SurgePays, Inc. (SURG) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and thank you for joining us for today's virtual investor spotlight featuring SurgePays. My name is Jenene Thomas, CEO of JTCIR, and I will be the moderator for today's event. For today's spotlight event, I am pleased to be joined by Brian Cox, Chairman and CEO of SurgePays. Welcome, Brian.

Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

So I would like to remind our audience that SurgePays is publicly listed on NASDAQ and traced under the ticker SURG. During today's discussion, we will be making forward-looking statements, and I encourage everyone to view the company's latest SEC filings on their website at surgepays.com for the latest information. So Brian, I've been really looking forward to this event. A lot going on with SurgePays, so we're going to have a lot of back and forth that I think will be really important to our audience. But first, I want to congratulate you on your recent NASDAQ bell ringing. I'm sure it was such an exciting day for the SurgePays team.

It really was. We've got a great team who work really hard, some 6, 7 days a week. And a lot of times, I'm the only one that gets to kind of peek over the curtain like a puppet show and see all the public company excitement. Now a lot of times, I'm taking the incoming tomatoes and fire. So I do -- they're protective, but at the same time, going to Times Square, getting to see themselves on CNBC, Bloomberg, Fox Business, all these things that are normally just in there, they're [indiscernible] television, that was -- it really made what -- it allowed them to kind of see a glimpse of, hey, what they're building, the hard work, the rewards and then also motivating them to continue to push forward to our goals in the future. So it was a great time.

That's wonderful. I know you and I were introduced just about a year ago, and I remember you telling me the story and your plans to even just discussing the uplisting to NASDAQ and everything that you're trying to accomplish. And now I see where you are today. We have so much to cover. I want our audience to hear everything. But I have to just say congratulations. I just learned that you were one of the top 5 best-performing stocks on NASDAQ year-to-date. What a huge accomplishment, and you've done everything that you've set out to do back to our conversation a year ago. Congratulations, Brian.

Thank you. It's been a grind. I'm not going to say it's been easy. Obviously, the economy is crazy. So I've had to go out of my way. I know until we post 2, 3, 4 quarters of double-digit growth and allow people to really get a sense of who we are, that I'm the flag bearer for the company. So I've taken that burden. I've attended -- gosh, I don't even know how many investor events. I open up myself for at least an hour to 2 hours a day to speak to potential shareholders, portfolio managers, fund managers, doing everything I can to let people know about our company and about how we thrive even in an inflationary or recession-type economy. And I think we're starting to get traction, and I do feel that we're really just getting that hockey stick going right now. And as our sales back up, what I'd say like you said, I usually don't say unless I'm pretty confident we can execute on it. And I think people are betting on the jockey as well as the horse. So I know that's a lot of pressure on me to continue this pace. But I'm up for it. I'm motivated and that's why I'm here today. We're looking forward to talking to you -- not on my list. I'm excited -- after a year ago.

I know we got you. I think the most exciting thing is you are ready. I mean a lot of the legwork that you have done has really positioned you for the story that we're going to tell the audience today. We have great participation from our virtual investor platform. So I'm sure a lot of your current stakeholders are paying attention. But we do have new folks that are joined that are going to be new to the story. So why don't we start from scratch. If you could just give us a big picture overview of SurgePays and tell us a little bit about your background for those that are new to the story.

Sure. Let me start with my background to give people a perspective on how SurgePays came to being. I've been involved in providing telecommunication service, specifically telecom to the underbanked, underserved folks without credit going way back 20 years ago to local [indiscernible] . You call it -- especially down here in the southeast, you had BellSouth, if you called BellSouth and you didn't have credit or you didn't have a social or you owed the money from the past, it was almost a $500 deposit, which is never going to happen. Keep in mind this is 20 years ago. So we were one of the originators of the phrase prepaid. You just -- you get the same price as everybody else. You just pay upfront, then we would pay BellSouth wholesale. So that was the origins of my introduction, if you will, into the underbank. Now what I learned quickly was that the only way to reach this market, it's a very difficult to advertise to, very difficult to get payments from market. So the only way to really thrive in this market is to be in their neighborhoods at the grassroots level. So I spent probably the better part of 5 or 6 years, traveling the southeast. When I say I've -- I've driven from Memphis and seen the ocean in every direction. And it's -- it was a grind, especially back then before GPS and smartphones. You're following maps and staying in truck stop hotels. But during that grind, I got to experience pretty much every type of underbank that -- in the city, all of the convenience stores, beauty supply, pawn shops, check cashing, furniture rental. It was a massive education for me on this market, the needs of this market and the -- really the addressable size of this market and the fact that it is growing every day. So I took that and I -- we ended up growing the largest privately held CLEC or prepaid telephone company in the country. I sold that in 2010, got into wireless. Obviously, you saw the tealeaves in underwriting, writing on the wall there, the technology was changing, still wanted to provide the same type of service to our base, but it was from a wireless perspective. So fast forward to 2017, been really blessed, did a lot of business, built a software platform along the way that allowed us to take payments at the convenience store level, decided that I was watching what was going on in the market with Whole Foods and Amazon. And we knew that there's a manual data and selling directly to customers is really going to evolve here. When I start delivering groceries, man, I didn't think they're going to buy it. Sure enough, they bought Whole Foods. And Amazon, companies like that were looking at that top 1/3 of our socioeconomic country here. So we made a couple of phone calls and figured, you know what? They already got the middle class and the upper class nail down. There's a digital thumb tramp. They know who they are. Nobody really knows this market like we do. Let's go out there right now, whether they're hair-on-fire laser focus, let's sign up as many of these independently owned convenience stores, bodegas, tiendas, just random stores that are in the corner of these communities that are the heartbeat of the community. Let's get them transacting on our platform, offer our prepaid financial services and telecommunication services. And then meanwhile, let's grow our prepaid wireless company that we own, listless undercut everybody else, and let's go out there and get as many subscribers as we can, build value in a public company at the time OTC. "Hey, we can exit this bad boy in a couple of years and off to the races." Well, once we got into the OTC, I kind of fell in love with the public company side of things, like, know what, we're going to take this to NASDAQ. We can do this. So 3.5 years ago, we flew to New York, I met with the folks, started our vendor list, got our checklist to go and started executing. Now COVID hit us, as you know, and that has occurred all that threw me off 2 years. But by being in the right place at the right time and already servicing this market of the underbank to underserve, last year, the government discovered through -- I mean, sometimes the government only discovers thing when people kind of blow off the dust and it's in their face. And they did -- they never realized how many millions and millions of households didn't have access to quality internet. They did when intercity folks were never showing up for Zoom classes with their teachers. So they created an emergency benefit for companies like ours because we could get this product out to market quickly. The mobile broadband internet access, they subsidize us to get that out. And by December, the program had been so successful that the White House signed it into law and the infrastructure build. So if you want to kind of see where we are now, we have 2 revenue channels based on the story that I just told you. One would be a software platform that we go out and set up at the convenience stores in the -- again, the corner stores at a grassroots level in these communities -- to service these communities, we enable that Cler to take payments for all the prepaid wireless companies out there, Boost, Cricket, MetroPCS, all of them. And that store owner makes a commission uptake in the payment. The customer, which is now over 100 million prepaid wireless customers out there in the country that gives you a perspective of the addressable market, they're paying cash somewhere. Now they can pay right down the street. Right, where they already go shop, right, where they're buying their Dr Peppers and whatever else, 5 times a week as we know from the government studies that the underbank frequent these corner stores 5 to 6 times a week. So we're enabling the store owner to do those to provide those financial services to this community, and really coming to quasi banker for the underbank. Meanwhile, we have the other revenue channel, B2C directly to the consumer, providing mobile broadband through wireless connectivity through -- we use an 8-inch tablet where they can use that. Most of them don't have computers, so they can do their homework, job applications, health care, any of that, they can do through the 8-inch tablet or use it as a hotspot to provide internet to the rest of the folks in their home. So that's -- I think it's a little bit more than a mile high, but I feel like it's a mile high and a mile back. It helps to know where we're from and the longevity we've had in this market and also our ability to adapt to new technologies as things come available where we can maximize based on kind of the tentacles we already have in this market.

