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

I would like to call the meeting to order. My name is Paul Hildebrand, as I am the Chair of the Board of Directors, the company in accordance to the company's articles, I will act as the chair of the meeting. In addition Shaheem Ali, the company's Chief Financial Officer, will act as the Secretary of the meeting. With the concurrence of the meeting, I now appoint James Effort of Endeavour Trust Corporation, as the scrutineer of the meeting. The company's articles stipulate that a quorum for the transaction of business at a meeting of shareholders is 2 persons who are or who represent by proxy, shareholders who, in the aggregate, hold at least 5% of the issued shares entitled to vote at the meeting. I have been informed by the scrutineer that we have a sufficient number of shareholders present in person or represented by proxy who hold a sufficient number of shares constitute a quorum. I therefore declare that a quorum is present and that the meeting is regularly called and properly constituted for the transaction of business. I have before me the information circular, notice of meeting, form of proxy and financial statement request form delivered to shareholders in connection with the meeting. I will table the meeting materials together with the confirmation of mailing of this, I will dispense with the calling for the reading of the notice of meeting, and I will direct the secretary to file materials with the minutes of this meeting. Do you have them, James? Thank you. Turning next to some procedural matters. Prior to proceeding with the business of the meeting, I wish to make a few comments regarding procedural matters. Only registered shareholders or proxy holders present at the meeting are entitled to vote. On each item of business requiring a vote, ballots will be distributed to the registered shareholders and proxy holders present at the meeting who wish to vote. First item of business is the presentation of the annual financial statements. The company has filed the audited financial statements for the years ended July 31, 2025, on the SEDAR website. I will ask the secretary to table the audited financial statements for the years ended July 31, 2025, with the meeting materials. And you have those? Yes. And they can just be added to the materials in the company's records. Thank you. Shareholders are invited to review the table documents or request copies, which are also available on SEDAR. The next item of business is setting the number of directors of the company. Pursuant to the articles of the company, the number of directors of the company is set at 5. I would ask the scrutineer to circulate ballots to the shareholders and proxy holders present in person at the meeting to record your vote. Please raise your hand if you wish to record your vote. Once you have finished, please raise your hand and the scrutineer will collect your ballot. So I have hands for everybody who wants to have a ballot. It should just be registered shareholders in person or proxy holders vote [indiscernible].

No, I'm going to vote in person.

Okay. Fine. I thought I saw you -- is there anybody else? I didn't see any hands go [indiscernible].

I didn't vote. I said I'd vote in person.

We have a report that says you voted, which is interesting. [Indiscernible] . It's done. Okay. Anybody else? I don't see any hands. So based on that, the scrutineer should be able to prepare the results of the election or calculate the results of the election based on the votes that have been submitted online. Do you have that?

I have the report here, but I have 4 ballots, So I don't know if you want to do them. We'll do them -- so where do I sign.

Well, I think these are all the results.

At the top here Yes. Okay. [indiscernible] Okay. So I'm going to -- my name is the proxy holder and [indiscernible].

So do we have a third party appointee?

We have a ballot here for Albert.

I'm sorry, my mistake -- this is for the appointment of directors [indiscernible] again. We received the ballots for the first item. Thank you. So I've now received the voting [indiscernible] you got tabulated. Okay. On the first item, setting the number of directors at 5, what is the number of votes...

57 votes voted proxy per person [indiscernible] shares representing 43% of the company has voted and the number of directors is voted in favor by 90.99%.

Can you give me the number of votes?

Sure, 101881585. against [indiscernible].

Please wait a moment. Are those final numbers on that item? I'm going to just make a call. Please do.

The scrutineer report does exclude Albert shares. Give you a number in [indiscernible].

Did I need 2 ballots.

400 ballots -- 4 ballots and we go through, I'll [indiscernible].

But I had to register twice because I had shares in 2 different accounts.

Okay. I'll check that in a minute. I think she's probably [indiscernible] your number in favor is 102 [indiscernible].

[indiscernible] What's the number?

