CitroTech Inc. ($CITR)

Good day, and welcome to the iAccess Alpha Virtual Best Ideas Spring Investment Conference 2026. Our next presenting company is CitroTech. [Operator Instructions]. I'd now like to turn the floor over to today's host, Wes Bolsen, CEO at CitroTech. Please go ahead.

Thank you. I appreciate everyone joining today and excited to share the CitroTech story, what we have, and I can click through pushing Slide 2, put up the standard Safe Harbor Act that all of you are probably extremely familiar with. And so we will reference the Safe Harbor Act, but really get into telling the story about why I joined CitroTech, my background coming in the wildfire prevention and protection space, built a company personally LaderaTech that was sold to Perimeter Solutions, than I became the Global Head of Wildfire Prevention and Protection for Perimeter Solutions, building that team under the PHOS-CHEK brand for prevention protection. So who we are? I am now the CEO here at CitroTech, which is really now the only other NewYork Stock Exchange publicly traded company in this space for wildfire prevention and protection, with products that are the first ever EPA Safer Choice-recognized long-term fire inhibitor. Obviously, I had to believe strongly in the product, the team and where we have come from, or I would not have joined personally, same reason a lot of investors come in, looking at what is this, why is this different, and it really comes around the first and only EPA Safer Choice Fire Inhibitor, fire retardant that has multiple different industries that we're going after in our market overview, looking at more of the wood products, lumber, building materials, preventive proactive fire inhibitor, fire retardants as well as systems for home, a lot of potential technology adopters of a safe and effective fire retardant, with our business model being let's get this chemical, high-value specialty chemical, high margin and move millions and millions of gallons into the market, whether it is through systems that are on homes, roadsides or going into lumber and building materials. We want to move and move as much as we can with a technology that is backed by accreditations that are stellar, that over the last 5, 6 years have really been working everything from the patents to the EPA Safer Choice to the ASTM standards to get where we are. I'll move fairly quickly through some of these slides. I think many of you are familiar that wildfire is a growing disaster with Federal budgets growing to fight wildfires, to suppress wildfires and even politically the new Office of Wildland Firefighting being established by the Administration, one of my old friends and an amazing individual in the industry, Chief Brian Fennessy, being tapped to lead this agency, a tremendous individual that I think is going to do a great job, pulling together and not just having one company working, but a companies like CitroTech having a leading technology to address California having 5 of the 10 largest wildfires occurring in the last 5 years, significant populations moving to the wildland-urban interface and the demand for a safer and more effective product. And so as we look at the pillars of CitroTech, what we're looking at is proactive spraying, so putting it out on ignition, prevention, protection, roadways, utility corridors, around homes and cabinets even, like we'll talk about later in San Diego. But I think there's a tremendous opportunity in our Class A Lumber Treatments, kind of a core centerpiece of where we can go on fire-resistant wood building materials, and then finally, our CitroSafe defense systems that go in and around homes. So we'll talk about each of those on the pillars of the platform. But really, what makes us different. There's not another fire retardant that looks and sprays with almost a viscosity of water, that is different than legacy 60, 70 years, we've been dumping fertilizers. It's phosphate, ammonium-phosphate, phosphate-based solutions, mined phosphates, really what everyone else has been basing it on to put, dump millions and millions of gallons of red stuff out of the sky. What we're looking at is a non-phosphate chemistry, a plant-based chemistry. That's why we can get to the EPA Safer Choice, something that comes from things like fermented grains or fruits and vegetables, CitroTech coming out of a kind of a citric acid-type approach that has fermented with potassium in it and some other things, stable, stays in suspension, ready to spray, can dry clear and go out there. If we're looking at dominating the precision applied ground-based wildfire prevention protection market, I've never seen a product like this. And it's probably the reason I joined, is to have something that works the way it does, not just in wildland and firefighting, but in lumber, building materials, wood products designed for the environment and for that prevention protection side of things. So when you look at -- I'm going to let a video play while we're going -- the video, I can mute it as well. It is unbelievable that you could have wood chips or wood shavings. They're going to ignite. That's a map torch, a couple of thousand degrees. But when you hit the treated, you don't even see white phosphate or white coatings. It's not coating the outside of that material down to even something like a wood shaving, hamster shaving. You're seeing it's in the cellulosic fibers. It soaks into the material, forms a crystalline structure. And you can hold that torch right over the top of an area with chips that had that carbon char on the outside, that the crystallized structure forms this barrier that even protects what's below it. Think about that, if that was a 2x4, you wouldn't even be getting to the middle of it. And the individual is going to just flip up and show where there's this carbon layer that was formed, didn't even get to the chips below it. And you're seeing that kind of mentality, what if that was brass or brush, what if it was lumber, building materials. And so you're looking at something where even at the end of this, it would be crazy to put wood chips -- wood shavings on top of an active fire. But when you can take the fuel out of the fuel triangle, it is a radical solution. And so this is something where you can think about the ability to slow a flame or stop a spread, prevent ignitions, protect assets. That is what CitroTech is able to do, backed by strong, robust intellectual property, 