PyroGenesis Inc. (PYR) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone. My name is Rodayna Kafal, and I'm Vice President, Investor Relations and Strategic Business Development and current board member of PyroGenesis. The Annual Shareholders' Meeting is about to begin. Instructions on how to ask questions and the voting procedure will appear on your screens. As with any technology, unexpected glitches may occur, but our service providers for this platform at Lumi, are very experienced at running this type of meeting, and will help us out. We will conduct the vote on each of the matters before us by a poll. On each poll, every shareholder's entitled to vote on the matter, has 1 vote in respect of each share entitled to be voted on the matter and held by that shareholder. The poll will be open for all resolutions at the same time. This will allow you to choose to vote on each resolution immediately or wait until conclusion of discussion on each resolution prior to casting your votes.

Thank you. Thank you, Rodayna. Good morning, everyone. [Foreign Language] This meeting will now come to order. This is the 13th Annual Meeting of the shareholders of PyroGenesis Canada Inc. My name is Alan Curleigh. I am the Chair of the Board of Directors, and I will act as a Chair for this meeting. I would like to introduce the other current members of the Board who are present and one who's not present. Andrew Abdalla, is a member of the Board; Dr. Virendra Jha, a member; Rodayna Kafal is a member; and Ben Naccarato is a member. Robert Radin is here today as is Nannette Ramsey. I'd like to say that our CEO and President, Photis Peter Pascali, has taken the leave today to attend his son's graduation ceremony. We have also present the management team, Steve McCormick is the Corporate Vice President; Mark Paterson is General Counsel of PyroGenesis; Andre Mainella, our Chief Financial Officer of PyroGenesis; Sara-Catherine Tolszczuk, Corporate Secretary of PyroGenesis, who will act or be acting as the Secretary for this meeting; and Isabelle Vachon and Bertrand Gely of TSX Trust Company, the Registrar and Transfer Agent of PyroGenesis who will act as scrutineers of this meeting. In accordance with the Notice and Access procedures, PyroGenesis has sent all shareholders through its transfer agent or other intermediaries, a notice of availability of the proxy materials for the meeting, and is applicable a former proxy or a building instruction form and forming of the website where the meeting materials can be found, how to access the meeting materials online and how the shareholders can access a paper copy of this meeting -- of the meeting materials, excuse me. Now the notice sent to shareholders also contains basic information about the meeting, such as the matters for which and both will be held. We will forego the reading of the notice as it has been made available to all shareholders of PyroGenesis entitled to receive such notice, together with the other meeting materials, including the management information circular, the former proxy, PyroGenesis' financial statements and the auditor's report thereon. Ms. Vachon and Mr. Gely had filed with PyroGenesis proof of mailing of all of these media materials. The declaration as to this mailing is available for inspection by any shareholder. The Secretary will append proof of this mailing to the minutes of the meeting. The corporation's bylaws provide that a person present at the opening of a meeting of shareholders and representing personally or by proxy, one or more shareholders holding 5% of the issued and outstanding voting shares of the corporation to constitute a quorum for transaction of business. I will now ask Mark Paterson, General Counsel for the corporation to explain how the participants may vote and ask questions. Mark?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Today, registered shareholders and duly appointed proxy holders who are attending the meeting have the ability to vote online through the Lumi platform. For those of you that have already voted in advance of the meeting, you do not need to do anything today. The poll will remain open throughout the meeting until the last business item has been put to a vote and the Chair of the meeting declares the voting to be closed. Preliminary results will be provided at the end of this meeting, and final results will be posted on SEDAR. Participating shareholders and duly appointed proxy holders may ask questions through the Lumi platform by clicking on the messaging tab. Please type your name and then type your question and submit. We ask that you keep your comments brief and ask one question at a time and questions should be of a general nature that would be of interest to all shareholders rather than of a personal nature. Questions related to items of business will be addressed immediately before each item is put to a vote and questions of a general nature will be addressed during the question period after the Chair's remark.