Yes. Well, the number, I'll read in the record according to the scrutineer, the number of votes in favor of the resolution set the number of directors of the company at 5 is 102,022,085 votes for, votes against. I declare the number of directors is hereby set at 5. The next item of business is the election of the directors of the company for the ensuing year. There are 5 directors positions to be filled. As disclosed in the information circular, management has nominated Rich Sadowsky, Paul Hildebrand, Rob Chang, Rod Lan and Kurt [indiscernible] for election as directors for the ensuing year or until such time as their successors are duly elected or appointed in accordance with the company's articles or until such directors' earlier death, resignation or removal. Each nominee is consented to act as a director. The company has adopted an advanced notice policy, so no new nominations for election as directors will be considered from the floor. I would ask the scrutineer to circulate ballots to the shareholders and proxy holders present in person at the meeting to record your vote. Please raise your hand if you wish to record your vote. Once you finished, please raise your hand and the scrutineer will collect your ballot.

I think Richard has already signed back management. Ah, he's here [indiscernible].

But it says there's no room for no nominees on here.

You can write the names in there.

We're not allowed to [indiscernible].

That's true.

What you could do is if there had been a proper nomination, you could add their names to your ballot now, but [indiscernible].

I don't have to check it any.

Okay, so we made a poll, who goes forward.

In favor is 63,743,335 representing 17.61 polls or withheld [indiscernble].

Not opposed...

I've got the withheld is 177346816. Okay. And then for Richard [indiscernible].

I don't have that. I have [indiscernible]. Richard [indiscernible], sorry. That was for Richard. those numbers. Number of directors is the first next director is election of director. Richard.

Second name that I have is Rob Chang. So Rob is 63, 666, 438. I'll give you a copy of this as well. And against, it was 17, 423, 733. So in favor of 78.5%. Kurt 63,867,053. Withheld is [ 17,223,118 ], [indiscernible] favored. Next one Paul Hildebrand, 59,507,802 [indiscernible] 21,582,369, 73.3% in favor. And the last one should be [indiscernible] [ 58,367,101 ]. Withheld 22,723,070, [ 71.8% ] in favor.

I have now received the voting results from the scrutineer and report as follows: Paul Hildebrand in favor, 59,507,802, withheld 21,582,369; Richard [indiscernible] Ski in favor, 63,743,335; withheld 17,346,816; Rob Chang in favor, 63,666,438, withheld 17,423,733; Rod Langtry in favor of 58,367, [indiscernible] 22,723,070; Lag in favor 63,867,053, withheld [indiscernible], I declare that each of the nominees are elected as directors of the company to hold office until the next Annual General Meeting or until their successors are elected or appointed. The next item of business is to appoint an auditor for the ensuing year to authorize the directors to fix the remuneration of the auditor. As noted in the notice of meeting, the information circular, management has proposed that the Ferry LLP be appointed as auditor of the company. I would ask the scrutineer to circulate ballots to the shareholders and proxy holders present in person at the meeting to record your vote. Please raise your hand if you wish to record your vote. Once you have finished, please raise your hand and the scrutineer will collect your ballot. do you want a ballot on the auditor? Okay.

[indiscernible] And numbers for that is votes in favor is 59,149,835 and votes against is 22,080,836.

We have now received the voting results. The scrutineer report as follows: the appointment of Vistar LLP as auditor of the company to hold office until the close of the next Annual General Meeting of the company and that the directors are authorized to fix the remuneration to be paid to them. There were 59,149,855 votes for and 22,080,836 votes withheld. I declare Vistar Gray be appointed as the auditor of the company for the ensuing year and that the directors are authorized to fix the remuneration. The regular business of the meeting has been completed. As there is no other business before the meeting, I now declare the meeting to be concluded. Thank you very much for. That concludes the formal part of the meeting. And as is our practice, we're now prepared to address on a more informal basis, some of the -- some of the stuff that's going on. I'll turn the floor over to Mr. Sadowsky, who is our acting Chief Executive Officer and company [indiscernible].

