OTC Markets Group Inc. (OTCM) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the OTC Markets Thought Leadership Educational Webinar Series. And today, we will be hosting a webinar on ESG. But as everybody is dialing in and as we have some general housekeeping items, I'd like to just go through that really quickly. There will be a Q&A session afterwards. So if you have any questions, please type that into the chat box on the right. Also, a copy of this presentation will be mailed along with an archived recording of this webinar. The webinar will also be housed on the OTC Markets Group website. So for those of you who didn't get a chance or would like to share the webinar with somebody, it will be available. And if anybody has questions, they can contact me or Seth afterwards. So we have the pleasure of having SocialSuite join us today, which is a global ESG and social impact software disclosure platform adopted by over 160 organizations worldwide. Publicly-traded companies across the Australian Stock exchange, the ASX, New York, NASDAQ OTC markets and more than 100 nonprofits, such as Big Brothers, Big Sisters, the Princess Trust, the YMCA, trust Socialsuite to track and disclose the changes they are making to the world. SocialSuite has offices in Austin, Texas, here in the New York City area, San Francisco, Melbourne, Australia as well as Vancouver. And from SocialSuite, I've got the pleasure of having Seth Forman who is the President of ESG SocialSuite based here in the New York area, a seasoned strategist, data-driven SaaS technology leader. Seth is responsible for the global commercial team driving business growth and advancing the company's product offerings to help organizations track and measure and disclose ESG. So ESG, Environmental, Social and Governance. We've heard an awful lot of noise about this. There's all kinds of questions we get asked all the time. And welcome, Seth, for joining us. Before we get started, I wanted to just kind of lay the groundwork a little bit. And I was hoping that you can tell us what is ESG and why is it important for a small-cap or a micro-cap company to start thinking about this.