Love it. And that was a great, great overview. I think it helps at this stage to your point of being in the right place at the right time. I also think it's about just having the vision and the courage to kind of proceed with some business ideas. So Brian, I think before we get into the meat and bones of the story, I think you raised a good point earlier talking about people betting on the jockey. And so kind of additional part of the setup, I want to think if you can just talk to the audience about what lessons have you learned from your early successes and failures that have helped drive your path forward to become CEO of SurgePays?

That's a great question. I don't get asked that very often. So I definitely don't have anything canned for that. So you're going to dive into the raw part of my brand. Yes. I am a big fan of team. We know what we know and the things we know are from life experience. I -- college football enabled me to get to college and education that -- the scholarship that paid for my school. And so I was a football player for so many years and also not just a football player but an offensive linemen. And anybody that knows offensive linemen and know that we're down, dirty, we're the grunt. We're all nasty, broken and battered. Team wins, we get the ring, but our name is not in the newspaper. So I've always taken that philosophy of I'll lead first. I'll go. I'll run through there. I'll clear a path. You just stay behind me and do not drop the ball. And that's really, if I had a book on how I lead, that's it, don't drop the ball. I'll lead. And so I think the people that I surround myself with -- it's not easy because I know sometimes I'm not the easiest guy to work for. The millennials would have a little problem with me because I'm a very hard charging hard worker. And I don't micromanage. I hire adults, and I expect them to do adult things and be accountable for their actions. And no different than, again, going back to the way a college football or football team runs, you have position coaches. They do their jobs. They stay and they get promoted and they get rewarded. So that's really my management stuff. So I think if you talk about mistakes that I've made, that has evolved over the past 20 years. When you're a young entrepreneur, you think you're an attorney, you think you're an accountant, you're pulling down documents off and trying to copy and paste word, change it and you think it's good. So you think you've got to do everything. I've definitely grown beyond that. I've got the wisdom and now the capital and the funding to have all of those things where I can be what I'm best at. And I'm best at talking to folks, thinking, planning, motivating my team, working with folks. So I think that ultimately, from a big picture perspective, now I will say this. Now you won't find things on LinkedIn that talk about this too much, but I won't mind tell off. I mean you see me drinking coffee. We work, and there's been many, many, many nights over the past 20 years where we saw the sun come up. I saw the sun come up. And you go day after day with 3 -- 2, 3 hours sleep, you're disaster, you're making mistakes, but you keep grinding. I'm not saying that that's a popular thing to talk about and people want the easy path and the path of least resistance, I only know what I know. So those would be the lessons I think. And what's really interesting as an entrepreneur as a company's you're thinking about things. I'm willing to try, pretty much anything in business, pretty much anything. And I don't have a problem making stakes. I used to worry about that kind of stuff. I don't let that bother me anymore because some of the best ideas that we've ever had were crazy random walking down an aisle of a store or on a treadmill at 2 in the morning or have -- and you don't know if you don't try, the key, I think, is don't fall in love and marry the idea if it doesn't work. And that is another thing that I've -- a mistake that I made maybe 15 years ago. If you build the old school, excel pro forma and you can't make the math work, you can't make it work. Math is absolute. There's no feelings in the math. If you cannot make the numbers work, don't do it. So I've built in some little checks and balances for my emotions and my pride where I get carried away with an idea -- example, let's say that we have a subsidiary that we're evaluating. Man, that's a great opportunity. But I'm visualizing me running that subsidiary every day, executing 12 hours a day, run until the sun comes up and goes down, and that's not the case. And that's a mistake that I think a lot of us have made and me even has been blessed in business to be able to invest in other companies. I wasn't always a great investor in other companies because I always invested in the opportunity as if I was running that company. So those are things I've learned, I think, that we apply now. And I will say this, when you're not trying to force a square peg into a round hole, which is what I -- I did it, all of us, young entrepreneurs do, which is I think part of being the maverick because being an entrepreneur is by definition a maverick. You're doing something that's not normal. School didn't teach it, college doesn't teach it. It's not really encouraged. I have more people telling me the statistics on failed business when I started my first business 22 years ago, then I did say, "Hey, man, that's great, wish the best for you." So it's really hard, and you've got to block out the things that your friends are doing. You've got to -- you will sacrifice a tremendous amount of your personal life. But at the end of the day, if this is truly what makes you happy and you spell out your goals, I think that it's all worth it. And by the way, I'm a big fan of Napoleon Hill and Carnegie and those guys, I don't stare at the mirror and do affirmations like Stuart smiling on Saturday Night Live back in the day, but you do have to have clear-cut goals, writing down, think about them and modify them as time passes and call audibles when there's an audible, but you do have to focus on those or you will get distracted by all the shiny objects that life throws at you.

Perfect. Well, that was extremely helpful. Appreciate the insight and just sharing that all that information. I think it's a great setup. So we did the mile high, mile wide viewpoint. Now let's kind of dive further into the business and help people understand exactly what SurgePays is doing. So if you can give us an overview of the business model and how the company has evolved over the years, fintech, telecom, if you can go into that, that would be great?