First off, welcome to everybody that out here, and we appreciate seeing it. And thank you to everybody that's on the Zoom. We appreciate not seeing you, but having you see us. And I want to thank shareholders generally for the level of participation this year. Given the historical lack of participation to find ourselves with over 45% of the shares voted is very gratifying. Those of us who are doing the work, appreciate the validation that comes [indiscernible]. We now have -- if you will please pass me the present that is at the Yes. This is going to be my little lifetime achievement moment. [indiscernible] has been with this company since 1993 and has been a valuable contributor to the company's activities, both legacy and current. He is not going to be on the Board going forward, but we have retained him as a consultant. So he will be available to provide us with his advice and counsel. But because of the ending of his time on the Board, we would like to offer him just a word of appreciation.

I'd like to say everyone here has been great. I think this is a great company, and it went through its struggles. We had our trust issues along the way. But everything, I think looking forward to keeping on the strong tradition of bringing the company into the rich [indiscernible] no more blues.

[indiscernible] It's gratifying to know that their loyalty and the folks that have been here are still. Okay. Talk a little bit about the last year because it has been in the world and in and recycle a lot of changing. We are in a very different place than we were at the last meeting, as is the state of the world. I think it's fair to say that whatever expectations people had about what the mineral recovery industry generally would look like and batteries in particular, would look like, all those expectations have been [down]. I read an article last week in which the author said, the only thing that is in more trouble than the battery recycling business is the battery business. When you think about it, of course, that makes some sense. But the way we view critical minerals here at the company has had to be reassessed given the way the world is now viewing critical minerals. The calls for domestic supply chains, the concerns about the availability of imports, the sense that national security requires access to stuff that used to be freely available from Brazil, from China, where ever, South Africa is causing us to think very differently about what goes on here. One of the things that I learned in the last year was that almost everything that is mined in the United States leaves or the Canada leaves the United States and Canada for smelting. It's not processed here. So if one wanted to be talking about a domestic supply chain, we want to be talking about domestic refinement. And we are expanding our view of what we do as a company to address this notion that there needs to be domestic refinement. It's also been a bad year for our industry peers, the folks who we looked at as comparable in terms of the progress that they were making or the customers they were trying to engage and the research they were doing. Many of them have just disappeared. They've been sold for parts, and they're just done. Few have pivoted entirely away from the subject of mineral recovery and are just going back to being miners. There 's dwindling stuff. At one point, we were thinking about perhaps buying a PCAM manufacturer because the vision of the company, at least until recently had been that we would be a PCAM supplier. And the thought was, well, let's go find somebody that's already doing it and then we can add recycling to the mix of material. And there are no longer any PCAM manufacturers in North America at all. That's something we couldn't find. It means -- and a lot of that comes from an understanding now that PCAM is something that the OEMs make themselves or they use captive vendors to make, and they don't need somebody to be providing them with PCAM from recycled sources or otherwise. But that is a useful insight because it means that what we do, do well, the extraction of minerals from feedstock and the removal of impurities can be available to us in all sorts of circumstances. We do not have to be turning batteries into batteries. We can turn batteries into salt. We can turn batteries into metals. We can turn rock into metals. We can deal with tailings. We can deal with waste. All of that, there are possibilities. And we are working very hard to address those possibilities. a little bit more about that later [indiscernible] more about that later. The other thing that we learned this year was that large-scale capital-intensive projects are not a good idea in the -- for a company of our size. We were poised at the last meeting. We had a contract that required us to commit about 80% of our treasury business?

I think let's put it this way. Barring with cost -- with anticipated or reasonably anticipated cost overruns.