Well, thanks, Andy. And first, let me thank yourself and the OTC Markets Group for inviting me to present today. ESG has become one of the most prolific and exciting new drivers of business all around the world, and it's a topic all business leaders no matter of size of company or who you are in your company need to be paying attention to. That said, ESG for many is complex. It can be overwhelming. And so today, we'll be breaking down ESG with a real focus for small-cap companies and just simple and manageable themes and best practices. So yes, let's kick things off. And Andy, it's a really good first question to let's knock out the basics here, and what is ESG. So ESG is an acronym for Environmental, Social And governance. When you think about it, it's a new set of considerations that are used mainly by investor stakeholders to evaluate risk of companies, mainly around their nonfinancial criteria. But what we're seeing is that an evolving nature of ESG to also include many other stakeholders in terms of the impact ESG can have. And so when you think about what ESG is, starting with the E, environmental, environmental factors and policies related to emissions, recycling, water usage, pollution and so on and so forth. Social, the S, is more related to policies and goals around diversity, human rights, labor-related policies and other more social factors. And the G, governance, governance and many of you are public companies on the call, and some of the governance disclosures you may already disclosed, but governance factors are items like purpose statement. What does your organization stand for? Political engagement, anticorruption policies and so on. So ESG altogether, when you bring it all together, it's really a compelling set of nonfinancial criteria to transparently share with multiple stakeholders, how your organization impacts climate, the world and society. So if we could go on to the next slide. Thank you. I'll go one back if you don't mind. Yes. So it's important to look at when you're looking at ESG. If you think about it and you zoom out ESG, there's a lot of drivers around ESG in terms of the different stakeholders involved, investors stakeholders, customer stakeholders and employees these major stakeholders all have relation to ESG. And we're going to go through each one of those factors that really determine why ESG is so important. But then when you zoom in, and you look at within your company, ESG also has impact across multiple departments within an organization. It starts with the Board, and then it moves down to your executive management team. And then it could also include the legal teams, HR teams, marketing teams, really across the gamut and the departments that are mainly involved are really dependent around the objectives of your ESG policy and why you're doing. Is it more investor, stakeholders, it could be more related to your finance team. If it's more customer stakeholders, it could be more in relation to your marketing teams or HR. So we're going to be going through all of that as we go through the presentation. But in the end, it's about the outcomes. What are the results that you're trying to drive to? What are the benefits? And ESG can have many benefits related to raising capital to the reputation of your company to your brands and ultimately about your people, it can help with recruitment and retainment and hiring. So there's a lot of outcomes that ESG can have across an organization. So we're going to go through all of that today. So we go to the next slide, please. So as discussed, the 3 main stakeholders around why ESG is important is really related to investors, your customers and your employees. Let's start with investors. So if we could go to the next slide. Thank you. So with investors, when you look at the broad spectrum of investors, you have institutional investors, you have retail investors, and we're going to go through both. Now with institutional investors, there's hundreds of institutional investors all around the world that make up billions and billions and billions, even trillions of dollars collectively that look at ESG and will have ESG's inputs in the way that they evaluate companies in which they're going to either invest into or participate in their funds. So if you're a company that doesn't have an ESG reporter hasn't started their ESG journey, institutional investors that actually do have ESG as an input into how they evaluate they will screen out companies that don't have any ESG report. And so that's a potential list opportunity if you haven't started ESG. And then conversely, if you're a company looking to raise capital from investors and there are many investors that do require ESG as part of their criteria and you're out in market trying to proactively raise capital and you don't have that ESG report and that also could potentially lead to a negative outcome of not being able to raise that money from an ESG-based investor. So ultimately, reporting an ESG has a real net benefit from institutional investors. And then if you look at retail investors, there's a lot of research, particularly with the younger retail investor, Gen X, millennials, they do deeply care about ESG. In fact, there was a Wall Street Journal article just from a few weeks ago. looking at Stanford University Research that did a whole analysis of retail investors, and they saw that with the Gen X and millennial retail investors 91% we're even willing to lose money on their investment so long as the companies had ESG-driven goals, particularly around the environment. So those retail investors deeply care about ESG. And again, it's something that you really need to be paying attention to from that investor point of view. If we go to the next slide. So then we're moving into the customer stakeholder. So let's start with what is the customer stakeholders. What does that mean? And when we think about the customer stakeholder, we're talking about large cap companies, multinational companies across a variety of different industries, auto manufacturers like General Motors, technology like Apple in the media and advertising world, big media agencies. What we're seeing happening is that these multinationals are under tremendous pressure from their shareholders, from their -- from governments, from investors to really push and strive to be more sustainable organizations. And so what they're doing is using the massive amount of buying power that they have as multinationals to push down into their supply chains to ensure that their suppliers are more sustainable, that their suppliers are measuring aspects of ESG or tracking aspects of ESG and are reporting on this. And so when you -- if you're a small-cap or a micro-cap, private company even and you're selling your service up into the -- your product up to these multinationals, you have to start paying attention to ESG, if you haven't started yet. You may already -- you may be getting RFP or request for proposals or questionnaires from your large cap companies ask about sustainability action. And so it's really important to pay attention to this even down to, let's say, a battery mineral micro-cap. If you are looking to eventually get either when offtake agreements from the automobile manufacturers or other intermediaries, it's the GMs of the world, the different auto manufacturers of the world are already requiring down at their supply chains to have ESG-driven reporting. And so it's something to make that of. Let's go to the next slide.

Before we go to the next slide, I want to just interject for a minute because last week, I was reading that the Biden administration announced that they will remove barriers to ESG investing in retirement plans. And this may potentially lead to more choices for investors. We talked about investors, we're talking about customers before we get to employees. Does this mean that plan administrators may consider climate change and other ESG factors when selecting managers for defined benefit plans or selecting funds for defined contribution plans and lineups coming up into the next year?

Yes. That was big news. It's really -- you're seeing it allows retirement fiduciaries, your fidelities of the world, et cetera, to be able to include ESG as part of their potential funds that they can promote to different investors or retire or people managing the retirement accounts. But I think the main takeaway is that you're seeing even more money, more flow of money that is being driven into ESG-based investing. And ultimately, that means that it's another reason why companies should be paying attention and ultimately starting and starting that ESG journey because you're continuing to see more and more dollars flow into ESG-based investment opportunities. All right. So let's go into the next slide. Yes. So employees, another stakeholder. And as we know, in any organization, your people matter the most. And you're only going to be a successful as your people in any organization. And what we're seeing is a lot of research showing that younger employees, millennials, Gen Xers, folks just coming out of college are deeply driven around, and want to work for purpose-driven organizations. Companies that are transparent around what they're planning on doing related to ESG and sustainability. And so when it comes to recruiting, talent, retaining your talent, companies that have strategies, report, transparent and are thoughtful around what they're doing around ESG have a real advantage for recruiting and retainment purposes. And so the employee stakeholder is becoming incredibly important for organizations. And another reason why it's just so important to get started on your ESG journey.

