Verde AgriTech Limited (NPK) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Yes. Hi, everyone. Welcome to our very first attempt to do a Twitter space. This is all very new to us. I hope it will work. I think -- perhaps the best way to make sure this is working, and you guys can hear me, is to invite someone who is also listening to us to join here as a co-host. So Adi, I'm inviting you here as a cohost. So your microphone is open now. Zach, I'm inviting you as well here as a cohost. So I don't know what that means, but we're going to find out together testing this very new technology which I've already found out, it isn't great. I was hoping we would be able to share our screen. And there is a presentation we put together. There's a little video I was hoping to play, but none of that seems to be possible. So I really hope Elon will be looking to fix that with Twitter space in the short term. Perhaps that's the very reason why he didn't want to join. He would be embarrassed by how this thing is set up at the moment for calls with investors. So Adi, I've joined -- I've added you here a cohost. Can you hear me? Hello? You're on mute, Adi, if you're trying to speak, it's showing you're on mute. Hello? Let me try someone else here to join as a cohost, you see Jeff. I can see Jeff is on the call. Let's see if Jeff will hear what we say. No. Magnus, let's see if he can hear us. Magnus, can you hear us? Okay. I just need some sort of confirmation that you guys can hear me. Otherwise, I don't know how this thing is working. Jeff?

Chris, I can hear you fine.

Fantastic, Jeff. That's good. So that's a good beginning. It's a good beginning. You can imagine if like in 40 minutes down the road, we found out that no one could hear us. So that's very good news. So what I will -- even though very unfortunately, I cannot share my screen or you guys cannot see the presentation, what I suggest is that I take you guys free what we did to come up with Bio Revolution, what the journey has been like, why we are so confident, why we're so positive about this new development, why we believe it's so important for all of us, shareholders of Verde Agritech and also to society, what we're doing with Bio Revolution. And then I don't know if I will be able to -- or how it will work to take questions. But I pretty much hope this can be as interactive as it gets along or as many people as possible to ask questions and contribute to today's presentation. So let's talk about microbes. In one hand full of soil, just one hand full of soil, we have over 10 billion different types of microorganisms. And it's very interesting because all the way back 1,500 something, Leonardo Da Vinci said that we knew more about the movement of celestial bodies, more about the movement of planets than what we knew about life underneath our soil. It already suggests what an interest certainties had taken to what could be there and what could be done out of all of those microbes. However, it took us around 500 years to advance to the level of knowledge where we are now. And the crazy information is that even nowadays we only now understand, we have only studied about 1% of all soil organisms, only 1% of all soil organisms are known to scientists. It gives you an idea of the potential for transformation, the potential for new discoveries -- and the bit later on during the presentation, we're going to talk a little bit why now, we believe, is a crucial point in time where it has already been accelerated, but we'll start accelerating even further the knowledge in this area of science. The first point is an increase in awareness by agencies like the United Nations Food Agency organization. So last year, FAO chose soil biodiversity to be its key theme, and they've been publishing a number of papers. They've been supporting a number of initiatives from an international perspective. What has also happened in terms of more of a society, increased awareness of microorganisms and its benefits to the planet is that documentary to [indiscernible] the ground. I hope most of you have seen that documentary, the ones who didn't, please support Netflix, sign up to Netflix and watch it. It's phenomenal. I'll go a step beyond and say, I hope it will be something equivalent to what the documentary inconvenience truth was for raising awareness of global warming. So I really hope the issue of soil biodiversity, the importance of not just protecting it, but applying science and looking at ways to apply that to better yields and more quality agriculture will grow over time. Lots of people have asked me in the last few days what microbes do? Why are they so important? And I think the best way to start to answer this question is really by saying we wouldn't be able to feed the global population today for the same cost as we currently can, if it wasn't because of microorganisms, if it wasn't because of that 1% we already know about microbes. And the microorganism behind that was [indiscernible] it by a Brazilian scientist and that microbe is capable of enhancing nitrogen fixation to agricultural soils. So pretty much all of the crops grown, the most of the grain crops grown in Brazil. They already one way or another benefit from this technology, which saves farmers billions, literally billions and billions of dollars in nitrogen fertilizers, which no longer required because of this microbe. And the other companies looking to advance that even further, looking to apply that to all the microbes, and there's a lot of interest in doing -- in the ways to do that. The other very interesting mechanism, microbes can help is making more of the phosphate from the soil available to crops. So for example, in Brazil, in tropical soils, when you apply phosphate, a lot of that phosphate reacts with other elements in the soil, making it unavailable to crops. So people like to say how you have billions and billions and billions of dollars of phosphate in Brazilian soils, which are their -- which became fixated with other metals and crops can't uptake. So there are, including aryabhattai does that as well, but there are other microbes, including aryabhattai, which we add into Bio Revolution, which you have papers demonstrating that it can help making some of that phosphate, which wasn't available to crops becoming crop available. Then you have all the mechanisms which are important in terms of humans formation, humans play is a key role in a number of physiological aspects of crops. There's another area of research. And again, there are billions of dollars being spent in this area, which is increasing crop resistance against pathogens, against pests and also making it more resilient against what's called abiotic stress, which can be either too much heat or lack of water, too much cold. So all of those abiotic stresses are also elements, which can -- you can -- microbes can help. If you go on Google Scholar and type in microbes agriculture, you're going to come across a lot of papers with a lot of very interesting mechanisms, and you will find very interesting how most of them were published very recently. This is