Sure. Let me talk about the fintech side first, and then I'd like to spend a little more time on the mobile broadband because that's definitely the most questions I get right now because that's the kind of the red hot, exciting side of the gold rush, if you will. So let me talk about the fintech first. The fintech, we have a software platform that a clerk can use on -- it's an app that they could use on a computer at the checkout. So we don't do fixed machines or anything that takes up floor space. I want that clerk to be compensated, and I want that clerk to be the influencer in their store, talking to people, taking the payments and it just works out better. It's a heck of a lot less costly if you don't put equipment out in the store. For stores that don't have a computer, we have a little reprogram Verifone terminal, low credit card terminal that our software runs on that allows them to do the transactions to take payments, like I said, for Cricket, Boost and what have you. We've got approximately 8,000 stores right now, transacting on our network, ballpark 20,000 transactions a day. Definitely, where I think the value in our company will expand using this number of stores as we look to get to that 50,000 number 3, 4 years from now. I do think there's going to be a significant value as we've talked to several of the big guys out there. By big guys, I mean, the eBays, PayPals, those types of companies who have huge platforms that offer the underbank products, but they're never going to go into these neighborhoods and shake every single independently owned mom-and-pop store one at a time, build the relationship, be in their checking account, have a trusted relationship. They're not going to do that. They would acquire a company that has that level of transactions, sales relationships and also data. Keep in mind, all of this is data that's being transacted through our platform. So that would be the fintech side. It's a good business. The margins are thinner because you're talking about anywhere from 4% to 6% because you're basically transferring value. It's a fintech margin. But a good business, and it gives us a great point of distribution for selling not only our products but other folks products as they can opt. Like you had mentioned, telehealth, there's some other really cool products that are going to benefit this market and who better to get them out efficiently than us. We get approached all the time even from consumable good companies. For example, like what is it, Delta 8 CBD-type gummies. Any random things, lots of the things you see at the cash register that are all around it that are easy to ship. We get approached by these companies all the time. So that's a very unique, very cool and exciting part of the company. Whenever you see -- if you look at our financials, that would be the SurgePays, ECS divisions of our company. On the mobile broadband, again, we talked about in August, we had 0 mobile broadband customers. Now we did build it out. We were -- we did have the infrastructure, the software infrastructure. We were integrated with carriers. We were ready to go. But it was one of those things like, hey, we needed to make sure I was waiting on the funding from the NASDAQ -- excuse me, the NASDAQ list to be able to really push out higher. So it wasn't -- the timing wasn't there. So I had 0 customers in August. Then when this emergency benefit came out, and you know what, we need to push that out. So we already had 14 states certified because we had wireless customers in 14 states. So even with 14 states, we still only started in Memphis. I mean, Memphis and just across the border in Mississippi. We got going, we were figuring out the program, signing customers up, adding salespeople and growing it from a stairstep perspective. And then let's fast forward to 2 months ago, 2, 3 months ago, we -- now we're humming. We're humming. We got the software in place. We've got the compliance in place. We've got all the -- I call it the rails. So you can always amp up the speed when you've got the rails built and things are staying between the rails. So we acquired a company Torch Wireless that gave us the rest of the 36 states, and now we're in all 50. Now when I say humming, we are really humming, having all 50 states allowed us to also activate online sales. Anybody that's ever done online sales and tried to geofence certain areas, knows how expensive that is as opposed to just broadcasting you're at across the entire country. So now we're able to do that. We're seeing over 300 sales a day online. We're also growing at well over 1,500 sales exhibit 1,000 to 1,500 sales a day average out in the field. So I mean, we're humming right now. We released -- I guess it was an update a couple of weeks ago where we surpassed 150,000 subscribers. And keep in mind, that's 150,000 households. I was curious about 90 days ago, how -- because this is -- I'm always saying like, okay, I'm a sales relationship guy at heart. I'm not a hard sales guy, I'm a relationship guy. I want people to want our products and come back for more and ask and give referrals. So we added as a part of our activation process a survey to see how many prepaid wireless devices were in these households. And our guess was pretty close. It's 3 to 5. So there's 3 to 5 prepaid wireless devices in each one of these homes, which now gives us an opportunity to go back to these people and upsell them because we've got a huge competitive advantage over the other folks: number one, we're providing the internet to the house. So we're already making money on that household. Number two, these guys were at the convenience store where they shop. We own the transaction platform. So we're not paying anybody 15% to do the transaction for us. It's our platform. So we've already got it built in kind of an intrinsic competitive advantage to be able to cut Boost, MetroPCS, Cricket and all those guys by 25% on the cost of the prepaid wireless to really go and be able to grow our base, not just with the government program, which is called ACP, by the way. If you hear me say ACP, it's the affordable connectivity program. I didn't go over that earlier, but not only the ACP program, but we can use the ACP program as really the tip of the spear to get us into these households and expand by offering other prepaid, not just telecom, but also gift cards, other things that enable that customer to have a little bit higher quality of life, better buying power, lower cost of telecom and utilities. So that's where we're rolling. I think the follow-up question that I normally get when I say this that will tell me the economics. I don't want to do your job for it, but if you don't mind. You can just take a break at...

Can you do the next one for me too?

But that's what's the most exciting part, and that's what it make -- and I've had over 100 one-on-one meetings this year, and that's where people usually have that lightbulb when they start doing the forward-thinking math, which is great because that gets them into my frame of thinking for next year, not thinking quarterly, but thinking where could we be at the end of next year. So we're incentivized to put a device in consumers' hands that qualify. So in doing so, the device cost us anywhere from $80 to $90. We reimbursed $100 for putting that device in a qualifying customers' hands. So that's the first step. The second step is providing the ongoing service, the reoccurring mobile broadband. We get $30 a month, every month for those customers. All they have to do is use it, the customer doesn't have to pay anything. Our cost is somewhere between -- depending on the carrier and depending on the use of somewhere between $12 and $15 a month. So you can kind of do the quick math on that and see that our margins are at least 50%, and that's month after month, and that we get reimbursed that $100 per tablet that cost us 85%. So it's a really unique model that our challenge, if you want to call it a challenge, is the float between putting that tablet in a customer's hand in a calendar month, and then getting reimbursed for that specific action that device the following month. So that's our challenge. That's where I spend hours a week with our CFO, Tony and going back and forth and running numbers because we call it red line growth. We want to push it to the absolute. We have no devices that are left at the end of the month, collecting to us. I mean, we push out everything. I was an economics major, and I've drawn on the thousands of supply and demand graphs where it needs either gives you to price your output. And this is the first time in 20 years of business where demand and competition didn't factor in at all. It's as many as we can get, we push out. If we get 45,000 tablets, devices this month, they're out. I mean they're gone. So it's -- I've never seen anything like this. And I've been a part of 2 big, big runs in telecom specifically subsidized telecom. Never seen anything like this, Jenene. It definitely keeps us up at night in a good way for a change. Instead of the 3 or 4 years leading up to NASDAQ, where it was like how are we going to cover payroll. Now it's like how can we grow and maximize this growth before the end of the month.

