Then you'll see what we see, which is a massive gap in the market that we intend to fill. And we believe we can fill it. We've got the right people, the right strategy, and we're executing on a daily basis. So it's very exciting. And the next step for us is really pretty basic, which is to take our MOUs and move towards definitive contracts, definitive contracts will become then hard money in the real estate lingo. Then he's going to write a check to make sure that we have the tools to execute in a specific location. And then in that business model, right, we're getting actually paid to design, project manage, build these factories in exchange for a piece of income and royalty and an equity participation that we negotiate as a minority equity stakeholder. This is a very capital conserving strategy that has the ability to scale at a global level. Just think about it, right? Where are we limited? Well, we're limited by capital, just like everybody else. The difference here is and the benefit of the bargain, the benefit of the bargain for our partners, we are actually giving more than we're taking. Why can we do that? Well, because we're thinking globally. We think that this is the kind of technology that needs a global rollout. It needs a global scale. The world needs it. These data companies, these data center managers and big AI providers need energy and energy storage in an insatiable way. So we think it's an extraordinarily rare moment in a corporate journey to be well positioned. Now remember, one of the common questions we always get is, who are you? And how in the world do you have a technology for long duration that's "better" and what's available in the market. And of course, that goes to the tribute to the inventors that spent almost a decade inventing this technology with all that R&D prior to our involvement. And it really is a complement to the work. The work of discovery, the work of testing and failing, expertise, of course. And so we're fortunate. We're fortunate to be here to take up where they left off to then revalidate that technical achievements, prototype, scale up, develop a scaling model, develop a business model, develop the way to produce at scale manufacturing, that's where we're focused and we're leveraging on technology that is an absolute winner, an absolute winner. I'm going to drop that. We'll come back to those questions in a minute. I'm going to turn this next topic over to Charlie to review some of the basic economics of our performance for the last quarter and year-to-date. Go ahead, Charlie. Charlie Dargan, our CFO.

Yes. Thanks, Dennis, and good morning to everyone. And yes, we get to this part of the presentation that's just going to talk briefly about our numbers. We publicly filed yesterday. So you have them. And this slide represents where we are on our net stockholders' equity even though we've had losses over the last 6 months, we've been able to maintain our equity position through raising capital, equity capital certainly through BioLargo but also through Clyra. We did some warrant exchanges. And that has allowed us to be right around $6 million and maintaining $6 million in our equity. So the rest of the balance sheet, we've got $12.5 million in assets. We still are on about $3.5 million of cash. And yes, you'll notice that we now have a note receivable, and that's related to Ikigai and Pooph. And they are maintaining the payments on the note receivable. So that's why it's current. Regular AR. And then we have about $1.7 million in equipment and leases. And then on the other side of the balance sheet, you'll notice that our debt obligations have gone up a little bit, but most of that's related to Clyra and Clyra getting ready to launch the wound care product. So for us, we're in a good space. The balance sheet is strong, and we move forward. So from the P&L perspective, we only did about $3 million in revenue versus $5 million last year in the 3 months ended June 30. And then in the 6 months, we did $6 million in revenue versus almost $10 million last year. And pretty much all of that's related to as we've spoken and disclosed, and I'm sure Dennis will talk further, Ikigai and the reduction of sales with the Pooph product. You'll notice that our service revenues have gone up dramatically. We've gone from $300,000 to $1.2 million in the 6 months. And in the 3 months, we went from $125,000 to $771,000. So we've been improving there, increasing our revenue there. And then we go forward. The best part is we've maintained our margins. We actually improved margins in the 3 months. But in the 6 months, we maintain them. So we're not losing on the margin side. It's just a reduction in sales. SG&A, we've maintained, we're very vigilant about maintaining and managing our expenses, certainly, as we're in a reduced revenue time period, but we're managing our expenses. So when you go to the cash flow, you'll notice, obviously, our usage of cash in operating activities went up, but if you look at it, it's pretty much all because of carrying accounts receivable or note receivables. The rest is in Clyra -- yes, in Clyra, totally agree, in Clyra. So important there to note that, like I said, Clyra is now ramping up for production of the wound care products as we hope that next year, we'll be launching it. So it's not that we're spending, we're spending because we need to. And so I think that's pretty much it, Dennis, anything else. Otherwise, it's back to you.