Yes. We -- all of our cash would have been gone and it would have been gone by mid-March and the lights would be out. We reassessed that project with our partners, and we basically came to the conclusion that not only would it cost more to build than anybody had expected when we first entered into it, that instead of being cash flow positive in year 1, it would be -- there would be funded losses in the year around $7 million a year for at least the first 3 years. This was -- would have been the end of this company. We would basically not even be as good as light cycle in terms of which was [indiscernible]. We reassessed this with our joint venture partners. They agree that that's the wisdom of moving forward, and we would be very -- in a friendly and amable way, we just unwound it. And that has preserved for us all of the cash that we now have on hand, which puts us in a much better position than a lot of our peers. We kind of -- we have options. And what are we doing with that cash? Well, we talked last year about the notion that the company needed to expand its infrastructure and its talent base. And we have done both of those things. Infrastructure, you are sitting in it. This building, the lab that is being constructed downstairs, the pilot plant that will be reassembled and upgraded downstairs. There is our infrastructure. Our talent is in -- so far as in the room, we will be growing that staff. The only way that a company of this sort can be taken seriously in the world and in the industry in which we want to participate is with high-quality scientific engineering and technical personnel. We don't have the chops, no one's going to talk to you. And we will be growing that staff over the next year. We are pleased with the staff that we have. I talked earlier about circular domestic supply chains. That's a phrase that gets thrown around a lot. But basically, what has become clear is that regardless of what you might think about sustainability from an environmental perspective, which was a lot of what motivated recycling and mineral recovery generally. The need for certain materials, rare earths, critical minerals is strong in the military area and also in just lifestyle, if you want to -- people want to live the way they have grown accustomed to, we need to have those materials at hand, and we cannot be held hostage by the whims of foreign governments that may say, no, we're not sending it off this game. It's -- it's easy to be reductive about that, but it is a serious question. It is an important part of what we are facing, and we have been trying very hard to leverage the talent that we have brought on to become active players in that discussion. And we are. We are being -- we would join the Minac Group. I'm not going to go through all of our press releases again, but we are -- that has led to some other introductions and some other possibilities, including our announced arrangement with Alaska Energy Metals. And we are going to continue to -- I've got a couple of discussions in the works that I can't announce today, but I'm hoping we'll be able to announce shortly. And we have a commitment to continuing research and development. This is not static. The NMC batteries in which we were so good at recycling are not necessarily going to be the batteries of the future. There are other lithium-based batteries that are around now. There are a whole discussion of sodium-based batteries that is going on. And I wouldn't be surprised if somebody said they were going to give you a yogurt-based battery down the road, we need to be ready to adapt to the world that presents itself. There are going to be, I think, if rumors are going to be believed, an increased attention to -- both in Canada and the United States to new mines, and they're going to need refining facilities. And we want to be able to play a role in that. We can't -- and this goes back to the capital question. We cannot build a new factory every time a project presents itself. But what we can do is provide advice to the folks that are creating the feedstock as to what the best methods of extractions are, what the best method of removing impurities are. We can help them design their facilities. We can run those facilities for them. And we are also hoping that even though we will not have the capital in our own coffers to build facilities, we are hoping that we will be able to get nondilutive financing in the form of government grants and cooperative funding that will allow somebody else to build those plants and for us and our shareholders to own them and to reap the benefits of operation. We have actively -- we are actively preparing grant proposals. We are -- we are, at the moment, waiting on the U.S. Department of Energy, which has been promising guidelines for this quarter, but which have not -- they have not yet presented themselves, but we will be filing grant applications once we have those guidelines in hand. We have [indiscernible] consultants who are tasked with sourcing grant opportunities, and we will be, I hope, spending a fair amount of our time convincing governments in Canada and the United States to give us the funds to build the kinds of plants that would be useful in this world that we are facing. And we have become a legitimate player. We are talking to the folks that are really involved in this work. We are not -- we were not doing what we did, which was doing random tests for large battery manufacturers in the hopes that they would one day like us and come back and [indiscernible] golf course business. We are now talking to people with the idea that we work together so that we can apply for money together and we can move forward together. And that legitimacy improves the opportunity for partners and it improves the opportunities for revenue. The feedstock, we are becoming feedstock agnostic. We have been talking about black mass and black powder. And what has become clear is that -- that's not enough. There is not going to be enough in the way of economical upcycling of black mass and black powder to sustain a business for any time in the future. And we know we know a great deal. The process of extracting minerals from feedstock has to be -- you need a bespoke solution for each sort of feedstock, but it's basically the same process. You're either -- you're grinding it up and then you're leaching stuff out or you're using solvent extraction, but you are doing in a very broad sense, the same thing. Similarly, once you've extracted that stuff out, you need to remove the impurities, get it to the point where what has been extracted is in the most valuable form in the most useful form indeed. And then one hopes that either the folks that you are tolling for or the folks that you are selling to will be prepared to pay for that effort. We are looking very much forward to that being paid for those sorts of efforts. We are -- in our presentation to potential partners and to governments, we were talking about the notion of bespoke hydrometallurgical solutions to the problems that are presenting themselves. If there are -- by my back of the napkin estimate, there have been announcements of about $1 trillion being committed by the U.S. and Canadian governments towards these kinds of projects. We would like to be considered for even a small percentage of that and would increase our activity dramatically. And what is nice is that we are being taken seriously in those discussions. The other thing that we have learned, and this is interesting. The availability of lab services throughout North America is not keeping pace with demand. There are a lot of famous laboratories around, but they're busy. They are booked up some of them for 2 or 3 years. And so the question becomes now that we have a lab and people that can -- talented people to work in it, can we offer laboratory services? And the answer is yes. We can. We will. We are in discussions already with a couple of potential customers and we are hoping that there will be more. There are brochures. I would ask everybody to take one when you leave for our laboratory services offering. And I hope to be making announcements very soon to who our customers will be and what kinds of projects we'll be taking on. The laboratory itself, I'm told now should be operational and fully functional by mid-January. That is a little later than we had originally anticipated. A lot of that was because of the permitting process, which took longer and because of the delays in deliveries from our vendors of the equipment that we needed. I don't know if you saw that the few months are going to be [indiscernible]. So -- and so then the question is what's coming up? And what is coming up is going to be, I think, exciting. The demonstration plant that had been at Kemetco is now downstairs. It's not assembled and it will have to be reassembled, but it will often have to be upgraded and added to. If we're going to be talking to people about different kinds of feedstock, we need equipment that can accommodate those different kinds of feedstock. If we're going to be looking at new and different ways of extracting minerals and metals from those feedstocks, we're going to have to optimize the equipment. There were there -- even before, there was always a sense -- this was not static. What was that connect or wasn't going to be the last thing anybody built. It was always going to have room for improvement. So we are hoping to both reassemble and optimize and upgrade the plant facilities with the idea that probably sometime late in the second quarter or early in the third quarter of 2026, we will be able to do not just the bench testing work, but we will also be able to work at a pilot level. We are very much interested in getting for higher testing revenue, either at the lab level or at the pilot level. there is not a lot of pilot level for hire work going on. And this is what I have also learned is that a lot of start-ups find themselves unable to get past the pilot phase because they can't raise the money to build a pilot plant from scratch. But if we have a flexible facility and we can help them, we get them to the point where they can demonstrate their pilot potential. And then we can go on to the next company and do it again. And I'm hoping that, that will be a source of revenue for us. And I guess at this point, as I said, we are working on grant applications. We hope that we will be able to announce a few certainly in the next quarter, we expect to, and we will keep at it important -- it's important that it happens.