I love it. And I'm going to take back the question asking because you have triggered so many -- so many ideas. So this is so exciting. I first think about the solution you're providing to the customer, the people that are behind with the real need here and the solution is unbelievable. And I think that I'm seeing how you're helping people, but I'm also seeing dollar signs for the SurgePays, on the SurgePays side and on the investor side, really an idea. Let's kind of dive in a little bit deeper there. So you mentioned a couple of times to underbank. So as I mentioned, we have a whole audience that are full of your stakeholders but also new people to the story. So I just want to make sure everyone really understands the opportunity here. So if you can talk about the underbank -- serving the underbank market, what does the underbank mean? And how large is the market?

Yes. That's always a part of my initial challenge is explaining the underbank. I can't do -- Warren Buffett always says the thing where he talks about drinking Pepsi and then buying Pepsi. Well, by definition, anyone that has money in an account that they can invest in a stock or a company, they're banked. So I'm talking about products that, for the most part, people are not -- most shareholders are not on prepaid wireless. Most shareholders have checking accounts, credit cards. They don't depend on a corner store they go to 5 times a week. So there is a little bit of an explanation. But I think the lightbulb goes off when I'm able to -- it's not just me talking about the market or the 100 million prepaid wireless customers out there. The Miami Herald, for example, did an article about 3 months ago where they were talking about the infrastructure bill and the over 6 million -- I think it was almost 7 million people in Florida. Florida, not the United States, Florida qualified for the ACP, which is our program. So extrapolate that out to the entire country. Mean Florida is a pretty big state, but it's not the whole country by any stretch of the imagination. And Florida is an interesting cross-section between the Panhandle in Miami, back up both ethnicity and financially, it's a good cross section that I think represents the country. So we extrapolated that out to kind of get our numbers. We've used some of the White House numbers. And that number is anywhere between 48 million to 50 million households to 100 million. And I say that because what's really interesting, this is the first subsidized communication product that includes WIC. And for those that don't know, WIC is a program for immigrants. And it's to make sure that their infants, their babies are not destitute, baby formula, diapers and baby food. So WIC is a program where you don't even have to be an American citizen to qualify for it. So now to be -- not just underbank and not just falling into the -- maybe I've had a rough run of my credit, maybe I've had a rough run of things that have made some stakes or somebody got sick or divorced, every things happen to people, but also immigrants. To qualify for the ACP program, all you have to do is be on any one of the other government programs, SNAP EBT, Medicaid, older folks on fixed incomes. It could be any of the school lunches, subsidized utilities and now WIC. So from the bigness of the program, you talk about between 100 million prepaid wireless customers, over 50 million households out there that the White House is same qualified, and that doesn't include the immigrant population, which I think -- this is one of those unique things, Jenene, where we don't know, but it's -- we don't know what the market is because we don't know how big it is. Not we don't know how small it is. It's actually a unique, we don't know. Meanwhile, we're sitting over here with 150,000 customers cash flow positive, growing in double-digit growth, and we just got started. So that's -- again, this is not like the Lightning. It's exciting to us. And look, we approached the NASDAQ list. We prepped for it for a couple of years. We -- I personally put a tremendous amount of capital in to protect both mine and the existing shareholders' positions. I believe in what we were doing. And I wanted to make sure we could scale rapidly once we got to NASDAQ and got the funding. I did not know ACP was going to come around the corner, but we did build the framework that allowed us to scale this rapidly and is going to continue to allow us to scale without hitting plateaus.

That is absolutely a perfect segue into the next question. So how -- what is your approach to targeting this market and meeting their needs? I mean it seems like the numbers are literally unbelievable and they're massive, right? So there is a broad reach you need to have. How are you going to target these customers?

No, it's a great question, and that is one of our strengths. We, at our core, understand this market. We're a grassroots company. We don't put influencers on social media and keep our fingers crossed and shoot things out from Silicon Valley. We actually go into the neighborhood. And we mentioned that we are partners with thousands of convenience stores that transact on our network. Well, their parking lots are phenomenal places to set up pop-up tailgate tents, folding tables, a chair, you put a banner on each side that says free Internet, and you love to know they can also get a tablet there, tablet device, we talked about. And it doesn't take about a day or so before a line wraps around the block. And so going into their neighborhood and understanding this market and being able to hit right down the street from these folks. They don't have to go any one. Keep in mind, we, as Americans, are already instant gratification, but especially the under bank market. If they can walk -- there's a picture up there. If they can walk up to a tent and you see the demand. So the demand is not an issue. But when they walk away from that table, they've got a tablet valued at $150. They can now go home access the Internet, use that to provide Internet to their other devices and they're good to go. And they don't have to pay a thing for it. So going into the neighborhood is hard, having the logistics of managing salespeople coast-to-coast and millions of -- like, for example, the picture you're shown there, that person there probably has about, let's say, $10,000 worth of tablets in that van. They're responsible for that. So managing the inventory coast-to-coast, having the software compliance to enroll the customers and sign them up and make sure that everything is done perfectly, black and white. That took a lot of years of work to perfect, a lot of proprietary software that we've built. And so you can't just go get an ACP license and pop up a tent and go to town tomorrow. There's a ton of work and energy that all the way back to the lifeline days, not just the experiences, but the software, the things that we've built and we fine-tune and calibrated specifically for this program that have enabled us to grow. So that right there pictures that you're showing that when I say it keeps me up at night because it's so exciting. That was the first day that we showed up in that town. Somebody sent that over to us. And so I could sit here all day long and talk about demand, but nothing I could ever say could paint the picture like what folks are seeing right there. And so -- so that's the exciting part. And that's also -- you've got to assume too that people don't have Internet. So marketing through Internet, you're kind of marketing to people that already have Internet and maybe they're just rerouting some of their spending or just saving on Internet, which is still fine. It's under bank low-income folks. But these are people who desperately need access to Internet and knowing too. I'm not -- I think I've evolved more into -- let's just call it more of a libertarian independent over the years, from my global thinking as I've seen in the world. But folks now that education, health care and employment are all going to be centralized and funneled through the Internet and through your access to good Internet, we as a society, I don't care how much money you make or how successful you are. We cannot allow that bottom 1/3, that low income section of our country to service folks, the blue collar folk. We cannot allow them to drift off and that digital to buy it to get giant or we will collapse and become a third-world country. I've traveled to a bunch of third world countries, and none of us want to start living in that world. It won't work. And that's not what we're made of here. So I love the fact that the government -- I think the government did get it right with this program. They use -- they're using and backing a company like us who knows how to work with these customers, knows how to service them, customer service. We've got the tools to upsell them, help them, offer them efficient pricing as opposed to the government trying to fix it themselves. So that's what's really unique about the growth curve of our -- called the Nike switch as well.

Perfect. So I wish we'd locked like 3 hours for this conversation, there's so much to the story and so much to ask. So I'm going to keep it moving. So just you mentioned the grassroots expansion. Just briefly, if you can just give us an idea before we transition into the ACP because I want to touch on so many things related to that. What is the adoption process in the underbanked communities then?

No, the adoption as far as the ACP program?

Just -- yes, I mean just with respect to the ACP, but just even in your initial outreach before ACP, just what has that adoption been?