Thank you, Charlie. Very good. Yes, the -- if you look at the investments that have been made clear to ramp up infrastructure and the logistics of preparation for scale manufacturing is pretty dramatic. It represents a major portion of our net loss. And so yes, we've been very diligent to maintain consistent overhead. We shrink when we can. Very, very careful, especially when we have not been able to rely upon the cash flow that we were historically relying upon for the Pooph sales. We are thankful that Ikigai and Pooph have been able to maintain their payment schedule, which is great. And we're really hoping for the best and doing everything in our power to support them as they reposition themselves for growth. And again, we remain optimistic. The people often ask the question, predict the future, something like that. I wish I could. I think we're at a spot where we can -- what we know is true, right? What we know to be true is they're very good at marketing. They're very, very good at selling product, okay? So if they can find if they can get a strong position to do that, they'll do well and they can sell themselves, they probably could sell themselves out of just about anything. And so we're hoping for the best and want to support them as best we can. We also want to do that in a very careful way to preserve the integrity of our position. Our position relative to financial implications. We didn't sign up to be the bank. And we do find ourselves providing financing for our partner, which puts a heavy burden on us. I will say that in my opinion, the fact that we've been able to do so is a testimony to our business strategy and our management. We're doing a good job of managing a very difficult spot. And we're hopeful that they'll stabilize and continue to go to track that we know they're capable of, right? They're extraordinarily skilled in that area. And of course, they're great products. And so we're hoping for the best. But we do have a lot of uncertainty. Now I will comment on the management side, uncertainty is difficult. It makes us operate in a way that will not allow us to assume that we're going to receive the payments that we expect. And so that makes us sure of our capital position so that we, as we say, save for a rainy day. We're really good at saving for a rainy day and as evidenced by our net shareholder equity. We're just not going to allow uncertainty to overrun the company. So that we can survive and thrive because the unseen value is multiples of our current valuation. That's just the reality. And so keep them alive, get them into the go mode, make sure Clyra gets to the starting gate and can start really capturing the value that we've invested now 13 years and massive sums of money to get to and do its purpose, impact the world for a greater good. I mean that's what it is. It's going to transform the industry, we believe. It has a chance to be a dominant player in its market space with some of the largest partners in the world, really featuring a technical breakthrough for patient outcomes for infection control and wound care. Okay. Same thing with battery tech. You got to get to the starting gate. We're knocking out we see it. We see it. It's in sight. We know that there's public funding. We know that there's a $1 trillion market on the other side. And we don't know of any technology that matches the technical prowess of what the technology can provide. We just don't. And we say it often. We say we believe it's #1. Let's just be clear. We believe it's #1, but that's an argument. It's starting with based on the entire product feature, right, high energy density, high efficiency, 95% round trip efficiency, low cost of goods, recyclable components. No rare earth elements, no China supply chain, right? It's a perfect situation for bringing high-tech jobs back to the U.S.A. And of course, our strategy is to build factories with partners. So it's a great model. So again, why do we highlight it? It's worthy of our pursuit. It's worth it. And yes, there are some things we got to get through, pulling those partnerships, get them into definitive contracts, pull in the financing, leveraging public financing wherever possible and get on with our purpose, which is the point. So that's a lot. Okay. Now I just want to point out, I'm not going to go through these, but I just want to open it up for questions. When we go into the appendix, we took the press release -- really simple. We took the press release I'm just going to highlight them so you see they're there, we'll come back to them, appendix of highlights. We took the press release and we took the shareholder letter as well as the Q and we consolidate those into a bullet point presentation for each operating unit. I'm not going to read them all. It's a lot. Clyra. They're all in those documents we just referenced. I'm just going to show you they're here, energy, why is important. Each one of these becomes a thesis for defense of our strategy, and we think it's credible and real. And there's substantial activity in each and each one we break down specifically okay? And we might refer to those when we talk about Q&A. So let's stop now open us to Q&A and then see if we need to drill deeper on any of these items okay? Brian?

All right. All right. Exciting stuff. So questions. Can you provide any additional insight into the challenges and successes to the barriers to entry for the salinity battery?