38 granted patents, 45-plus filed and pending going across multiple different areas from chemical compositions to the methods for application to defense systems, all these patent numbers plus many more, is the strength of saying we have a solution going into the market that is protected because it's actually very easy to manufacture, good news for our investors and for our company. But really backed by the only fire inhibitor with these kind of accreditations, an EPA Safer Choice, meaning all the ingredients are safe for the environment. First time the EPA has ever put a fire inhibitor, fire retardant on the EPA Safer Choice recognized list. You have GREENGUARD Gold. If you're in a multifamily housing, a commercial unit and you build with lumber and building materials that have been utilized, putting CitroTech into the fibers of that material, the vapors coming off, the VOCs, the low chemical emissions is an unbelievable benefit. And we are your GREENGUARD Gold, which is the highest level that is for vapors and emissions backed by the certifications and the pieces that go into Class A flame spread. This is going to be very disruptive for pressure-treated lumber and building materials. If you have to pressure and pregnate wood or incise wood to get it to be Class A ASTM E84 Extended, that is -- it weakens the wood by 30% versus what we can do coating that wood, get the coating and stacking or even treating that wood to be Class A fire rated. So we'll go through a few of these on the go-to-market. I've already talked about. I think number one, the reason to be the most excited is what is happening around lumber, building materials, wood products, able to even go in and you could have a home what they call stick built that is -- and go in and spray that with a paint-less air sprayer and have that then rendered Class A fire rated. But you're looking at, can you get into other things like OSB board, plywood, other wood product materials. That is an unbelievable opportunity for CitroTech. Then you go after the ground applied retardants, counties, Departments of Transportation, utilities and others. And finally, a systems approach, how do we get more insurance and others into homes that are at the wildland-urban interface. So the number one, like we talked about, manufactured and treated lumber, you're going to go after some of the biggest wood producers. You're going to go after some of the biggest lumber, building material and wood product companies in the industry that are looking for how they could have solutions that aren't just a zinc borate or borate-based retardant that has to be put in a separate dumpster if you utilize that material, plus the expense of putting that into the material. So you look at something as simple as being able to factory treat with our MFB or CitroTech-34 product, not losing the fiber strength, not having sheer strength, not compromising structural integrity because it soaks into that wood. This is very disruptive if you're building trusses and building materials and having those kind of wood products, 2x4s, 2x6s. And we'll talk about kind of the go-to-market on the building materials. Standard, something like OSB board, the torch is even off this. This is actually a fire test being run by one of the largest wood products companies. And you look at what something that's been treated with CitroTech and OSB board. These are little strands that carbon layer, that carbon char comes up and almost protects even from going through, you almost have to bludge in it to depth with a 2,000-degree torch held in the same spot to just get even through strand. This is not seen in the industry. This is radical and is why I believe is one of the most exciting aspects of what CitroTech is going to do and can do. I think as you go towards our go-to-market on ground-based applications, what we're looking at is you look at linear miles. It's the easiest way to say, spray lots and lots of vegetation as quickly as possible and get CitroTech out into the wildland, the safest product to be out there, protecting 80% of ignitions starts adjacent to a roadside in California. It's an unbelievable statistic, but true, cars overheating, catalytic converters, brakes, change dragging, cigarettes, so many reasons that next to a roadside is where you really need to be treating. Ingress and egress routes, a fire started. You want to safely get people out of the community, egress. You want to get fire personnel in. Ingress to help fight that fire to make a corridor, okay? We're going to treat corridors with CitroTech to be able to protect and do that in a way where those road signs for environmental reasons, you wouldn't use past retardants or storm water runoff and other things that were real issues, CitroTech will be a large market opportunity because as you prevent more fires, you're going to have less fires to suppress. And so if you look at the opportunity, I think we believe it could be a $500 million-plus opportunity for globally wildland fire and what we could do with CitroTech. As you look at the final leg, well, actually, this is where we've been putting it out into the wildland. And so as you look at the City of San Diego was going out and spraying, the Mayor of San Diego actually unprompted, started speaking about where applying it in high-risk areas like Alvarado State saw a 50% reduction in mitigation. This actually came from the San Diego Fire Marshal for the City of San Diego. But there's a number of areas where it's safe, a product going out already that we'll expand on across the California and across the Western U.S. where we're looking at. As we talk about the final piece, the CitroSafe installed systems. This is something where the market will start to demand non-water-based solutions. I mean we've got 4.5 million homes in high-risk wildfire areas. That's why we see the insurance market not ensuring entire ZIP codes or not insuring homes. They want home hardening, defensible space. CitroSafe systems are one of the layers that it can be put on to a home that then helps to make it insurable. If you have to self-insure, that's an even bigger reason to have a CitroSafe system. You're not going to put a water-based system that is tapped into like we saw in the Palisades, we saw with the Altadena fire in California just over a year ago, the devastating fires. If we had had more of the CitroSafe systems out there, it sprays all of the product out in a matter of