RecycLiCo Battery Materials Inc. (AMY.V) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

I'm Jim Goddard. My guess is Tony Mitchell, RecycLiCo Director of Marketing. Tony, -- welcome to the Company Showcase.

Nice to meet you, Joe.

Tony, how would you give us a picture of what you do with the company?

Well, Jim, I've been Director of Marketing for RecycLiCo for just over a year now, and I've been involved with the company for a number of years, providing strategic marketing and communication support, whatever management needed it. In fact, they developed the RecycLiCo name and brand back in 2019 when the company was ready to market its battery recycling process to the world at large. Since then, it's been amazing to see how much the company is in the battery industry as a whole has grown evolved within the transition from gas to electric powered vehicles, which is still just getting started.

What are some of the challenges you faced in marketing RecycLiCo?

Well, there's a number of them, but I guess a couple of the biggest challenges we have is that most of the companies we're dealing with are so massive and each have their own unique long-established betting protocols that comes to working with new vendors. It takes engagement with multiple departments over the course of months, if not years, before they're ready to make key decisions. We know we have the solution of the battery waste problem, but it takes a lot of patients back and forth testing and betting on both sides before they're ready to do a deal. And I've learned a lot a lot of patients, Jim. So another challenge is that while the general public is slowly coming around to understanding that lithium-ion batteries can be recycled, there's still so much misinformation about what battery recycling truly is. And then between ignorance and understanding, huge companies have sprung up over the last few years to fill that knowledge gap with hyped fueled by practically unlimited budgets when it comes to marketing dollars and whatnot. So unfortunately, it's such a situation, the oxygen gets sucked out of the room for companies such as ourselves who have done the hard work of cutting true path through rocky terrain and are committed to delivering a real-world solution to a very real problem of production waste.

Yes. One of the criticisms of electric vehicles I've heard is, oh, they don't have any plans on what to do with the old batteries. Doesn't your company have the perfect plan for it?

Yes. No, totally. It's the type of thing that -- again, the general public is just starting to wake up to this. There still a lot of people don't realize, that's even a possibility. And I think from the perspective of where we're standing, we've been doing this since 2016 from bench scale to a pilot plant and then our demonstration plant, and now we got our joint venture going on in Taiwan. So it's a situation where we're constantly trying to educate people about the various facets of what we do. But at the same time, we're a stage 2 recycler. So stage 1 is just grinding up the batteries and well, discharging them and grinding them up in the stuff called like Black Mass, but what we do is Stage 2, which is taking that Black Mass, which is pretty much toxic waste stuff and turning it into lithium and PCAM to be able to put it directly back into production. So it's a pretty exciting thing. So we're really excited about continuing to move forward thing,especially when we get a lot of people still looking at what we're doing and getting the process. So...

What do you see in the company's future?

Well, it's -- for me, it's a situation where you got to look back in the past before you can look forward in the future, right? So way back in 2016, which seems like a lifetime ago now when we look at everything from week to week, a few people even thought was possible to recycle lithium-ion batteries. Let alone recover 99% of the valuable materials locked inside them now. People were burning them back then. That was the industry standards. Now we wanted to deal with the waste product because it was just something as a toxic thing. So since then, though, we've proven multiple times through independent verification that are recovered and upcycle lithium and PCAM meet or exceed the performance of the original Virgin battery materials. But as battery producers around the world learn about what we're doing in sent sample materials for us to test. They continue to grow more and more confident in what it is we have to offer. And believe me, as Director of Marketing, I would love nothing more than to tell you what we're and who we're engaged with. But because of nondisclosure I can't really say anything. So with that in mind, as our first joint venture, commercial joint venture with Zenith Chemicals in Taiwan proceeds as we continue to strengthen collaborative relationships with brilliant companies such as Nanoramic laboratories, we got a couple of wishes -- I think we'll include a couple of links in our latest press releases below this podcast. As the battery industry is awakening to the power of the lean modular approach we're taking on rolling out our highly efficient plants to support their operations around the world, which is what I'm really excited about talking to people about over the next year. Jim, I really -- I couldn't be more excited for our future.

Tony, what's the big difference between what RecycLiCo does and what other companies claim to do with battery recycling?

Well, Jim, were what's called a Stage 2 battery recycler -- and typically in a stage 1, which is what a lot of other companies are touting they do, but they don't really fill in the blanks about being a stage 1 or stage 2 or show what their technology is all about. The Stage 1 is they discharge batteries, and then they put them through a grinding process and create something like what's called Black Mass when it comes to battery production waste, a lot of times is black powder overseas, they call it, which is a higher value product. But what we do as a Stage 2 is take that product that ground up products and put it through our process and spit out high-grade high-quality lithium products, hydroxide and carbonate and PCAM, which can go directly back into production. So we take that product and turn into a multiple of value from what initially goes in. The thing about a lot of these other companies, these recycling companies, I say in air quotes, a lot of times, they just buy off-the-shelf third-party equipment and install in pristine buildings where you could eat off the floor because the truth is there just won't be enough end-to-like batteries to feed their operations for years to come. And I think if you watch how things have been playing out over the last couple of months, we see how that's hurting those guys recently. And by comparison, I wouldn't want to eat off the floor demonstration plant Jim. We're busy continually processing skids of Black Mass and cathode scrap from potential joint beat -- joint brand venture partners around the world. Trust me, it will be too tasty or safe for that matter for you'd offer a [plain] floor. So...

And Tony, you have a little bit of an adventure coming up.

Yes. Speaking of the future, next week, I'll be representing RecycLiCo with the Advanced Automotive Battery Conference in San Diego from December 11 to the 14th. So I'm looking forward to connecting with others in the battery industry and discussing what we have to offer.

Tony, for people who don't know where you're traded, where are they -- where are your shares traded?

Well, we're traded on the TSXV under the ticker symbol AMY. On the OTCQB under the ticker symbol AMYZF. And on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol ID4. And if you need any more information, do your due diligence and check on our website at recyclico.com.

Tony, thank you so much for the update.

Thank you, Jim.

Our guest has been Tony Mitchell, RecycLiCo Director of Marketing. I'm Jim Goddard. Our conversation took place on December 8.