I think anytime you bring a product through a, let's call it, through a channel that's a trusted channel especially in the low-income neighborhoods. There's a different level of trust, respect and the adoption happens faster. I've tried various types of marketing over the years, whether it be -- we didn't call the influencer back in the day as we call it, just people that you know. But at the end of the day, that guide behind the counter at the place that you shop five times a week, that knows your name, it pretty much knows what you're going to buy when you come in the store. His carrying your product is already a vouch for it and you being in his parking lot is a vouch for it. So we learned that a long time ago. You're not going to get customers through TV ads and newspapers and what have you. So we've -- let's call it, we've adapted to create the adoption, how about the that would scale quickly. And by the way, if you have Spanish customers, we learn real quickly, let's have the Hispanic bilingual customer service and sales. So we navigate and adapt to the market so they can adopt to us. I kind of like that phrase. But that is what we do. We have never -- since we've started the ACP program, I don't believe that we've ever gone a month where we didn't sell out of every piece of inventory we have. So I don't know if that's -- I mean, that's without trying to quantify the adoption, I think just the math doesn't work.

Perfect. well, it certainly does. I know you touched on ACP, the affordable connectivity program. You mentioned that earlier on. What I'd like to -- where I'd like to take the conversation because I think this is a build. I think you kind of really did a great job establishing the SurgePays offering, establishing the need, establishing the growth and opportunities there. And I just keep continuing to kind of do the math and my own head, and it really -- you said it's just the beginning. This is going to be, from my perspective, an unbelievable opportunity. And I think that I'm trying to help get those new to the story and even your current stakeholders to really get to see all this because this is so exciting. And I meant what I said, I wish I had 3 hours to go through this. You touched on this earlier, but I want to kind of really laser in on this. Can you talk about the impressive growth in the mobile broadband subscribers that you've seen since the launch of SurgePays' mobile broadband subscriber business [ SurgePhone ] last August.

Yes. No, absolutely. And I think we touched on a little bit of this. The epicenter of our growth was tremendous, and we were not in Arkansas. So we had to grow, let's call it, East and South. And it was onesies, twosies. We had days where we have a look -- I run my company on dashboards. So I have dashboard did or look like at on my phone where I can kind of see what's going on. Again, I don't micromanage, but the dashboard will have a little thing, It'll tell you if something is wrong. So I mean, there were days where we have 40 sales, 35 sales. And you're like, yes, we got to 50; hey, man, we broke 100. So it was all these milestones through growth. And I think that's important for people to know when they look at our growth trajectory, like based -- assume tomorrow based off of yesterday, that 150 we accomplished starting at 0, but it wasn't homing. Again, we only had 14 states until a couple of months ago. We did not have all of our systems in place. We've been growing very carefully and strategically. I have not raised a dime of capital since getting to NASDAQ, we're cash flowing all of our growth or leveraging our receivable that we build up each month. We're getting paid from USAC, which is the administrator of the ACP program. So we've been very, very, very strategic on how we've brought capital in, purely debt, no equity or stock-related discounts OADs, discount to market convertibility. All those fun things of that stack of term sheets this stick I've been offered since we got to NASDAQ. We pushed them away. We've been very careful to navigate that and bluntly. I think you may know this, Jenene, but I own a little bit over 1/3 of the company. I realized for me to hit my numbers that I want to hit 3, 4 years from now, that won't be the case. But for right now, it is. And I'm very protective. I always tell people I've got the CEO had where I need to get numbers and I need to grow at all means. And I've got the voice on my shoulder that's also the shareholder, I flipped the header on backwards like, yes, but hey, -- there's an easy way to grow, and there's a hard way. I'd rather crawl across broken glass and take that 90 to 120 days to get traditional debt financing as if we were a private company based off of our success or our receivables than just take the easy term sheet with the easy money yet, they pump up numbers for a minute, but all of us stakeholders get diluted in that process.

So I don't want to put you up, but so I mean, that's a really important point, I think, for investors. You are hand-in-hand in the trenches with investors completely aligned with what's in the best interest of all shareholders, and that's including you. So I think that's a great thing for investors to really understand. Just speaking of cap, are you going to raise money anytime soon?

I don't -- I'm never going to say never, but I don't have plans for it because I don't need to. The only reason I just don't see -- there would have to be something that would pop up that, let's say, some crazy acquisition or something fell from the sky and landed in my front yard. And we just had to do it and could not say no. And I had Tony, our consultants and everyone else show me on a green sport why the net-net to Brian, look, I'm being blunt. I mean, I'm not doing this just for the CEO job. I'm doing this for the net worth play as a shareholder, being the CEO is just a means to an end. I mean that's what I feel like is my best shot of achieving my numbers. So to your point, raising capital, yes, I don't think you should ever say never because you went public for a reason. But only if it was a way to really accelerate growth, I kind of had the old vision. I don't know whether you used to watch roller-derby but when they would slingshot somebody forward. If it would -- to me, raising capital is a time machine. Does it take off a year, 6 months of a 4- to 5-year plan? If it doesn't, don't do it, we don't have to raise capital to support our overhead, G&A or any of the basic and to just touch on your last question, something that's really important to tie together, our growth is specifically based off of that strategic red line growth. If I had 100,000 devices in my warehouse today, we push them out in the next 30 days. No problem, we do it. But we've strategically and methodically grown at the right speed and still -- I mean, it's still -- they go from 0 to 150,000 households in less than 12 months, it's still crazy in any market, especially if you look at our sales in relation to other companies on NASDAQ and what we're doing. So I'm very pleased with what we're doing. Again, people try to get into my head all the time. So maybe I'll just -- I'll be the one to open it up. I run things right now. We're halfway through this year. I have numbers that I work off at the end of next year. That's really how I approach problems. I don't look at the quarters. I don't -- that doesn't even factor into anything. I don't even know what day of the week it is. We're 7 days going. I'm looking at the end of next year. I just -- I'm not going to say I don't care, but that's not why I'm doing this. And I think people that sometimes get a little too overly concerned about every 90 days. I'm not a trader, I don't know enough to trade stocks. I'm not -- that's not my world. I'm a business builder and a business scaler, and I've got numbers that I'm gunning for by the end of next year, and I can reverse engineer what I feel like our market cap value will be if I can hold our outstanding shares under X. And if we're -- for example, I'm gunning -- this is not guidance, I want to be clear, but my number I'm gunning for is over 0.5 million subscribers by the end of next year. I know a 0.5 million subscribers and a 50% margin, we're putting about $7.5 -- or excuse me, $15 a customer. And even at a crazy G&A, let's say that the G&A quadruples to $2.4 million a year -- excuse me, a month, we're still putting $5 million net-net in our back pocket every single month. So if we can keep the market cap -- excuse me, not the market cap, but the outstanding shares in that $20 million range, hit that number, the sales and hit that $50 million to $60 million profit I mean I know based on our peers in the telecom world at, what, 17% to 22% or 22x multiple. I know what that will get to. So those are the things that guide me. Everybody wants to know what guides you, what drives you. That does, getting to that day. What do I need to do to get to that date? Well, it doesn't do any good, the blitz to 500,000 subscribers if I just tripled the outstanding shares which we can do. I mean, I could get -- I could have 0.5 million subscribers by the end of the year, if I be down all the concern about outstanding shares. So that's what I hope people really appreciate the challenges that we face. And I think that we're being pretty successful at it, is that equalizer, if you will, of sweet spot of growing as fast as you can within the boundaries of not raising dilutive capital.