So Seth, we talk about this from an operational standpoint from adopting an ESG internal culture for the company, but I just want to shift over here because we deal in a world of public companies, okay? And these are all important stakeholders, but are public companies required to report on ESG? And maybe you can touch and expand on that a little bit before we move on.

Yes. Yes, it's a great question, Andy. And so today, in the U.S. market, we'll start -- we'll stick to the U.S., ESG reporting is voluntary. So it's voluntary nonfinancial disclosures. Now what we're seeing is the SEC has a climate disclosure proposal that is in review. It's been delayed a couple of times. Now it's looking like a decision will be made at some point potentially early next year. It's unclear. It's continuing to be up for public comments. In general, what it's looking like is what the SEC is trying to do ideally is to align it with the TCFD, the task force on climate-related financial disclosures, which is a framework related to climate disclosures and mainly around reporting on emissions. So your Scope 1 emissions, which are direct emissions. Scope 2, which is indirect, but it's -- things like your electricity emissions and electricity usage. And then potentially Scope 3, which is your upstream and downstream suppliers. Scope 3 is up for debate as to whether that will be included as well. So we'll see in terms of timing and who this would apply to it's for -- if it does pass, it will immediately apply to large-cap companies for most of the folks on this call for small-caps and small reporting companies. That's something that if it is -- if it potentially this past next year would be something that would apply at some point around 2024 and 2025 depending on the size of the company. So you'll have time to prepare. But absolutely, this is something that you need to watch. But right now today, it's voluntary reporting. Yes. All right. So let's go to the next slide. Now we've gone through why ESG is important and all the stakeholders that ESG will impact. So what's -- I think the question is what's holding back more small-caps from getting started on that journey. And so there's a number of these misconceptions that I will hear and my team will hear in market that I want to talk about. And the first one is we hear a lot about how ESG can be this really complex process, messy process. There's some hundreds of frameworks, all these different metrics. It's really hard to choose what to actually do. And we're going to talk about that, that ESG can be expensive. There's consultants after. They're charging way up into the 6 figures and that's holding people back. That ESG can be really time-consuming, something that could potentially take 6 even a year to go through that process and report. And then there's the confidence layer, the misconception that, hey, ESG is only for sustainable companies. So I don't need -- I don't -- it's not for me. And again, that's another misconception that we hear a lot about, and it's just not true. And across all these different specific misconceptions, there is a path that's a way to overcome all of these things, where ESG can be simple, ESG can be cost effective, ESG can be a well-managed process. So it doesn't pick up too many of your resources. And ESG is for everybody. ESG can apply to any company, whether you're a mining company to a software company, to technology and manufacturing. It's really for everyone.

So Seth, so here I am. We've addressed the general issues around it, some of the misperceptions things to think about, but I'm the CEO of a small-capital or micro-cap company, okay? And this could be overwhelming to me, how do I get started? How do I organize myself and what are the major maybe the entry barriers to get going. Maybe you can kind of touch upon some of that for the journey of ESG within a company.