Now we have a bunch of questions that got sent in 3 of them, and I want to talk a little bit about them. One of the question is asked, how many recovery units do we expect will saturate the market. And one of the things that is clear is that the potential market will never be saturated. We are going to be in a world that is going to have increasing needs for mineral recovery. And that means that there will be increasing facilities. I mean I suspect one looks at 1,000 years from now, maybe there'll be enough, but there's a lot. And I don't believe that saturation is a concern in this industry. Okay. And then the next question was, do you feel the new lab will allow R&D to further research and advance its recovery recycling tech to add more valuable patents? Well, the answer is that it's certainly going to add to the R&D. We intend to do that. We need to do that. And yes, when you have your own lab, you can do that. Whereas before, we would have to ask somebody else to do it for us, we will be doing our own R&D. Now as to whether or not patents come from that, that's hit and miss. There are things that are there are valuable discoveries that people make that aren't patentable. They are nonetheless valuable. There's know-how that you can have that is valuable without a patent. And there are all sorts of patents that turn out not to be valuable, and there are plenty that turn out to be valuable. But the real point, and I would say it in the question is, yes, we expect to continue to do R&D. We expect that R&D to yield valuable results, and we hope to exploit that for the benefit of our shareholders. All right. And then this is my favorite. Has the company and any company interested in the modular units? And I want to talk a little bit about modular units because I think that has been one of the misunderstood things about this company. When we talked about modular units, we were talking about the notion that the way we were designing facilities they could be built elsewhere in modules and reassembled. That didn't make them somehow or other off the shelf. It wasn't like you could go into a store and say, okay, I want that reactor throw it together and that your modules won't work. But only that we would be able to put something together modularly so that it could be -- things could be swapped out, things could be upgraded, things could be manufactured remotely rather than on site. We were not offering modular units as packages by module 1 and module 2 or module 3. But we are continuing to think about the idea of preserving the modularity of what we do. There is a -- is obviously intelligent to know that if you can make the same thing even in a bespoke and customized environment, roughly the same thing over and over again, you will be better than starting from scratch each time. So that is the answer to that question. And are there questions here?