minutes. And then once it's done, all that vegetation, we've helped to render it nonflammable. And so I think in the future, water-based systems or anyone thinking about a sprinkler system on a home, we want to move product. We're willing to work with people switching over to say, it should be spraying the only EPA Safer Choice friendly product around that home, a tremendous market, even if you're spending $50,000, $100,000 to protect a $2 million to $10 million home, if you're protecting homes more than that, anything over $3 million, you can't even get in the California Fare Plan on insurance. So we're going to build different. I think we'll start to build in different versus going one by one on those CitroSafe systems, you start looking at some of the most respected largest homebuilders in America. You look at custom homebuilders, top architects, new homeowners associations and fire marshals saying, we don't even want a new development built. You look at great insurance companies and others that you could have conversations with about part of an insurance top-down program. How do we start getting these CitroSafe systems in. Spending longer talking about it, but it's the third on my list of things I'm most excited about at CitroTech. But we have the ability to start moving that from a top-down perspective. I think as we look at the competitive landscape, there's a lot of pressure treaters in treated wood. You don't have to pressure and pregnate. You can look at a lower cost per treated unit. So stronger, better, faster. Take all three. It's a pretty good thing to market. You look at the retardants that are on the market. Obviously, I know a number of these extremely well from my background, but CitroTech being the only EPA Safer Choice recognized non-ammonia, non-phosphate formulation, has a tremendous benefit. And then you look at systems, we're the only long-term retardant active, after water evaporates. The long-term retardant is good until it is physically washed off. So many people ask, how long is it good for? It is until it is physically washed off. What that means is it's as good for as long as it needs to be good for. If you spray it and the fire comes and then it rains and it puts out the fire, yes, it will wash naturally, wonderfully, break down, but that means the fire got put out or if you needed to, you activate the system and then you want to wash it down with a garden hose, afterwards, it breaks down to clear, safe and easy to use. So it's really -- that's one of the big benefits. It physically works until it is washed off. Coming into the final pieces, we can obviously give more details, small share count out there. I think there's some pent-up demand for the CitroTech stock. I think there are some people that are hearing the story for the first time. We're 1 of only 4 companies that went from OTC-traded late last year to being an NYSE American-traded company and now 1 of only 2 that are in this space. And I think there's some pent-up demand, a few convertible debt and a few other things, but overall, very small capitalization share count coming into the end of the year having a cash balance of a little over $6 million, on average burning around $500,000 a month for the year and with an expectation that with sales taking off in 2026, some of the relationships we are planning to form, feeling good about where we are from a cash side and growth that could come with with monitoring and managing cash burn plus obviously, significant revenue and sales growth. The team is in place to be able to deliver. I joined in October 1 officially as CEO, but Andrew Hotsko came in a few months ahead of me, a tremendous individual with a wonderful background, United States Naval Academy, U.S. Marine Corps, Regional President for a vegetation management, Canopy Service Partners, coming in with the ability to execute and execute well and something that I think is going to be a tremendous benefit to the company, adding on to our Founder and CTO, Steve Conboy, who's been around a long time and Nanuk who's our CFO, really bringing the expertise needed to manage -- expanding the Board, you would have seen at the end of last year, continue to bring expertise in to add into Ted Ralston, our Chairman, and Jeff Pommerantz, who've been around for a while, but Craig Huff and Lorenzo joined in to bring expertise, tremendous chemical knowledge as well as industry knowledge for what we have. I'm sitting in Denver, Colorado. Denver was very excited to have us with me being here, start to build out a little more of the team. And so we've announced that and the public announcement being that we're in Denver, but our operations, R&D, manufacturing, continuing to stay out in Oceanside, California, just north of San Diego, having a tremendous opportunity to deliver to the California market with the team that's already in place and the capabilities that are in California. So as we come into why I think CitroTech is positioned for scalable recurring growth. What I want to build is the annual predictable, high-margin recurring revenues that the market is looking for. It's good for us. It's good for us to be able to grow from that with the go-to-market in the wood products, building materials, replacing kind of pressure-treated lumber and building materials with a better solution, county, fire, roadsides, utilities, asset protection, getting an EPA Safer Choice recognized retardant into the environment to be able to do things that weren't possible in the past. And then kind of with more and more construction going into the wildland-urban interface, there's a growing need from the builders, from homeowners demanding it and from insurance companies demanding it to get something better out there. The IP, the differentiated technology, the proven business model, getting high-end chemical sales, recurring revenue across the three verticals and the team that can execute on it with a tremendous amount of growth and upside for our product with the ability to do some platform extension into adjacent verticals. So with that, I will flip over pretty quickly to questions that have been asked, but also look forward to being available, following up, being able to submit questions post this event to the CITR at Hayden IR for the things we're doing. So I will probably leave that up as I -- actually, I'll go back one slide just to leave up the questions there in case there's additional questions coming in.