Sure I can, actually. So let's do -- let's stay here, someone pull up that slide so that you can see it. I hope you'll listen while I'm talking to provide the barriers to entry. Yes. So I have an unusual perspective. when we were asked to join the Environmental Technology Trade Advisory Committee by the Secretary of Commerce, I kind of thought to myself, what do I have to share with this team of 40 people that are representatives on the front line of industry in the environmental technology side. And over time, I really challenged myself to add value, right, to do something worthy of the time that requires for both our companies and for the United States of America. And I -- it became very apparent that our experience, our experience, BioLargo's experience, my personal experience and innovating across multiple industries gives us an insight to the barriers to entry and both regulatory frameworks, incentives, incentive structures, competitive barriers, supply chain barriers, all these things that come to bear on the execution of strategy. Okay. The battery tech is no different. So in the battery technology, the first challenge is technical proof of claim. We've achieved a lot of that. The next step will be to take that -- the sale technology in a scaled-up version, which we're doing now, assemble sales into a larger module, okay? So cells go into racks, racks going to pack, and you put a computer on the top and that computer distributes energy and it measures electricity flow in and out of the cells and then you do computer modeling to replicate its interaction with the flow of energy that mimics the activity of the grid or renewable energy, right? Whatever use case you want to use. That piece of the puzzle is really critical to adoption, and it is ahead of us. We haven't done it. From a science and engineering perspective, what I can say is that for science and engineering, it's not fearful at all. It's an engineering task. It needs to be done, of course. For non-technical people it can be a much bigger issue to overcome. For technical people, it's not as big of an issue, but you have to do the work. And that will take some time and some money, but it's all achievable. The second is we're going need to scale manufacturing. Tesla is notorious for its vertical scale and capability. I think they went into South Haven Tennessee, close to my home in Memphis, and they built -- they opened a factory and went live in less than a year, is my understanding, a giga effect, massive installation, $1 billion installation. They took over an old building and turned it into a battery factory. Well, that's a company that's -- I don't know how many they have done. I suspect 20 or more manufacturing facilities of giga scale. And so they did very, very fast, and they have achieved scale because they've got so much history. They're brilliant at that. They're brilliant at that. That's both expertise and capital for deployment. Hence, the reason we're pursuing our strategy we are so that we can access that kind of capital in scale globally, right? Now that execution barrier is real. You have to get to scale because in order to capture the margin on manufacturing, you need to go vertical in accessing the ingredients and then literally making each component in the factory. That means manufacturing electrodes, manufacturing the ceramic insulators, manufacturing the stainless steel, manufacturing the activity and the feeling and the loading of chemistry into the pack and the testing and then the assembly of a rack, a pack and a module and the testing. All of that is designed to be manufactured in our locations that we're focused on forming these partnerships, right? Another significant barrier. From a regulatory barrier, it's pretty low actually. If you have a battery and you can prove it's safe and you can justify your claim of extended functionality, which is a warranty then really, you just need safety data, and most of that safety data is tied up in the UL certification, which is really pretty basic, okay? So it's not a regulatory barrier as much as this is a practical barrier of scaled manufacturing and improving your claim. And so that's a task. It's a big task, okay? And I think the argument for support of our strategy says we know we have a #1 contender. We know it. and we're not bashful about it, and we're not afraid, okay? Now we have to prove it. And we have proved over and over and not screw it up, make sure we get it right. That's how it works. And then along that journey, and here's the way I would say it, from this moment forward, every step we take, we become more credible, every step we take. And if we do the work, we get the price. We have to do the work. And so what we believe we can do is provide additional capital that will come into our battery company without diluting the parent. We believe that will happen. We also believe that we'll have these partnerships that will head into definitive contracts and contracts returning to deposits and highly leveraging public funding. Public funding is massive and don't -- and make no mistake, Tesla. Tesla built their company using federal funding, both the DOE and the tax credits that were available. And if you go back and study their business model and how they scaled. They were masters at leveraging those funding tools from the public interest for the initiative of transitioning to an electrification of the world. They did it. And they did really well at it. You know what they didn't do. They didn't focus on long duration. That's where the gap is. They focus on EV charging stations. Now they have an initiative in the long duration side for that's fixed side grid scales, but they're deploying primarily lithium. There's a lot of talk about alternative technologies coming to market. I would argue that there's -- those are years, if not decades away. There's a lot of work to do. Remember, when we started this acquisition with this battery technology, I asked our engineers, just like everybody else asks about us, right, when you hear the story, what's the first thing you think who are these people to have a #1 technology opportunity in the fastest-growing trillion market in the world. Who are these people? That's what everybody asks. It's a good question, right? And here's the answer. The innovators that spent 10 years of their career, 10 years of their 35-year career is focused on this technology did the work to identify the secret, the secret to manufacturing high energy density to techniques for manufacturing that made the performance work that we believe will contend to the #1 spot in the world. Okay? So now it's our job. Take it from there, take it through the additional journey of scaling manufacturing, dealing with all the critics, overcoming the hurdles, find the right partners, make the deals. So it's very exciting. And I know that's a long answer, but I think we covered the barrier and the mission ahead. Next?