Yes. And that's a really good segue, Andy, and a really important question. So why don't we move into the kickoff consideration slide, which is the next slide. And it's -- to answer the question, I think it's important to really think about how do we set that foundation. And what are all these different considerations that you should be thinking about as an organization? So the first one is this idea of perfection. You really shouldn't wait for perfection. Perfection is no one's ready immediately. You don't have every disclosure. You don't have every metric. You can't report on every framework. This is a journey. And so what's most important that we strongly encourage companies to do is that you just kind of have to jump in. And you have to get started, and that's really about action, and really setting that baseline and setting that the goals of what you're looking to achieve and ultimately, that takes action. The next factor here is this idea of complexity. Now you don't want to overthink ESG. There's a lot of information. There's a lot of complexity out there. but it really comes down to reporting on a set of metrics that are material to your business. So a good first step is to discuss materiality with your stakeholders what issues are material -- have a material impact on your business. And it doesn't only have to be about your internal materiality, but it also should be that externally and who are those key stakeholders that would be involved and what's material to them. So really helping you understand those issues, both internal and external and building that framework is a really good place to start, and that helps you drive towards that process of simplicity and trying to simplify this process. So the next one around limited capacity. While it's important that you want to build that internal capacity around ESG, you don't want to let a lack of time keep you from getting started. And then that's where seeking external support from partners, consultants, vendors can really help you if you've never done this before, and particularly help you through those first steps of -- in that journey. Expense. So the next one here, ESG can be expensive, but if you find the right support and platform, it doesn't actually have to be a significant cost to your business. The resources like things like money and time, you spend on the ESG or actually invested into capturing some of the value that you can get from ESG. And when you think about earlier, we talked about those key stakeholders, investors, like raising capital customers, winning business, your employees, getting ready for potential regulatory actions that come into play. The investment that you made into ESG will have a really good return on your business. So it really needs to be thought of that way where this is a real investment into the future of your business. So moving into the next is the commitment. So commitment to ESG is important, but you have to follow through with implementation. While a genuine commitment is crucial, a visible lack of implementation and progress and improvement can potentially trigger perceptions of greenwashing. So you really want to follow through on those commitments that you're making. And then the final one here is Sprint. So ESG reporting is not a one-off exercise that can be completed in a really quick sprint out of the box. Of course, you can pull together a report quickly, but in the end, it's really about demonstrating an ongoing basis how you responsibly, transparently and sustainably operate and govern your business. That's why building that internal capacity and embedding ESG across your organization is so incredibly important.

Okay. So we think when I think back at this, don't wait, okay? But as this is kind of aligning a structure for the CEO or CFO to think about it, I want to just ask you a question that comes up all the time. And you mentioned commitment and the word greenwashing comes up. Can you just explain what greenwashing is and its impact and its misunderstanding under ESG.

Yes, Absolutely. So the term Greenwashing. It's really used to describe the company or fund that's disclosing a certain level of ESG related information that either is fabricating that information in terms of what they're actually doing or isn't following through on the commitments that they're making. So really, it's this essence of misleading the public or misleading investors or consumers. And so this is becoming a real issue because there's there are fines that are coming down. The SEC has fined certain banking institutions globally as well. This is happening ASIC, which is a regulatory body out of Australia. Just recently is starting to fine organizations. You're seeing out of Europe, many regulatory bodies all across Europe are finding organizations for greenwashing. So it's really important that whatever you are disclosing that you're following through on those commitments. And again, I think that's another reason why as you dip your toe into these waters into ESG, making sure that you have a partner that is done to support an expert that you work with so that you avoid any sort of nature of the idea of greenwashing for your organization. Great. Let's go to the next slide. So as we move into this next section, we want to touch on some of those basic steps that you can take as an organization to get started and to start your journey. And the first step is this notion of a baseline report. What we mean by a baseline report is looking at your organization. Now many of you on the call as public companies, you disclosed certain information. Many of the governance factors you may already be disclosing as it relates to ESG. So you kind of already have that starting point. And so the baseline report is really looking at what you already disclosed, overlaying it against a framework. So at Socialsuite, one of the frameworks that we highlight and use as the World Economic Forum, stakeholder capitalism framework. And so the idea of the baseline is, hey, looking at what you already disclosed, overlaying it against the World Economic Forum framework and saying, okay, here are the items you already disclosed, you've already had disclosures on and then you know what you don't have disclosed. And so it gives you that starting point to say, okay, here's everything that I need to work on. And then what you can do with that baseline is, one, you could share it internally, you can share it externally. But more importantly, it allows you to plan. It allows you to set goals, it allows you to set priorities to then really progress through the rest of the report. And so that's really a really good starting point. Step 2 and really in conjunction with step 1 is this idea of an external review. And having and leveraging partners to help you stay accountable to build up your knowledge, build up your education, help you navigate through the waters of ESG and through this evolving landscape, identify opportunities. And that's why it's so important to have that third-party partner. Let's go to step 3 on the next slide. So step 3 embed ESG in your business, you want to make sure that, one your Board is involved that it's on your Board's agenda and your executive management team's agenda. And it's really embraced across the organization. It's part of your everyday decisions. It's part of your operations. It really kind of is bled into the organization -- blended into the organization as a whole. And then we have step 4, which is around the promotion and amplifying that message. If you're going to take all this time to develop an ESG report and take that sustainability action, it really should be rewarded. You want to promote this. You want to talk about it internally. I talked to a lot of CEOs that once they have the report, they'll set up in all hands. They'll share it with all of their internal teams. They'll share it externally as well with different stakeholders and investors. You want to make sure your messages are clear. And ultimately, everything that you're talking about are really actionable sense and transparent sense as it relates to your ESG strategy. Let's go to the next slide. And then let's take a moment to talk about what does success look like. And so we'll go to one example. So if you go to the next slide, One example that we have is with the company that Socialsuite work with called FYI Resources. This is an OTCQX-listed company. So FYI, they're a critical mineral company before working with us. They've never done an ESG report. And for them, they wanted to invest into ESG for investor reasons to have a report because they were noticing that many investors that they were speaking to are asking them questions and want to see what they were doing around ESG. And then they also wanted to find a way that they could improve their ESG scoring. And so as it relates to ESG scoring, there's a number of these rating companies out in the market that will rate companies based on their ESG data and ESG information. MSCI, Sustainalytics, there's many of them out there. And so they wanted to improve those ratings. And so they came to us. We helped them with strategy. We helped them with materiality, and we ultimately guided them through with your goal support and our platform to help them develop a ESG report that they were able to use in market, put it up on their website, share with their stakeholders, share with their employees. But one of the biggest wins for them was the -- once they got the report out to improve, they were able to improve their ESG ratings from Sustainalytics. So it was a big win for them as well. And we worked with many similar companies like this. Another example of success story, we were working with a micro-cap mining company that was looking to raise capital and they were able to raise upwards of $30 million from a Canadian fund that did use ESG in terms of how they evaluate the companies that they work with. And that's money that they wouldn't have received without the ESG report. And so there's a lot of examples of capital raising examples of meeting the needs of your customers and examples of helping and helping from recruiting and retainment purposes for companies that take that jump into that journey. And if we go to the next slide. So wrapping up here. I want to thank everybody for your time and for listening today. If you have any questions as it relates to ESG in general or if you're interested in learning more about Socialsuite, my contact information is right up here on the slide, feel free to e-mail me. My e-mail [email protected]. And again, my last words of encouragement are, if you have not started that journey, please start and looking forward to having conversations about this in the future.