Yes, sir. I have a couple. Okay. First question is, how is the search going for a full-time CEO?

Okay. That search is interesting because it continues, but it has reached -- we reached some interesting conclusions. We've spoken to a number of people who we thought might be good candidates to be CEO of this company. A few approached us directly, a few we got referred to it and sought out ourselves. And the responses from the qualified people were almost uniform. To become the CEO of a public company, if you are qualified to be the CEO of a public company in this sort of industry, you need commitments and from the company that is employing you. You need to know that for at least 3 years, you have a job. You have to know that that's going to be the case. You have to know that there is a team that is going to be there so that once you figure out what the business plan is, you can implement it. And we did not, and we are building a team at the moment, but we couldn't offer somebody a full team. And you have to have enough capital in hand to give them runway. If they're going to take on the kinds of projects that this company was talking about, they're got to know that the money is not going to run out in the middle of things. We are hoping that with the grant making, we will be able to say, yes, there's enough money here so that this becomes attractive. The other thing, Alan, and this is something I hadn't really thought about until recently. But to bring somebody in as the CEO of a company that is essentially venture stage, which is what this company is and has been for some time, you've got to give them the economics of a venture stage company, what a founder would get. And I'm not sure that our shareholders are prepared to give anybody 60% of this company by virtue of coming in and designing a business plan. But that's the kinds of things that you might be asked for in those kinds of discussions. So we continue to look, we continue to try and figure out if there are people that would be good fits. And the goal of this year's activity is to increase the likelihood that we will be attractive talented candidates.

Okay. My second question is that you've hit upon it already. And I've been raising this issue for at least 10 years. I've run lots of companies. I'm a director of a mining company right now, what have you, publicly trading mining company. And I've never been involved with a business that doesn't have a business plan. And I keep asking where is our business plan. Now Richard and the rest of the Board, I don't want to cast dispersions upon you. You keep doing the best job you can under the circumstance. I understand that. But from a shareholder point of view, the value of my shares are based on what kind of revenue, what kind of profitability is this company going to have. And quite frankly, from what you told me today, the company is no better off than it was when you came on, Richard, -- it really has -- while it has improved a bit because you're much more in tune with what the industry now, which when you first came on, you weren't, but you're more in tune now. But like business plans, I've drafted enough business plans to know what goes into them. And look, if you're going to raise money and even with the government, if you're going to go for grants, you're going to say, what is the -- what -- how are you going to be able to produce? If we do -- give you the grant money, then what are we getting back? And you have to be able -- we have to tell them, and it should be in a business plan.