Yes, sir. Great slide and explanation there. All right. Next question. Will BioLargo be funding the cost to build battery factories? Will you be involved in designing and building the factories?

Yes, it's a good question. So the business model, again, is unique and other industries, I had a call with an institutional fund recently, about a week ago and listened to the story and he said, it's like Qualcomm on steroids. Listen to that. And that's a complement. I took it as a compliment. Qualcomm on steroids, right? So the idea is there's a technology core. At the core, there's technology and there's a strategy and then the implementation strategy is to leverage that core competency. Now we have 2 core competencies, I would argue 2 or 3. Two obvious ones. One is the technology itself. And the second is the technical support from our engineering group that allows us to actually say to a partner I will build you a factory. And it will be a good factory, and it will meet its time lines and it will achieve success, and we stand for that and we're credible in the position for that sort of strategy, okay? As a result, that venture, that JV can access public funding, right? So the venture will finance itself. Now that may be financing from a partner that can be equity or debt, it also could be public funding. We're not the financier of the venture. That means that we're the vendor to the venture. And when we then enter the venture, we generate revenue, revenue in the form of engineering services, project management, the lead on the design build, the provisioning of the equipment, the training of the staff and the execution of a production facility that produces batteries that come out the other end for commerce. And we get paid to do that. We also ask for a royalty for the transfer of technology into that operation. and then an equity carry in exchange for the transfer of the business opportunity that is forecasted to generate $0.5 billion a year, understand this per factory, $0.5 billion a year with a margin that should exceed 16% net income after debt service and after royalty, 16% on $0.5 billion, run the number. It's over $75 million to $90 million. okay? These are extraordinary opportunities. In exchange for transferring that opportunity to our partner, we get paid and we carry an interest in the venture. What that means is that our balance sheet will not carry the day. It doesn't have to. The ventures can stand alone with the combination of our investor partners, public funding, and the architecture of creating an economic opportunity that's visible to the participants. And that's what we're doing. And we think that that's a globally scalable model. So yes, we're not the check writer. We're the vendor to make those ventures work. okay?

All right. Question. What is the latest on New Jersey and the AEC project?

Yes, that's a great question. So we did just shipped the AEC. We posted some of the images in our social media. So you can see those on LinkedIn, on Twitter, on Facebook, I don't know if they made it to our blog yet, but we'll work on that for sure. Anyway, the unit was packaged up. I think it was last Wednesday or Thursday and within 24 hours, it landed in the Lake Stockholm, it's pretty cool. And so the images show it's being unwrapped, big forklifts, big heavy equipment is moving into the facility. As everybody knows, we were waiting for the general contract to finish manufacturing. Now we'll go through a setup and a test phase to go live. Remember that we have the state EPA, the federal EPA both agreed to participate in validation work, which is super important because we'll have the -- really the most prominent voice of opinion in the world, doing that validation work for us, which will be critical for -- to have an on-site location in which prospective customers can come and touch and feel and see. And it's a beautiful machine, it really works. And so we're very excited. And we'll have a go-live date soon. I don't know what that is today. But we'll certainly make an announcement it goes live. And it's a very significant long hard fought win. But it's a good one. So there you go. Next.

There we go. All right. How can you be so confident about Clyra given that it's taken so long?

Yes. It's human nature to wonder, right, when things take a long time. It makes you fearful. I get it, and we witnessed that in the ebb and flow. So I would point to a couple of things that are really important. One, we've just raised about $3.3 million in Clyra, and those investors are investing in a private company. So that's not BioLargo, that's investing in our subsidiary, Clyra Medical. The capital is really important, of course, we're thankful for those investors. But those investors do have an advantage. You know what that is, they get an NDA. They sign an NDA, they agree not to trade. And as a result, they can know what's up. So $3.3 million worth of investors just came into the company. There's a reason. And the reason is because we can see the launch pad in site and the partnerships are so significant. So we also know what we have in terms of the technical prowess of our invention. It's a game changer. It's a winner. It's going to raise the profile for human health, and we believe it can do so over a long period of time at global scale. That's what it is. It has a chance to set the standard. And with the right partnerships, which we believe we have in place now and are preparing to launch, we can do just that, okay? So this is 20-plus years of ideas, 13 years of investment. And now a couple of years are really a mad scramble to get those products to be ready for mass production at scale. And so yes, it's hard. It's difficult, lots of barriers to overcome. Our partners are very excited. There's been no waning of excitement, and we keep checking off the barriers to getting that product ready for scale. As of last count, we're hoping that we can be in a position to finish this next phase of third-party testing, the product design for validation for the final logistical paperwork that gets filed with the FDA, and we're hoping to get that done before the end of the year. And then everything from there is receiving confirmation of receipt, time lines, training, manufacturing to large opening inventories and then launching. And so it'll take a few months from that, but we're still hoping we got a shot at getting that done for Q1. But yes, no, it's -- we're not fearful and we're not -- I know it tries everyone's patience. But I know that from a value perspective, the Clyra initiative is worth multiples on our current valuation. So it's worth it.