Well, thank you, Mark. Notice has been served in accordance with the Canada Business Corporations Act and PyroGenesis' bylaws and quorum being present, I declare that this meeting is duly constituted for the transaction of business. The Secretary will annex the scrutineers' report to the minutes of this meeting. The polls will now be opened. The first item of business is a presentation of the annual audited consolidated financial statements of PyroGenesis for the year ended December 31, 2022, and the auditors report thereon. These financial statements as well as the related management discussion and analysis are available under PyroGenesis profile on SEDAR. I now present to the meeting the financial statements together with the auditor's report thereon. I ask the secretary to keep a copy of these financial statements with the minutes to this meeting. Rodayna, are there any questions in respect to the presentation of the financial statements?

We have not received any questions on this topic.

Thank you. Thank you, Rodayna. The next item of business is the election of the corporation's directors. The articles of the corporation provide that it shall have not less than 3 and not more than 15 directors. It is proposed by both management and the directors that 7 directors be elected to the Board of Directors for the upcoming year. The following 7 nominees are put forward as candidates to serve as directors for the following year. First is Andrew Abdalla, Alan Curleigh, myself, Dr. Virendra Jha, Ben Naccarato, Photis Peter Pascali, Robert Radin and Nannette Ramsey. At this moment, I would like to acknowledge the valuable contributions to the Board by Rodayna Kafal over the past several years. While Rodayna is not running for reelection as a Director, we are pleased that she will remain actively collaborating with the Board in her capacity as a corporation's Vice President, Investor Relations and Strategic Business Development. Rodayna, have you received any questions from participants on the nominations?

Thank you, Alan. And no, we have not received any questions on this topic.

Thank you. As there no further discussion, I declare that the nomination be closed. May I please have a motion to elect the nominated candidates as directors of the corporation.

I move to add 7 candidates nominated be elected as Directors of the corporation for the ensuing year.

Thank you, Bob. Could I have a second the motion, please?

I second that motion.

Thank you, Nannette. Thank you all. You have heard the motion made by Robert Radin and seconded by Nannette Ramsey. I will now proceed with the vote. I will pause to allow participants to register their votes. [Voting]

Thank you. I will now move on to the matter of the appointment of the auditors for the corporation. Rodayna, have you received any questions on the appointment of the auditors?

We have not received any questions from participants on this topic.

Thank you. May I have a motion, please regarding the reappointment of Raymond Chabot Grant Thornton as auditors of the corporation.

I move that Raymond Chabot Grant Thornton LLP certified public accountants, be reappointed as the independent auditors of the corporation and that the Board of Directors be authorized to fix the auditor's remuneration.

Thank you.

I second that.

Thank you, Robert. Thank you. Thank you. You have heard the motion made by Nannette Ramsey and seconded by Robert Radin. I will now proceed with a vote -- the vote. I will pause to allow participants to register their votes. [Voting]

Thank you. Well, this brings us to the end of the formal business of this meeting. In a moment, Mr. Steve McCormick, Corporate Vice President of the Corporation, will provide an update and overview of PyroGenesis' business affairs. The corporation will also have a question period during which moderated questions that were submitted prior to in this meeting will be answered. Following that, our scrutineers will announce the results of the voting. I will give you one last minute to cast your votes before we conclude the formal part of this meeting. [Voting]