So Seth, thank you for that guideline around that. I have a little -- I have a question. It sounds to me like when you solve for the E and the S, it's one matter, but under the G for governance, A lot of companies within a publicly quoted framework have requirements for reporting. So it covers a lot of their disclosure process within a framework. It sounds like best practices. When companies are exercising their best practices, they're probably, in some cases, doing a 1/4 to 1/3 of the work already, and they don't even -- they're not even aware of it because that's what the best practices will really start as guiding post. Would you maybe want to add a little bit to that or kind of drill down a little bit to a framework in terms of thinking about it for the particular businesses?

Yes, yes. I mean that's I think one of the -- for many companies, you've almost already dipped your toe in the water because you're a public company that -- and you're already disclosing certain ESG factors, and I think from there, it's really around, as you provide and you look at what an ESG framework can look like in all the different disclosures that you need to provide, that's the idea of -- once you have that baseline completed and you can then set those goals, you can progress. We see companies that they're playing out maybe quarterly, every quarter, you may attack -- sorry, tackle 1 or 2 disclosures. And so if you plan it out that way, the amount of time and the resources needed to accomplish ESG can be quite limited, and it doesn't take up a tremendous amount of resources to tackle. Now if you're a company that wants to get a report out, you have a really and give a time line -- a deadline to get it out, then there's also ways that you can really push it through over a very limited amount of time as well. And we've helped companies do that, but I think it really goes back to that journey and really setting those priorities and goals and planning from there.

Okay. Thank you, Seth. For those of you who may have joined us, who aren't aware, everyone on the webinar will receive not only a recording of this webinar. I see questions. If you have any questions, please put them up. I'm going to get to some questions. I see them populating. But a copy of this presentation as well as a recording of this will be sent to all of you who are registered. It will also be archived on the OTC Markets Group website as well. Seth, let's kick off to some questions that I have that are popping up on my screen. One is once the company chooses to go on this journey or into this ESG process, what kind of commitment should a corporate issuer expect in terms of time and resources. So I'll repeat it one more time. When a company chooses to go on to the ESG journey, what kind of commitment should the corporate issuer expect in terms of time and resources?