Wow, that was extremely helpful. But I wish I guided our audience to bring a calculator them with the intent I'm just seeing a lot of numbers going, which is amazing for this business and amazing, the opportunity, for investors. Let's just dial it back just because we talked about kind of the $0.5 million. I want to just talk about the 150,000, that subscriber milestone that you've achieved? And what does revenue look like with that amount of subscribers just in current day?

Yes, you know what, let's just drill down on that so that folks can if -- instead of just spitting out a number, let's talk about the fundamentals, so folks can scratch their own with their pencil. So recurring revenue is at $30, all right? So $30 and take the high side of our cost, the high side 15. So we're grossing $15 per -- $15 a month per subscriber at 150,000 subscribers. So -- and if you take that and then you assume our other subsidiaries as long as they're not all losing money, even if just all things being equal, they're not making money, which they're doing well, but let's just assume all of our other subsidiaries, all things equal, are just breaking even. Just use that as your underlying number here for simplicity. Our G&A, our overhead, fixed overhead, if we didn't make a dime is probably between $600,000 and $625,000 a month. So you take those two numbers and you say, okay, so $15 x 150,000. That's our gross and then our overhead and the fact that as we grow, Jenene, we have an operations center in El Salvador, we don't have to add millions of dollars of overhead per 100,000 subscribers. As a matter of fact, if we had 300,000 subscribers today, my G&A or fixed overhead would be exactly the same as it is today, wouldn't change a dime in it, mainly because we own the software and we built it for all types of automation, and we've already got the human capital side covered with folks sitting in cubes for customer service intake processing, all of that's already set up and humming. So I think folks can really scratch some numbers out based on that information. And I always like to word it like that so people can kind of come to their own conclusions as opposed to me just spitting out top line sales and what I'm talking about because I think when you distill it down, it gets very interesting, and this truly is stacking bricks.

Well, it does get interesting when you think about -- just you provided the formula to help people understand the future and you threw out that 0.5 million number and -- this is such an exciting opportunity, Brian. I'm doing a time check, we have about 10 minutes left. So I can think of more questions, so I'm going to get right back into it here. I think you talked about how the pandemic impacted your business and growth. So I think what I've seen is you've created a new normal and you've navigated through them and you're still pushing forward every day, and there's a lot to come from upside. So but let's talk about many economists talking about the high inflation and the possible recession. What should investors know about how this might affect your current business and growth prospects?

I tell you, I wish I could go stand on top of the Nasdaq building with a megaphone and scream as loud as I could that inflation and many of the adverse effects that are out there do not affect us whatsoever. We really are -- I told the story all the time when you're standing waist deep at the beach in a big way, it's fixing a crash, what do you do? You drop right below the water line because in lot that wave pass you, well, things like Dow Jones, GDP inflation, all these -- consumer prices. Those really don't affect our market whatsoever and especially our products, if anything. If anything, it enhances the importance of the products we provide. If anything, it even encourages low income folks to look even further for a better way to save money. Hey, let me go down to the corner store now and pay my wireless bill because I don't want to figure out a ride or drive all the way down to the -- where I got my phone, [indiscernible] plus wireless, two miles down the road. It creates the urgency for efficiency and cost savings, which is what we bring to the market. So -- and if we really want to talk shop, I would never wish ill on anyone. I'm an American. I would never -- but as people fall in hard times or they fall into our market, our bracket, the underserved, underbanked, it's very unique because in as immigrants come into the country, it only increases our addressable market. So I think that we're really primed to shoot our sales and growth like a rocket regardless of -- and I know right now up in Washington, they're debating what is a recession. You know who's not debating what a recession is, our customer base. It doesn't matter. They're going to be in the same situation regardless if there's a recession or not. So I think we're going to -- you're going to see zero effect on our growth, if anything, it will be a little bit of nitrous to it, but it's -- because, again, it's only addressing -- or excuse me, it's only increasing our addressable market. And again, it only increases the need now. What's really unique is they always talk about you want a product that people either -- you want to put products out that they either need or want. We've got products that there's a cross-section of circles. We fall in the middle, it's both. They need and want this Internet. They need and want buying power of a debit card that they can reload at the corner store. They need and want access to quality Internet for education, health care and employment. So I think that's why you'll see us only more emboldened. And from what I'm looking at right now, I joke around all the time. I'm a little bit of a history buff on certain gold rushes. And it wasn't just the people out there that were digging for gold. It was the folks that made Blue Jeans and pickaxes. So right now, we're looking at -- somebody asked me the other day about acquiring other ACP companies like we don't have a need to do that. We're growing as fast as we can, we can get as many customers as well, why would I buy a company? I would just by customers. I mean that's how you buy devices, the device turns into a customer in 30 days. So what we're looking at doing right now is providing services to other ACP companies because of the software that we've built. It's such a wide open market. We're not butting heads competitively with anyone right now. So it only makes sense for us to look at ways to make incremental revenue off of what we've built and are using -- and really, for example, Software as a Service, our software platform. We've already got folks lined up to start using our software platform, then we don't create a competitor. We've -- it's not a partner -- we've got another client though, not -- we've got customers in the field and clients providing services. So those are the things that we're looking at as far as our growth, not just shooting straight up, but why as well.

Well, I mean, I think that you've hit on so many points. And I think it just is resonating with me just you're really providing a solution for so many people that are in need that -- it is such a resource and the ability, well, it's something that they want, it is something that they need as well. And I just think this business model on so many levels is exciting. It's something that I think people should follow. It's been derisked on just about every level, congratulations on everything that you're doing. But -- and thank you for all the work that you're doing for people really providing solutions across the country and hopefully, globally. I do have just two more questions, and then we want to get a couple of questions in. We are running out of time. You previously provided guidance for 200,000 mobile broadband subscribers by the end of 2022. With the most recent milestone of 150,000 subscribers hit an over 5 months left in the year. Do you expect to be revising that guidance.