A couple of them are about the team assembled, the backgrounds and the talent split between Denver and the manufacturing facility? Currently, there is a few, 2, 3 here in Denver. I could see growing that, as we continue to expand, making sense for where we want some of the supporting mechanisms. But I think the technology and the growth that's happened on the Oceanside, 80% plus of the company is -- 90% is out in California currently with 10% here in Colorado currently. I get wherever I need to be is the answer to that one. Founded back in -- I had to look exact '17, '18. Steve Conboy, the company's name has been Mighty Fire Breaker. We obviously traded under General Enterprise Ventures, Inc., GEBI, before we flipped over to the NYSE American CITR ticker. So this is that history, a long history. In fact, it's not a new story, but I think it's a new story because of the regulation certifications, the EPA Safer Choice, the ASTM. All the foundation has been laid to get where we are today. And I think we're just now coming out of this development stage company, into really being able to execute and be able to deliver. It kind of goes to the next question around clarifying the commercialization time line? First meaningful revenue and contracts. I believe 2026, we will start meaningfully delivering on some revenue. I think it will come from the wood products as well as the wildland fire side. We're already delivering some revenue into the home system, the CitroSafe system side. I expect that to continue to deploy, but maybe through a different -- slightly different go-to-market mechanism, top-down, more B2B than B2C. We've been doing a lot of B2C on the CitroSafe systems. I think huge B2B on lumber and building materials. And then there's a handful of very large transportation agencies, utilities, railroads and government that fit in a pretty consolidated industry that I know quite well on the lumber building -- or the wildland fire aspect. What milestones need to occur for state or federal wildland programs to adopt CitroTech solutions at scale? Currently, we can go directly into private county, state, right of ways. We are in the process of working through all the federal for U.S. Forest Service for the Wildland, U.S. Forest Service side. We're working through the process, which is a long and painful process, but have no questions that we will have -- we have the safest product, first and only EPA Safer Choice, which we believe actually gives the recognition that's needed to get out there, but we'll continue to work with any other processes that need to be there. Defensibility of the IP in the portfolio and how it prevents larger chemical companies from entering the space? We believe we have extremely strong IP Obviously, that gets proven out by partnerships, things we form up. I said and still stand by, we expect some large announcements to be able to be made around lumber, building materials, wood products. And that comes from the defensibility of the IP. People outside -- very large other chemical companies that have looked at our IP and said, this is actually defensible, and we want to work with CitroTech to be able to deliver this CitroTech product into the market. It's actually very difficult to have a product. It's why first and only currently EPA Safer Choice approved product for the environment. It's very difficult to have a product that is good for the environment and effective. And so we believe we are very strong on the defensible IP. The first vertical, a different question to scale is in order, I think the -- revenue-wise, we're already doing CitroSafe systems, but I think the lumber building materials, wood products will take off the fastest, followed by wildland fire prevention protection. And then I think the adoption of building, homebuilding and CitroSafe systems going in will be the third vertical from speed to market and generating revenue. The question going around, moving from pilot deployments to sustained commercial production? I believe we've laid the foundations. This isn't just like we're starting. There's years, but testing, direct testing with some of the large wood products companies and lumber and building material companies that are already starting to pull the product in. So I think we're going straight into by later 2026, commercial production volumes, and we'll look at how we get more and more product and move more and more millions of gallons into the market. And so we would love to collaborate with insurance companies is one of the questions. We're already working with a few, but we are more than willing to help homeowners get insured by having additional layer of safety protected onto their homes. I believe homes will start being built differently. There is absolutely no reason that single-family homes wouldn't have lumber, building materials and wood products being Class A fire rated with CitroTech going forward because you don't have to sacrifice some of the strength of the wood, the cost and the time. Question around military cooperations. I think it's a tremendous opportunity for us, to go into military active munition zones and having the ability to help render vegetation nonflammable in areas where we are going. And then the final question I had on here was federal sponsorships or grants? Fortunately, we're not dependent on sponsorships or grants or trying something out. We believe the commercialization path that we have is tremendously strong. And so we have a product that can stand on its own to go into the market. So those were all the questions. I really appreciate everybody joining today. Look forward to continuing to share more about the story, having some one-on-ones and being able to communicate with you as CitroTech is moving into the market commercially and growing the revenue in an exciting, very exciting path forward. So thanks again, everyone.

Thank you. That concludes CitroTech's presentation. You may now disconnect. Please consult the conference agenda for the next presenting company.