Okay? Great. All right. Let's see here. Yes, we have 1 more that just came in. Do you have insight on Pooph's operations as far as advertising spend, the number of stores that they're in?

We don't have a lot of operating insight, and that's part of the problem. It's very difficult to forecast. And of course, with some of the uncertainty on receipt of the money owed to us. It makes us very cautious to do a lot of optimistic forecasting. Again, I'd go back to the basics, which is they had grown to over $50 million in run rate which is astonishing, a little -- just about 3, 3.5 years. So that's pretty remarkable. It was in 40,000 stores. I don't know if that's still the number. But whatever is going on there that they need to manage, we believe they can and should and will and we're optimistic in that regard, but we're cautious because they got to do it. We can't do it for them. And of course, we're here to help if we are able. So I wish I had more information, but I think that's all I got for the moment.

All right. Let's see here. Tell us about your appointment to the U.S. Department of Commerce, Environmental Technologies Trade Advisory Committee, heck of an acronym there. But how is this beneficial to BioLargo.

I think it's enormously valuable to BioLargo. We were asked to join there. In fact, the language is very specific. So just make sure you get it. It's in the press release that we issued when we started back in January was the start. The company -- so me as a person on behalf of BioLargo was appointed to the committee. And that's important to note. I'm there because of BioLargo, right? BioLargo is there because of what our technology, right? So the decision makers who appointed us there recommended us to the Secretary of Commerce to be appointed. That's how it works, is because of our technology. So they see a future for us, that's important. That's why we're there. So why is it important? Well, it's mostly PFAS. It turns out there's a lot of other things to talk about because of our experience, and especially on the environmental side. So yes, it does a series of things. One is there's a chance for us to make it to influence. Influence for impact, that's worthy because that will translate to watching -- just to point out, I was named as the Chairman of the subcommittee, which is enabling innovative technologies. So I'm the Chairman of the subcommittee. Why is that important? Well, subcommittee is where the work is. The bid committees are where decisions are put forth for public view. We just did some social media posting on the most recent letters of recommendation of the Secretary of Commerce. Those are on my LinkedIn, they're also on the company LinkedIn, so you can see those. We also linked them on Twitter, which is X now, of course, you can see all those. But the chance as an insider on the front line, on the cutting edge of environmental tech, that's us, have influenced our policy that promotes trade, that promotes economic resources to drive adoption of the leading edge of innovative technology. Yes, it's all about BioLargo. I mean it's a perfect spot. And so I'm thankful and I'm learning a lot, watching all this machine go through and also really understanding the fine balance between the trade-off of regulatory frameworks, which is the stick and the carrot, which is incentives, the carrot and the stick, you hear it often in regulatory frameworks. Watching that unfold. We have a chance to lobby for -- that's not the right word, argue for discernment in the things that can advance America's interest, which is the mission of the Secretary of Commerce under the executive branch. It's not a judicial and it's not a legislative position. It's bipartisan, and it's designed to advance American enterprise for the environment and for America's interest. So yes, it's a great spot.

All right. And there's been a request for me to answer a question. All right. So terminal. How many employees at BioLargo and related entities. So I know this one. Pretty sure there's 41 full-time employees, which includes Clyra and your Canadian operations and Clyra has increased from 3 to 10 full-time employees just this year.

We think we're probably going to wrap it up, what do you think?

Yes. Sounds good. Thank you for the update, Dennis.

Maybe I can do a quick closing. Yes. I'll just encourage everyone to do a deep dive. Investors, stockholders take a deep dive, they want to own a lot of BioLargo, especially when it's cheap. And with the pressure that we've been under, we've seen some real pressure on the stock of late. And we believe it's a nice situation for the long-term thinker as a buying opportunity. And of course, we'll continue to push on execution. There's so much meat on the bone. I just want to make sure that you see those additional slides in the appendix. They're important. They'll be available online, so you could pull those up. And then, of course, we welcome touching base with our investors any time. So as we say, go BioLargo, we'll keep plugging away. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much. This does conclude today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and have a wonderful day. We thank you for your participation.