Yes. Let me navigate that a little carefully for obvious reasons. Simple math would tell you, we went from 0 to 150 in 10 months. And now we had all 50 states. Now we've got online humming. Now we've got all of our systems in place and we're making more money to reinvest that cash flow. I look at it like just throwing it right back into that coal right back into the fire to burn the locomotive faster. Yes, of course, we're going to need to. But I'm not going to just willy nilly throw out numbers. But then I turn right back around and go, "Oh my gosh, I was -- what was a drinking that day. The coffee was too strong." I want to be -- give me another month or so to work with our guys and really -- because see, here's where it boils down to. It's not what we can do. It's where are we from a financial standpoint to bring the devices in-house to again, we're essentially buying customers. So it's -- again, it's not based on effort, not based on marketing or hitting a home run. I mean it's just simply based on managing our cash with that red line growth we talked about to be able to hit that. So I do believe we'll exceed 200,000 subscribers. I mean, that would only be a 50,000 subscriber increase. It's -- I don't want to be a fool and act like that, that won't be revised. But I don't want to put numbers out until I want to be.

I didn't want to put you in an uncomfortable position here. I know that you strictly adhere to disclose our guidelines and so forth. So I just -- so we're not expecting a number, but happy to hear you're going to take some time, and it's a potential. Just in the interest of time, we've shared so much thank you for providing all that background, lots of participation in today's event, I think you're going to have some new followers based on today because such a compelling story so much to pay attention to in the coming months and years for sure. Speaking of that, what upcoming catalysts should investors keep an eye out for in the near term?

Yes. No, by the way, I appreciate all the kind words. I don't normally get so many. So I do appreciate it. It's nice. I don't do this for the pound on the back, but when you get it every now and then it does help push you forward. I think from a catalyst perspective, I would -- if I was a shareholder -- and by the way, to your point, I try to be very accessible to folks as much as I can, but still obviously focus on executing the business plan. So that is where I try to differentiate maybe from the traditional CEO I'd love to talk to shareholders and stakeholders. But I think let's time -- time contractions. Let's time the milestone between 150,000 and 200,000 because I think people are going to be impressed when that hits. And I think you're going to see milestones of the 100,000. I think you're going to see those 50,000 increments start to click over the next 12 months. I would look to see where we are with some of our software development, where we could offer that as a service to other folks out there. There's some unique plays that really aren't competitors stars like, for example, cable companies, who we've talked to about our software platform. That's not a -- somebody that's doing fixed wired broadband in a rural area, that's not really a competitor to us, but we can make a subscriber fee on every single month on every subscriber they make. So things like that, I think, would be really interesting to look for. And then obviously, we've got some other things that we're working on in the fintech side as they're looking at growing their number of stores and adding some pretty cool financial service products to offer to these convenience stores.

Perfect. Brian, so much to look forward to. I'll ask shortly for some closing remarks. But are you candidly go a little bit over the time. We do have great participation from the audience. So I just want to get at least two questions in, and then maybe you guys can handle the questions that have come in that we haven't had a chance to kind of offline if that's possible.

No, Jenene, I always shoot straight. And I think, honesty is the best policy. This was the highlight of my day to day. I was looking I've been looking forward to this for a couple of days. So take as much time as you want. I enjoy -- because if one person has the question, there's a chance that several others have the same question. And maybe I didn't do a great job explaining something or I could bring clarity to something we've talked about.

I think that's perfect. So let's -- we do have quite a few questions that have come in. So our first question, could you clarify about sales per day? Did you say 300 sales per day online in sales per day in the field equal 130 to 1,800 sales per day total.

Yes. And let me be careful on that because we are doing 300 sales a day online. That is a fact. The sales in the field are interesting because you've got -- average is a funny word. It's definitely skewed toward the beginning of the month when we're loaded with devices. And your sales on Saturday and Sunday are usually less. It doesn't seem like it would be that way, but it is. Your sales during the week are always better. So averaged out, that is about what it is. The last couple of months, we ran out of devices the last week or so of the month. So -- but again, that was by design. That was -- I don't want to stay on purpose because that sounds weird, but it was. I mean, we just -- that was -- we hit our number, and we stopped them. Very, very disciplined when it comes to sticking to the program. I don't get enamored by a few more sales. I don't do it because I know what the impact it would have on our shareholders. So very disciplined approach to sales, but that is the average. Now what we could do is probably over 2,000 a day. And by the way, we hit well over 2,000 a day. When we're fully locked and loaded, we've had some days that were 2,500 to 3,000 a day, which I just let that simmer for a minute as we continue to reinvest and we are getting more locked and loaded fully coast-to-coast. But yes, that is -- I think that's actually what we did yesterday, for example. How about that for clarity. And I hate to sound like be ambiguous, but it's pinning me down to an exact number per month, and I don't want to mislead folks that, that -- any given day, that is what we can do, yes.

Perfect. Okay. So another question is what is the biggest bottleneck in getting these free tablets and services out there?

Biggest bottleneck? I will say this, thank goodness, we don't deal with any supply chain issues. So we've been involved in the wireless device business going back to flip phones, actually brick phones and flip phones back in the day. So we have a relationship with almost every handset manufacturer that services this market. It's not Apple and Samsung. It's the secondary manufacturers. We've got relationships with all of them, great relationships. So it's really -- it's not -- I wouldn't call it a bottleneck. Again, I would defer back to -- it's us sticking to a disciplined plan of sales. We hit our number. We know the amount of money we're going to budget for devices. There's also a commission that we pay to those folks sitting at those tents in the field. When we hit our number, we're patient, we're surgical and we wait and then we reload and we go to town again. And we take notes. We upgrade our analytics. We see where the hotspots -- where can we make a few extra bucks more efficiently? How can we push online sales? example, if I had 10 sales today that I could allocate to online or in the field, I want it online. Two reasons. Number one, it costs me less. Number two, they -- we got that customer through Facebook or Instagram. Now we have their messenger where we have their handle, their user name. We can communicate with them back and forth. It's a far easier upsell and instead of just being connected to that customer, I call it welding that customer because through their social media, we know that I think it's 5x response through their social media messaging than an e-mail or a text message. So it's a better, more stickier customer over time. So again, it's not really any bottlenecks. It's strategic red line growth.

Perfect. So during our pre-call, before we got started, you said I ask any questions, you don't have to filter anything, not sure what this one question means, but I'm going forward with it and asking anything that comes through. So it said, anytime you are part of a new program, I would think that there is a landmark mentality while so navigating regulators and competition, working through learning curves and clarifying of the rules. We saw you apparently had a little run with the local politician in Mississippi about 6 to 7 months ago. Can you tell us about that?