Thank you, everyone. The formal part of this meeting has now ended and the voting polls are closed. Thank you all for your participation. I will now hand things over to Steve. Steve?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Much appreciated. Hello. Good morning, all, [Foreign Language], and thanks to all for joining us today. I'm Steve McCormick, Vice President, Corporate Affairs, and I'm going to spend the next little while providing some background information and an overview of the company before providing a quick walk through some of our key business areas and technologies. For those investors who have seen similar presentations in the past, please note, we have updated the presentation significantly, so it might still be of interest to you. But first, here's our forward-looking statement. Please read this at your leisure. The company released news this morning regarding a partnership with Aluminerie Alouette, I will discuss this in more detail later in the presentation. So to get started. PyroGenesis listed on the NASDAQ just over 2 years ago in March 2021 and on the TSX formats before that, the company is part of and primarily serves the industrial technology sector. PyroGenesis has a 30-year history of continuously researching and improving its core expertise and ultra-high temperature processes, developing new ways to support heavy industry as those industries adapt to an ever-changing environment of energy, fuel and raw materials. So in business for 30 years, the company's achievements began accelerating over the past 5. During that time, the company uplisted to the senior capital markets through its patent base and production backlog significantly entered entirely new sectors and introduced several new technologies with what the company believes have major commercial potential. The second production plant was opened for a total manufacturing footprint of more than 70,000 square feet and by adding to perhaps the largest collection of experts in our field under one roof, the company doubled its staff count. PyroGenesis resides in Canada with the head office and engineering headquarters as well as 2 production plants all in Montreal, Quebec. From this location, we serve a global customer base. In fact, one of our newest customers is perhaps our furthest away yet in New Zealand. After more than 3 decades in business, management believes that the company is reaching its most exciting point yet. The customers we serve in heavy industry sectors of virtually all types from aluminum to waste management, automotive to mining and others in between are finally beginning to respond in force to demands to decarbonize to change their fuel sources and their energy inputs to dramatically revise their thinking around not just what they produce, but also the impact of that production, what they leave behind. And this situation is central to the investment thesis in PyroGenesis. As more companies respond to those pressures, and widespread adoption of technologies to facilitate those paradigm shifts becomes less of a choice and more of a necessity, management believes that PyroGenesis is well placed to capitalize. The company has worked hard to be strategically positioned to serve many of the largest, most environmentally impactful sectors: aluminum, mining, steel making, manufacturing in several different ways, including categories where we are, if not the only or primary option due to IP protection over the process, but have what we feel is a strong advantage technically or otherwise. And a big part of that advantage is our core innovation. Central to the company's expertise and ultra high temperature processes is our particular skill in plasma. For description purposes, plasma is electrically charged particles within superheated gas. The biggest example of course, being the sun. It's often called the fourth state of matter after solid, liquid and gas when you heat each of those, you get the next. So when you heat gas to a high enough temperature, you create plasma. Now plasma has been used industrially since the 1960s. But over the course of a few decades and with some of the world's top plasma experts in-house, we've taken industrial plasma to all new heights, introducing new uses that we believe are helping to change both industry and the world for the better. And when we say ultra-high temperature, that's not an exaggeration because the plasma PyroGenesis creates can be just as hot as the surface of the sun, up to 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit. And that's important because it's at those temperatures where the unique impact of plasma can take hold. Plasma has many uses. It could be a source of heat. It can purify. It can reduce combined elements back to their various original separate forms, they can alter the state of a material and it can destroy. With that type of impact being possible, we have developed and continue to develop technology solutions that exploit that immense power. For example, PyroGenesis is impacting the steelmaking and iron ore industries by offering an alternative to oil burning furnaces using clean electric plasma torches, which eliminates greenhouse gas emissions. We are the inventor of the de facto standard for creating the highest quality metal powders for use in printing and additive manufacturing and our hazardous waste and chemical destruction systems are deployed both on land and at sea. It's