Yes. I think it depends on -- one it depends on what your goals are. Are you trying to are you trying to meet the needs of your investor stakeholders? Are you trying to meet the needs of customer stakeholders. I think it also depends on what deadlines you want to have? Are you trying to get a report out within a month. Are you trying to get it out in 6 months. So all those are factors in terms of time and resources. In general, if it's planned efficiently and you're working with a partner that can work with you through the process, what we find is that it's no more than a couple of hours per week if it's planned accordingly. And certainly, that's an average. Certain companies have tight deadlines, it could be more than that. But I think in general, probably I would say the most important thing is ensuring that there is -- you have a single project owner in the company that is tasked and own the project. whether it's a CFO, the CEO or there's someone else in the organization and then you are setting the right goals and you have that planned out so that ultimately, you can continue and the priority is your business but that you can also manage through your ESG reporting as you go through.

Thank you, Seth. We're populating with a lot of questions. So going to go into fast talk speed here so we can get through some of this stuff, but it's totally legible. Quick question. What leads to the failure in relation to ESG reporting, on the first part. And then there's also a lot of different ESG softwares. And how does an issuer know what to really use or how to focus on what might help them.

Yes. So on the first question, failures. So we -- I would say the primary -- what we've seen is that the primary path where there's been, let's say, a lack of progress on the ESG front. I would say one where ESG in general is not -- there's not buy-in at the Board level or executive management team. So I think that if there is a pocket of the organization that is easily looking at ESG but then the Board or executive team hasn't bought in and the organization isn't ready to push forward on it, you can see that lack of progress. And so with that, it's really important given that ESG is encompassing so many different parts of the organization, beta factors, HR, like diversity, people factors, planet factors, operations, Investor Relations that there's buying across the organization. And so that is critically important. And then I would say another factor is potentially sometimes where a company will want to get started and then some distraction comes up and they have to delay the ability to keep going. And I think that, that's something where we stress and encourage customers that we work with is that once you're ready to go, really prioritize getting that baseline completed, ideally within 30 to 60 days because then you have that starting point and then you can build from there. So really maintain consistency and really focus on that baseline report. Sorry, Andy. And the second question?

The second question was there are many different types of ESG softwares. And how does an insurer know what to use -- and maybe you can translate that into a little bit of how Socialsuite conducts their process as well or kind of help the question.

Yes, there are a lot of ESG software. There's a lot of vendors that are out there. I think that it's important to ask questions related to -- starting with like what's the typical customer that, that software is -- that software company works with. If you're a small-cap company, and you're engaging with a software company that really only works with large caps, then there could be misalignment, both on price, product cost, support. So I think that's really important to make sure that you're aligning yourself with the software company that is a similar size and scope and works with similar kind of companies. And that also goes not only by size of the company but also sector. What kind of -- what's the expertise of the software as it relates to the sector that you operate in. So that alignment is important. I think from a questions like what types of ESG frameworks does that software operate under is another question that should be asked, what kind of support that they provide. I think that particularly what we find with companies that have never done ESG reporting before, there is going to be a fairly sizable amount of support that's going to be needed. You don't have -- most of these companies at a small-cap and micro-cap level, you don't have a Chief Sustainability Officer. You don't have a team of 20 ESG experts like a lot of large and mid-cap have. And so you really want a partner that can provide that augmented and fractional ESG expertise as you go through this journey. And so that support layer and questions around what kind of support that you're going to receive as an organization are really important to ask. And then finally, related to the question around what ESG software is preferred by investors. I would say it's more aligned to what frameworks are preferred by investors. So what we generally find is with -- part of it's market driven. So in North America, particularly in the U.S., a lot of you see across the gamut where investors have a whole range. Some investors will prefer SASB framework, some may prefer GRI and others generally from my own opinion is in the U.S. market, SASB is generally the most widely adopted by investors. But there's a lot of other frameworks that investors look, World Economic Forums, another one. But I would say SASB is probably the most prolific for U.S. for investors.

Thank you, Seth. Moving on to -- I'll be able to squeeze in 1 or 2 more questions here. Is your centralized area or ESG data reporting center that investors can actually look up companies and see how they report? Or is it simply limited to carving that out within your quarterly and annual reportings that you have for the market?