Okay. And it is a fair question. And I want to talk about it because I too have written lots of business plans. One of the things that makes it difficult to write a traditional business plan for this company is that the assumptions keep changing on an almost daily basis. A good business plan says, okay, this is the growth in Industry X. We see this is projected. We can offer a solution for which we can charge so many dollars. If we follow the growth and we scale up, we will be able to come up with a number. Those are what business plans do. But allow me, the trouble is that the expectations here are in constant flux. I think right -- we had a business plan for Taiwan that was written before the joint venture was negotiated. It was vetted by UBS. It was the product of a lot of work. This is obviously before my time, but it was there. And literally, 2 years later, when the time came to actually go buy the plant, all of the assumptions in that business plan were wrong. They just -- what the world looked like was so grossly different that if we had gone forward with that business plan, we would have wiped out the company's savings. The other problem that we have here is that we are, in fact, working in a situation where what we want to be able to say is what we are doing is useful to the governments and the world, the point that we should be paid to do it regardless of the -- I want to say that, I want to be careful about this. But let me give you an example. Recycling of batteries right now is more expensive than just working from raw materials. There is no economic incentive for a battery manufacturer to recycle or to use recycled material. They cost more. It's just not -- it's not a good idea if you're just doing it from a pure profit and loss standard. The way it becomes attractive and commercially viable is when governments say to battery manufacturers, you must recycle. That's what the rules are or because of national security concerns, somebody says, you have to create domestic self-reliance. But I couldn't tell you now how big those markets would be, what our share of it would be, what the revenue could be or even what the expenses would be largely because a lot of this stuff is scalable, but a lot of it isn't. And I would not it would be dishonest to put forward a business plan of the sort that you and I would both agree a business plan ought to be because it would be wrong the day it was published.

But Richard, believe me, I understand how complicated it is and how legitimately difficult it is for you to try and make representations that are just useless. I mean you just -- and you're not going to do that. I appreciate that. But the bottom line is when we have companies, a company like this, like I'll ask you -- the simple question is this. We don't have a business for the sake of having a business because it's a good idea and have all these great patents. The whole idea is we have all this intellectual property, which is patents and know-how and trademarks and all the other things that go with it. Trade secrets and what have you that we have to go with it. But the idea that we have all that information and knowledge is so that we can exploit them so we can make a profit. But -- and when you're going to make a profit, you have to determine, well, who are your target market? Who are your customers? And so really, truthfully, I look at this company, and I've been asked that same question over and over again. Like what are the profitability? And no one has answered. And the reason they haven't answered is because we're not sure what we're going to do with the company yet. Now I can throw something out at, which I've been saying for probably the last 5 years. I think battery recycling, I agree with you 100%. I think battery recycling was a mistake. I think that [indiscernible] all these companies and Redwood Minerals and all these people are just wrong because first of all -- once -- if it became very profitable, where are you going to get the feedstock? Where are you going to get the raw material from? And that becomes the business then you're not profitable. But I think where our company has a great opportunity is to take products like lithium and turn it into the precursor materials so it can be used in the batteries and that's -- but we have to fine-tune what our business goals are so that we can start saying here are the customers.

And I agree with that 100%. And we are, in fact, in the midst of doing that. We have -- we are in the middle of conducting both with a bunch of outside firms as well as our in-house people. We are in the middle of crafting a road map of where the white spaces are. who -- it's sort of interesting because you sort of have to work from a very big move. You go -- you look at Dow Chemical, you look at the folks that are at the very top and you say, okay, what are they looking for? And who are their Tier 1 and Tier 2 suppliers? And then you look to the Tier 1 and Tier 2 suppliers and find out what it is they want or what is it that they think can be provided cheaper, and we are going to be doing. We are in the middle of that activity. And once that activity is completed, then I got a working model from which I could build a business plan because I wouldn't -- as you say, we would know what our target markets were. We would know what it is we would be selling, and we would know what the cost of getting there would be and they got to have our product because it's the best. .

One would hope.

You see the frustrating point, I'm sure most of the shareholders are, when battery cycle and the buzzword battery recycle came up, we were the #1 you do a Google search, our name came up right off the bat. And now you search it now, you're lucky to can find it.

Yes. But I can tell you, what you do find when you research that [indiscernible].

You find a lot of value.

Believe me, I'm aware of that.

Okay. So I think that I take some pride in the fact that in the 2 years I've been here, we have avoided the break of failure. And I think that counts for some.

It does count. And we're still in business, but the $20 million that was left in the till is starting to come down.