unrelated as these solutions be seen, the defining aspect is no use of fossil fuels and no release of greenhouse gas with a number of different technologies in this vein as well as several more both related and unrelated. The question becomes how does this fit into a cohesive overall business strategy. I'd like to spend some time now explaining how we're pulling all of this together to best match our marketplace potential. Our full offering is substantial and growing, so understandably, may be a little complicated to new investors. But as some investors might have seen in some of the more recent filings, we've been slowly consolidating our solutions within 3 pillars or tiers, 3 verticals that align with key economic drivers affecting heavy industry, both in the present and more importantly, well into the future. And those are: energy transition and admission reduction, commodity security and optimization and waste remediation. Simplifying our solutions under this ecosystem helps potential clients better understand what we do and helps the company itself have a more dedicated focus. There's a tremendous amount of opportunity within this structure. And while there's always a possibility for exceptions, generally, if it doesn't fit within one of these verticals, we're probably not going to do it. So as we look to the future and focus our outbound sales on these 3 verticals, another big part of our growth strategy is by taking advantage of our past. Our 30-year history has created deep relationships with industry clients, government, academic institutions and research entities, including other engineers in the field, even the military. Being on the inside as a technical supplier or a research cohort allows us to see customer challenges firsthand, which leads to cross-sell of other solutions, development of new technologies, cooperation with other suppliers that can lead to M&A activities or request for engineering studies that have led to partnerships and joint ventures. Speaking of which, this morning, we released news detailing a contract that deepens our relationship with Aluminerie Alouette, right here in Quebec, who are operators of the largest aluminum smelter in the Americas. Alouette also released this news. If you go to alouette.com, you will see in their media section the announcement itself. Now this partnership, which has grown as of today to $2.7 million is a perfect example of the type of growth I just mentioned. We've been engaging with Alouette starting in very small ways going back to 2011, submitting ideas, eventually being requested to provide engineering research support, then all the way up to May 2021, where we received a grant to work in conjunction with Alouette to investigate development of a solution to recover material from a particular aspect of the aluminum process called spent pot linings. I'll have more on that later, so that approach works. It's taken 12 years in this case, but we are now deeply engaged with a huge entity that is Alouette, along with their powerful consortium of co-owners in a partnership, and the revenue has now started to come through, and that's all just one technology. So now let's turn to some of the rest of the key technologies within each of the verticals within our ecosystem. Each of these verticals has several different offerings at different stages. Some commercialized, some commercial ready where we are negotiating or pitching for first-time sales and others coming up behind in pilot phase or early development, and we didn't include everything we have on this chart. The in development phase, especially has much more happening behind the scenes, and we'll have more information on some of those as they move a little forward. So leading into the first pillar, energy transition and emission reduction. We see heavy industry facing impending carbon and greenhouse gas reduction targets with a need to switch to fuels, with the need to switch fuels growing more urgent, that means reducing the reliance on burning fossil fuels and increasing their use of clean electricity based solutions or solutions that benefit from the generation of fuel from waste gas or off-gas sources. While this has been true for years, a number of tailwinds are driving the impetus for change. These include rising carbon taxes on heavy industry, commitment by industries such as aluminum to honor or surpass the climate change targets of the Paris accord, which directly means lowering industry carbon output levels and even aiming to become net zero as an emission producer by 2050 and large-scale government incentive programs around green energy and emission reduction, such as what was contained in the recent U.S. Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA. As for specific technologies within this pillar, first, for the iron ore industry, effectively an upstream step in the steelmaking process and one of the most polluting industries in the world. The industry itself is under intense pressure to reduce their impact subject to huge financial penalties and fast rising carbon taxes. Now steelmakers have taken some steps in the past and recently towards decarbonization, such as using electric arc furnaces, hydrogen-based steelmaking and even battery-powered trucks for transport, but those are at the midstream and downstream parts of the steelmaking process. Upstream, where the ore is mined and made ready for transport for use in steel mills, the emission situation is still bleak, and one of the worst offenders is the process known as pelletization, where lower quality iron ore is blended and baked into marble-sized pellets. The challenge there lies with the fact that the existing baking process relies on diesel or bunker fuel or natural gas as the fuel in the baking furnaces. All of these are fossil fuels with the resulting emissions issues. And as for bunker fuel, in particular, which is widely used, it's a sludge-like residue that is highly polluting and contains a range of dangerous toxins. To solve this issue, PyroGenesis developed a special plasma torch system as a fuel replacement for pelletization burners. In fact, PyroGenesis was part of the first industry consortium to study plasma as a solution, and the study showed the advantages from using plasma were considerable, most importantly in eliminating the use of heavy fuels and all the associated GHG emissions. PyroGenesis would eventually obtain a global patent for the process. And after a word got out about the study, the company was approached by some of the world's top mining firms. Long story short, after 2 years of computer modeling and analysis business case development and their own significant infrastructure changes, the world's 2 largest ore producers purchased first around plasma systems from PyroGenesis and they will trial these in their live furnaces in advance of potentially placing large orders for full furnace replacement. With these 2 customers alone, there's the theoretical potential for hundreds of torch systems across all of their pelletization locations. And that's at about $1.8 million to $2 million per torch system with a lifetime value per torch of about $7 million over 20 years from after sales parts and service contracts. Turning to the solid waste industry. Landfill off gas is an enormous problem. According to the U.S. EPA, it's the third largest source of human-related methane emissions in the U.S. at around 15%. Landfill emissions are equivalent to the CO2 emissions from 12 million homes, energy use for a single year. We offer a comprehensive suite for biograph upgrading for the uninitiated biograph -- biogas upgrading is the phrase that describes isolating methane from the various gases that are released at landfills to create renewable natural gas that is pure enough to be put back into the natural gas system for general use. Mitigating and capturing this potential energy source is a big need and a big opportunity, and we offer landfill methane reduction in biogas upgrading solutions as a result of our acquisition of a 30-year-old biogas technology company, Air sciences Technologies, now called Pyro Green Gas and the division of PyroGenesis. Aluminum, an industry that has long been one of our success stories, and it continues to expand with opportunity in several different directions, with surging aluminum demand driven by the need for more lightweight electric cars and electronics, among other things. and rising energy and material prices and ongoing fossil fuel concerns, aluminum producers are under pressure to lower their emissions while at the same time, improving their yield of high-quality product. We have a number of technology solutions that are fast attracting attention and interest at primary, secondary and also tertiary producers such as automakers that have on-site aluminum holding tanks. These are commercial ready solutions. Primarily, we offer plasma systems to help move these aluminum producers away from fossil fuel use and remelting furnaces molten holding tanks and in the carbon nano baking process. We have recently started promoting our own scrap aluminum remelting furnace, the designs of which is based around our factory proven DROSRITE dross processing furnace. The company has other key solutions for the aluminum industry, any other pillars, and I'll touch on these shortly. For steelmaking, mentioned previously as a gigantic emission producer. The industry has multiple process steps that can use fossil fuels or they do use fossil fuels as an energy source. Some of these can be replaced with electric solutions, such as our plasma torches or plasma burners. Speaking again about our Pyro Green Gas division, EVA technology that converts the gas from the coke oven process to reusable hydrogen. Since the initial interest shown by the iron ore and aluminum markets, the steel industry has recently started to come forward with their inquiries. We continue very early-stage discussions with steelmakers and are doing our own R&D towards plasma in steelmaking furnaces. Keep in mind with steelmaking, it's not just about the blast furnace. There's numerous heating steps before and after the blast, and where natural gas or diesel is used, plasma can be an alternative. As I mentioned, there's another -- number of other solutions within that pillar that are under development. But for now, let's move on to Pillar 2, commodity security and optimization. With increasing demand and shrinking supply for raw material commodities, countries around the world have created critical mineral strategies to ensure long-term availability. At the industry level, PyroGenesis offers technology to help individual companies institute their own measures to maximize the use of raw materials for recovery of materials once being lost or through output optimization, which is technology that can be used to increase output