Yes. And I'm always an open book, Jenene. I have no problems going in. And one thing about the Internet, people access information and then they can take and twist it and just try to jam it right in your heart. A couple of things on that. And by the way, that was something simple again, that got a little bit of one out of proportion, but let's talk about it real equipment. So any time you're -- I don't want to say a thought leader, I hate that phrase, but you're an action leader. That's what always call us, a frontline action person. When you get out there, there's always going to be the newness of what you do and misunderstood. And maybe that's across this all business and all maybe life. So there was a local politician who was doing his job. He was protecting local businesses down in Mississippi, especially ones that he had raised money for, for broadband, putting fiber in the ground and servicing their communities. So I don't hold -- I wish there may have been a different path that we had reached on us instead of online back and forth. But it was protecting a couple of local companies when our teams went to their towns, and you saw what happens when we put up a dent. Now imagine a small town. Now imagine that you run the local broadband company that's trying to sign people up on ACP. And here, these guys came and got a line wrapped around the block and they're taking all your customers. So what we had to do in that situation was I went down to -- I drove down myself to Jackson, Mississippi, I met with the politician. We talked through our program. He better understood how we do business, be better understood our program. And then also, hey, not only as we talked about, first of all, we're in Memphis, but right across the border. But second of all, I've been in this market for 20 years. We're not a carpet bagger. As a matter of fact, we had 800 stores in Mississippi, who transact on our search-based network, independently owned mom-and-pops that we're empowering them to assist the folks in those communities. So we provided them with our compliance documents and everything, and we haven't heard a word since then. So -- but tied to that, again, this -- I'm familiar with governments and when -- especially government agencies. And anytime -- again, you're pushing ideas, you're trying new things. A lot of people go back and ask me -- I've talked about this a lot, and I think -- I've never talked about it online. So I'll bring this up too. We -- my original company was Lifeline back in Dalton days. And we signed up tons of customers, we helped hundreds of thousands of people who wouldn't have otherwise been able to get home telephone service. And keep in mind, that's how you got the call back for your job application, right? So very important, it was one of Reagan's program. He started in '85. Well, when Congress signed the Digital signatures Act in 1999, which then -- until then, we all had to sign pieces of paper with an ink pen, but after that, reported phone calls, digital signatures online, which now we kind of just call generically DocuSign, that was what spurred out of that moment. So most of us in the industry were using digital signatures online and recorded phone calls as opposed to having huge filing cabinets, rooms full of filing counters with pieces of paper that had a signed piece of paper for every customer that said, my name, my address. And yes, I qualify for the service. It's called self-certification. So about, gosh, 10 years ago, because we were the largest company in the space, there was a -- I don't know how you would categorize this government official, but he came at us really hard, both me and a couple of other of the industry leaders really, really hard. We stood our ground, we fought. And for 18 months, it was absolute pure torture until this gentleman left the government to go into politics to pursue his own thing. And then ultimately, after 18 months, it got to the FCC, and the FCC said, yes, of course, recorded phone calls and online digital signatures with suffice for self-certification for these customers. So -- and then it all just -- like a water vapor went away, except the stuff out there on the Internet and then my legal bills. So I think anytime you're again, a frontline action person, you have a risk because a lot of times government -- I'm not going to say they make the rules up as they go, but they have good intentions, and they curtail the rules. They have revisions and they call it clear they actually call it clarifications of the rules. As a matter of fact, in 2012, the FCC put out there that digital signatures do, in fact, qualify. So that I will -- because of that, Jenene, I wake up at night sometime. You asked me the biggest mistake I've made in business, biggest mistake I made in business, the data that the FCC said yes, what those guys have been doing and done is perfectly fine. I should have gone and I should have patented the online enrollments for subsidized communication. Because if I had done that, I'd be getting a royalty of every Tom, Dick and Harry out there right now that's signing up for Lifeline, ACP, all those guys online. So I can look back on that and smile even though it was pure torture for 2 years. But again, I'm an open book, I think it's good for folks that are going to bet on the jockey that they know that I'm more proven. I don't back down even if it says in the United States of America on the versus, I don't back down. I'm not afraid of anything on planet Earth other than God, I guess. And we're here with a laser focus to accomplish these goals.

Okay. Excellent. I appreciate that. We are -- I'm going to ask the final question. So before we close, why do you think it's an exciting time to be an investor in SurgePays right now?

As an investor in SurgePays right now, I think the upside of where we're going and the fact that we're just now gaining traction. I know that we've gotten pain the backs for our year so far. I still think we're significantly undervalued by looking at our peers, the multiples, our revenue. I think folks don't know who we are yet. So from a broader perspective, and especially as we eclipsed as untold thresholds that open us up to an even broader market. For example, when we surpassed the $100 million market cap. When we surpassed $7 a share, it opens up funds who have covenants that allow them to purchase our stock. And I think the exciting part is it's not just the continued growth. It's not just the fact that we're not raising capital that we're cash flowing. I think it's the fact that our officers and the folks at the core of the decision-making in our company, and I'll call it people are afraid to say the word, their greed is aligned with you, the shareholder. The decisions that are being made are from a shareholder's perspective. So if there was ever a situation where shareholders had a voice, I am the largest shareholder. I include the team, and I definitely make sure and get sign-offs on all the decisions I make, but I'm making this to growth 2, 3 years from now to really make an impact in a market that we're a subject or expert in and we're poised to accelerate growth. And I don't know that there's cap we talk about having subscribers. There's nothing stopping us to get into a million subscribers. There's nothing -- there's no limit. There's no capacity. There's no competition that would stop us. There's no -- like I said, supply chain or geographical limitations and hopefully, people have been able to pick up in the conversation we've had now. I'm happy but never content. There's always more. And I think that's what you want in a leader that's going out there and fighting for you.

Amazing response. Thank you. Next time, because you are invited back for the record, we're going to have calculators out, person on the whiteboard writing everything down, getting to those numbers because you've given us so much to work with. And really, you certainly convinced me, Brian, today that this is just the beginning for SurgePays. I think that it's just such an exciting time for the company. So much opportunity because you're helping people providing solutions, and I can see this getting bigger and bigger we met about a year ago. I've been following, watching on sidelines cheering for you guys for sure, and you are not disappointing whatsoever. And I think that, again, this is -- the future looks so bright for SurgePays, congratulations on all that you've accomplished. You and your team have been working so hard. I know 24/7, then you see on the other side, top 5 year-to-date proforma for NASDAQ; huge accomplishment. I just really want to thank -- sincerely thank you for being on our program today.

I have enjoyed it. I appreciate your questions. I like especially the tough questions that are not soft balls. I'm really looking forward to coming back. I'll definitely prioritize it and look forward, hey, meeting you one day in person. Maybe we'll have a same room meeting. Same room...

That would be great. We'll do it. We'll plan it. Sound motif. So just as a reminder, SurgePays trades on NASDAQ under the ticker S-U-R-G. I would like to thank everyone for joining today. This does conclude our virtual investor spotlight event featuring SurgePays and to our audience, I want to thank you for your participation. We had a great show up today, Brian. So you have hopefully, a lot of new followers for the company. Appreciate the thoughtful questions. As a reminder, everyone can access a replay on www.virtualinvestorco.com. Again, Brian, thank you so much. Appreciate your time and look forward to seeing you back on virtual investor.

Thank you. You all have a great day.

You too.