And it's going to come down a little bit further because we're going to hire people, and we're going to have to pay them. We are going to be, I hope, increasing it, too. I mean the concern that has been expressed to me a lot by shareholders is that capital is too expensive to go out and get right now. And I think that that's a fair concern. The cost in the capital markets of the kind of capital we could raise is just too high. It doesn't make sense to do that. What does make sense is it's the phrase of the month, NDF, nondilutive financing or nondilutive funding. And we're looking at that, too, because I think that you're right, the [indiscernible] will dwindle. And the thing we need to be doing is getting ourselves money that will defray our operating costs, defray our R&D costs and keep us around while we continue along the path of exploitation that you're talking about. It's not something that I could not honestly, and I don't think anybody could honestly a business plan for that, that would be an honest assessment. You could write something.

You could write one. We could write one.

You and I could do that.

Within a week, we would have one for, let's say, for recycling precursor material lithium material. We could write that and we can even project what the profits are and everything else. But that's very limited. But the amount of money we make in that may be so minuscule, it's...

That's right. And I think that what I -- one of the goals for the next 6 months or so is to be able to have -- somebody, please ask them not to Sorry, I don't want to keep everybody waiting. But I think that what I'm hoping I will be able to say to you and everybody else in a few months is, okay, we have now got our road map. We are identifying places where we -- where our IP and know-how could be useful. And we have identified folks who would want something that we would produce like lithium precursor base precursor. And because at that point, CapEx projections, OpEx projections and funding sources that we expect we can provide an honest business plan.

And the best technology to be.

One hopes again.

We do have that right now.

No, that's -- we have some of the best technology. The problem is that we don't have all of it.

No, but we should be able to exploit the parts that we do.

And we are trying mightily to do that.

That's all I'm saying.

I hope -- it is my great hope that these patents.

We got the well-educated people now. I mean we got the engineers and stuff right here. know what I'm saying, we have the people now. So [indiscernible]. You're being greedy, take the win.

Having the best technology product that nobody is fine isn't.

No. But the thing is like you remember the Dreamliners that Boeing made and they caught fire. And the reason they caught fire because the lithium batteries are 96% pure. They weren't pure enough. But we got the ones that make 99% plus purity. We got the product that the industry has to have.

Well, but there are other ways of doing that.

Well, we've talked about...

Yes. I mean that's happening now, right? There are people that are changing their batteries into materials, and they're not using Hydrovac by and large. And so I think what Richard is talking about here is expanding and finding the people that are calling us are not calling us looking for PCAM. They're looking for other things for our revenues to be had. And I think we've taken a position that we don't need to pick and choose. If someone wants to pay us to do something we can do well, we should do that.

Well, that's exactly right. But what nice if we had a news release came out says that we made a deal where we're going to start...

If I could announce a deal every day, I would do that. Deals in this space.

Are not easy to do. [indiscernible] But as I say, the win, you're being agreed with largely.

But as I take the win. You're being agreed with largely and we will be doing.

I'm throwing stones or criticize anybody. Believe me, I know the mount you're climbing is huge. And the equipment we had to time the mountain is limited. So I understand that. But from a salvage point of view, I'm not happy.

From a salvage point of view, neither am I, which is not to say -- and this is where I think people may have misunderstood me last year. Not being happy with the state of things is not the same thing as not being optimistic about the opportunities to change that. We look better than we did ever will. And we will look better next year than we do now. And I'm hoping that we will be.

But Richard. Yes, look I mean the bottom line is -- of course, the fact you're keeping the shipping full makes a difference because I haven't sold any of my shares. I could have been I wanted to, but I haven't. So I'm so optimistic because I still believe in the technology, and there's some hope there like the...

We want those folks to be realized. That's what we're here for and that's what we're trying to do. I got just make sure that anybody else has got a question, we can get to them. So that's it? Well, we got the [indiscernible] didn't have any that question. [indiscernible] those are online. Okay. Everybody please have a happy holidays and Happy New Year. Stay safe, stay warm. Love your families. We will do our best for you.