from the same raw material input. Key tailwinds include the fast-rising demand for metals, especially aluminum and titanium that offer lightweight and high strength. The war in the Ukraine revealed the impact of geopolitical unrest on commodity pricing and energy availability and the vulnerability of the global supply chain. As for individual products, starting with aluminum, we have several different solutions for the industry, but the one that really kick started our entrance into the sector is our technology for the recovery of valuable metal from the aluminum waste stream known as Dross. Dross is a residual byproduct in smelting formed when air comes into contact with molten aluminum. And as the impurities rise to the surface, the drying top layer acts like a sponge and hardens, but also stacks up valuable metals in the process. However, as a mix of toxic contaminants and metal, Dross has historically skimmed off and discarded. Methods eventually rose to try to separate any linked aluminum left in the Dross for possible reuse but the process was burdensome and inefficient, and the remaining residues became embedded in a final toxic salt-cake which still had to be either landfilled or stored. PyroGenesis has created a better way, a method to recover 98% of the aluminum in Dross, a 20% higher rate than the old method. It's also done at a 50% lower operating cost and with a lower carbon footprint. And very importantly, it can be done on site right there in the factory, while the Dross is still hot, so the metal can be processed and recovered and put back into the stream without ever leaving the plant and all without the use of salt. So there's no toxic salt-cake left over at the end to be landfill and allows us to put our DROSRITE system basically anywhere in the plant without fear of salt contaminating other areas, a reason why traditional Dross systems are off-site away from the factory. This is a fully commercialized solution, and we have systems in place for different companies around the world, including for the Ras Al-Khair Aluminum Facility in Saudi Arabia, the world's largest integrated aluminum facility. We continue to increase the efficiency and the price of the systems and are pitching several more contracts to major primary aluminum producers and now to secondary producers who remelt recycled aluminum and to various downstream manufacturers that have aluminum cast houses within their production plants, such as automakers. Titanium, like aluminum is on Canada's critical mineral list. It's a metal very much in demand by manufacturers around the world due to its high strength, but lightweight. How do we help? Well, PyroGenesis is the original inventor of the process to produce the highest quality metal powders process called plasma atomization. These powders are used in additive manufacturing perhaps, more colloquially known as 3D printing. At the industrial level, it's a massively growing industry with a 19% annual growth rate for the whole sector. After reentering the market a few years ago with an all-new technology called NextGen, we have taken a series of steps starting with a ground-up rethink and improvement of the technology to position us as an eventual leader in the high-quality powder space. This is culminated in the company now being in the final stage of a 2-year long product qualification process with a major global aerospace firm with an aim to be an official supplier of our metal powders to the company and to its supporting part suppliers and service centers. The company also very recently signed its first ever by the ton order. In fact, a sale of 5 tons of titanium aluminum metal powder -- excuse me, titanium metal powder with an option for 6 additional tons that officially announced the full commercialization of our titanium metal powder line using this NextGen technology. And finally, the third pillar in our ecosystem, waste remediation. We used to refer to this category as simply waste destruction, but we've since developed several processes that can also regain value from the underlying material in the waste, so remediation is a better term overall for the category as a whole. Regarding tailwinds driving this tier is heavy industry and governments wake up to the problem of long-ignored waste. The rules and regulations are tightening and both cleanup and mitigation efforts are beginning. The renewable natural gas industry revealed the potential of creating new energy from waste and other industries are seeing the benefit of finding sources of valuable materials and fuel were previously not thought possible. Likely, our most prominent solution in this area has been the work we've done for ships at sea. With ships no longer allowed to dump nonbiodegradable waste overboard and with the size of the ships increasing, the compacting and storage of garbage until the return to port is becoming untenable for some classes of large ships. We've been working with the U.S. Navy since around 1995 when they asked us to come up with a solution for their garbage and 28 years later, our PAWDS waste destructor is specified into the design of all current and future builds of the Ford-class aircraft carriers. Two systems have been delivered. The first ship, the USS Gerald R. Ford set sale on its maiden mission last year, and is the most advanced and most expensive ship ever built. The USS John F. Kennedy is up next, and 2 more will follow in the