Yes. And what we see is, one, once you have an ESG report, you should absolutely put it up on your website or in your IR portion of your website, similar to your other disclosures. And as it relates to the -- how investors are receiving this data and how they're evaluating companies, the ESG, some of the investors will purchase subscriptions and look at data from any of these ESG rating companies, MSCI Sustainalytics. There's many, many of these different ESG rating companies. And so that's one avenue. How the ESG rating companies evaluate companies are ranges. Some of them will have potentially catalysts that will go in and pull out and actually download your ESG reports and they'll review it. Some of them will push out web crawlers that will automatically pull in data from publicly-listed companies and pull in ESG data. So it ranges. I think we also see certain investors, the more sophisticated investors actually have their own internal ESG methodology is where they're pulling in inputs, ESG inputs through a variety of ESG rating companies, other ESG sources of data publicly, public data, and then they have their own methodologies and their own scoring in terms of their ESG investment. So it really runs the gamut. So...

Okay. I've got one more question here. Although there is not a specific framework for micro-cap and small-cap companies on how they should report nor does OTC have a mandatory driven process to do that. What I'm seeing is that many investors are very interested to hear what small-caps and micro-caps are doing to address these features to how are you trading it internally? How are you creating a plan for execution, and I think what this is leading me is that, that will develop over time before we get to that critical point of requirements. But Seth, if I gave you a crystal ball based on some of that framework and what you've seen, what do you see? And what does Socialsuite expect an ESG over the next, let's say, 12 to 18 to 24 months, the next year to 2. We can tie in some things that you've seen that have small issuers have done and also investors calling companies and saying, what is your strategy, calling to the CFO and have that. So I kind of lumped in 2 questions together there. But in the interest of time, I wanted to kind of get that in.

Yes, yes. I think if we zoom out, when you look at what's driving issue, where does this even come from? And a lot of it's been driven out of societal concerns. And I think that when you look at climate change, climate risk, all these factors down at the society level, consumer level, that's going to continue to be a major driver. And that society driver is going to push into organizations and businesses to see action. And then you're also going to see a push on the regulatory front. So when you break this down and a lot of the stakeholders that we talked about today, that pressure going into the big multinationals coming from their shareholders there from society, that's only going to become more and more prevalent, which is going to create more action down into the supply chains of these different organizations where we're going to see -- I could see in a year or 2 years from now, where big multinationals may have specific goals they need their suppliers to hit in order to maintain business with them or incentives that they may release if you hit certain goals. I can see that happening. You can see on the regulatory front, there is no question that major markets around the world are going to have pass some aspects of certain climate disclosure requirements that's only going to have more need for public companies to report any issue and prepare for ESG. So this is a topic that's only going to become more and more important, and it's only more important that companies really need to start actively getting started today, whether it's certain preparations, discussions, Ideally, it's actually taking that action and starting that journey.

Okay. I have one more question, and I think a lot of people always ask this, and we'll wrap up with this is what can a company expect in terms of a good low-cost framework to get started into this and what are the average cost? Because everybody always asks me the cost. Maybe you can kind of just give us a quick answer on that, and then we'll have to wrap up after that.

Yes. So cost-wise, I would say, number one, there's actions that you could take today as an organization and resources available that you can start those preparations, where you can at least start thinking about materiality, start thinking about what's important, what objectives you want to set, what stakeholders the most important for your organization that doesn't cost anything. That's just using internal resources or at least having certain initial engagements with consultants or vendors to learn more about this and using resources that are out there. So there's no question that's an option. As you engage with software and different platforms that are out there, cost-wise, mainly based on size of company, this can range at minimum for basic software down to $15,000 per year, and that can go all the way up into $30,000 to $40,000 per year at a micro to small-cap level, but then that can absolutely skyrocket up depending on the type of service, the type of packages that you need and the types of vendors that you're working with. But that, hopefully, Andy, that gives an initial range of what to expect from a software solution.

That is great. I want to thank you, Seth, for joining us. I know there's a couple of more questions, but Seth, I'll let you address those privately after the webinar. I want to thank you for having SocialSuite here at global ESG social impact software disclosure platform, which is at a reasonable cost for -- actually a low cost for a lot of corporate issuers in the micro-cap space. Seth, Thank you for your expertise. And I also want to thank all the panelists. I want to thank all the attendees for signing up. This will be made available and an archive all of you will get an e-mail of this, any further questions, they can e-mail to you or to me, andy@otcmarkets. And thank you very much, and that's a wrap.

Thanks, everybody. Thanks for -- thank you. Thanks, Andy.