years ahead with our systems on board. Back onshore, a similar system we make is used for various land-based waste problems. This was a relatively dormant business line for several years, but as landfilling rules started to tighten, especially for hazardous materials, suddenly in 2022, we started seeing renewed interest. First, we had a company in Asia, order a system to destroy medical waste. And just recently, we announced selling a big system with an option for a second to New Zealand where a government ordered product stewardship organization is mandated to collect and destroy synthetic refrigerants, such as CFCs and HCFCs nationwide. They've previously been saving and transporting these chemicals by ships to Australia, so this is a big win for them and has been widely discussed very positively in the New Zealand media. I mentioned previously, we now have processes to not just destroy but to recover, and beyond recovery, we can recommercialize some of the chemicals and minerals that are recovered, allowing the customers to reuse or resell the revived materials. The 2 solutions closest commercialization are: one, a joint venture with an international firm to set up factories to process the residue that is left over from aluminum draw processing, which I outlined previously. This residue is usually landfilled, but it's packed full of chemicals that have treated correctly could be regained and sold back into the market. With our partner, we have figured out how to do just that. And second is the technology from the news announcement of this morning. working with Aluminerie Alouette to figure out a way to process spent pot linings or SPL, which is the layer of carbon materials inside a smelter that is used to conduct electricity. Over time, this lining loses that ability and has to be removed and replaced. But again, it's full of valuable chemicals to a process that can safely recover any value within the material and make the waste less toxic would be in high demand. It sounds niche, but this has huge potential. Spent pot linings as one of the largest environmental waste management challenges faced by primary aluminum smelters due to its toxicity and there's a lot of it. 1.6 million tons of SPL were generated from primary aluminum production in 2019 alone. This is an in-development technology that, if successful, will be commercialized in conjunction with Alouette. So that's our business and our product strategy. Since many of the industries have, 2-phase decarbonization target dates, '25 -- 2025 to 2030 and then 2050, we see a long runway of opportunity. It's pretty diversified and management believes this diversification creates strength for the company. On screen is a quick sampling of recent contract mix where you can see the revenue diversify. We hope to add to our partnership roster over the next year, but we only do so after a significant due diligence and with a full commitment to commercialization by all parties. And to wrap up, we have multiple offerings moving simultaneously. Some fully commercialized, some aiming to progress from initial commercialization to multi-client adoption and others coming up from behind in pilot stage or early development. The company has reached an exciting point where commercial readiness of our technology is starting to match with heavy industries widespread adoption of decarbonization and environmental cleanup efforts. Our technologies help customers meet some of those goals, improve their efficiencies and output, transition their energy and reduce their carbon usage and emissions by moving them away from fossil fuels forever. PyroGenesis is bringing positive change to heavy industry, the type of change that can have generational impact. I hope this has given you a better understanding of the company, where we fit in and the scale of the opportunities in front of us. I want to thank you for your time and for listening today.

Well, thank you, Steve. That was a very insightful presentation and well appreciated. We are now going to address certain questions that were raised during our prior -- raise during or prior to this meeting. Rodayna, have we received any questions?

We have not received any questions. So I will ask everyone that has a question after this meeting to feel free to contact the IR department directly and we'll be more than happy to answer any questions. Thank you.

Thank you Okay. We appreciate that, Rodayna. Thank you for your response. I will now ask Mr. Gely as one of the scrutineers of the meeting to present the preliminary results of the voting. The final results will be posted on SEDAR. Mr. Gely?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So we, the scrutineers of this meeting hereby declare that on a preliminary basis, each of the 7 nominees for election as director has received a vote of at least 98.89% of the votes cast in favor of their election, and at least 99.51% of the votes were cast in favor of the reappointment of Raymond Chabot Grant Thornton as auditors of the corporation for the entering year and to authorize the directors to fix the auditor's remuneration.

Well, thank you, Mr. Gely. Before we close, and on behalf of the Board, I would like to thank PyroGenesis' management team for their continued support and leadership and thank our employees for their hard work and dedication. Thank you all for joining us today, and please have a wonderful rest of the day. Cheers.