something else, a bit later on the presentation, I'm going to be talking about. The other mechanism microbes are known for, and for the obvious reasons, there's a lot of interest in that regards is biological carbon sequestration. So all the way from fungi to bacteria, there are a number of papers talking about that. And I have no doubt this is something else, people will be looking to develop over the coming years. The more important, the more obvious benefits when it comes to a farmer is how they can make more money by using microbes. It's true that the society really cares about sustainability and saving the planet the same as us. But when you're a farmer and you're taking all the risk every year of going bankrupt with your business, if results aren't good, cost is something very important. So costs for farmer will hopefully translate into better yields. So the good news is that, yes, there are also a number of papers you will come across where there is significant gains in terms of better yields when you use microbes. So hang on here, what am I talking here? Are you talking about this microbes thing? Is this something just Verde knows about, is this something new? Doesn't farmers know about it? What's going on? You're telling me those microbes, they fixate nitrogen. Farmers can save a nitrogen fertilizer. You're telling me it drags potash somehow from the soil make them crop avail. You're telling me crops are more resistant against pest? Is this something magic, what's going on? Why don't more people know about that? And I guess the short answer is because to the investment community, let's put it this way. This is a new topic. You don't have public -- many public -- sorry, any public company of any significance active in this space. It's not the most exciting topic for the TV and papers you talk about. So you're probably not going to find it in the first 15, 20 pages of a newspaper, but it's something farmers are already aware of and are already benefiting from microbes. So to give you an idea, there's something going on in Brazil, which is called the on-farm movement. So you have in Brazil, thousands of farmers who are buying their own bio plants, bring those bio plants to their own farms, setting a toll up, buying microbes inoculant from different companies, multiplying those microbes in their own farms and then spreading that to the fields. And the farmers are doing that. We're not talking about small farmers. I actually visited one of those bio plants owned by the -- I wouldn't say the biggest -- otherwise I would say it is, let's say, by one of the 5 largest farmers in Brazil, it's massive and very excited. They're using it. And so it's the future of agriculture rather than being something obscured and bioorganic sustainability, people trying to save the world. It's problem mainstream. And of course, the industry has realized that. So you have a lot of money going in. You have some interesting startups launching with different propositions backed by serious money and interesting people. So there's a company looking to fixate nitrogen that's backed by Bill Gates and Melinda Foundation, among others. There's another one, which is backed by the same guys behind Moderna. You have some other ventures, which are backed by the big players in the space. And so until now, the way companies were looking to explore that from an economic point of view or from a market development point of view was to try to make some money out of growing those researching, growing those microbes and then selling microbes to farmers. So that was their business model, okay? Important as described, what some farmers started doing was to buy the microbes from those companies bring to their own funds, multiply it themselves, and -- you buy like a liter of something and then they multiply their own farms and go and spread it onto the fields. What the sector lacked was an efficient platform to apply microbes because even people doing that on farm, the way they currently spread that onto the fields, is expensive and not necessarily very effective. So just by putting that into tanks, going to farm and spreading it on soil, straight onto soil, unfortunately, a very small percentage of those microbes, they can survive and they will survive in competition with the, let's call it, the open soil itself. Some of the companies are trying to add that to seed treatment. Problem of doing it is nowadays seed treatment includes a lot of chemicals, a lot of other stuff that goes on to it, which necessarily aren't -- isn't the best environment you want to be adding your microbes to. I'll just very quickly stop and ask Louisa if the call is still going, and you guys can still hear me. Louisa, is the call okay? Can you hear us? Yes. Okay. Let's carry on then. The point I -- we did -- and it's a shame, I can't share my screen or you guys can see the presentation, but we will be sharing that. But we did that and we did that ourselves, which was to research the number of papers published related to soil microorganisms in recent years. So we went all the way back from 1,800 something, until nowadays. And the number jumps from the '90s when it was about 10,000 papers were published that year. It went up to 2010, more or less, when over 100,000 papers were published that year up to 2020 when more than 250,000 papers were published. The reason we are seeing this exponential growth in research publication about microbes has nothing to do with people realizing the important as we saw from Leonardo Da Vinci has mentioned, back then, scientist over 500 years ago, already keen to study it. The problem, and this is something else the market hasn't completely realized yet. The problem is, until very recently, you could only study about 1% of all microbes you have. The reason you could only study about 1% of all the microbes you have out there is because it could only study what's called free living microbes. Those are the microbes, which you take from the soil, put in a Petri dish and then you can cultivate in lab and then you can study it. That's the amazing thing about the space. It's the minority. It's like less than 1% you could study. You could understand what you did, the scientists that were very limited, very, very limited about science in that regard. The first improvement, scientists had was DNA sequencing. So then they were able to start sequencing some DNAs at a modest, relatively cheap cost, from costing billions of dollars with the human genome program down to a couple of hundred dollars for you to do a full DNA sequencing, even less than that nowadays that opened up more interest. But the problem when you're talking about your soil is that it isn't enough for you only to understand one microbe, one DNA, one microorganism. You need to understand the interaction of all of them. And the big change came with some companies that very recently launched cheap ways to do what's called metagenomic studies, which is when you can study a whole collection of different microbes, the DNA of different microbes. And then you can use bioinformatics to understand how this is changing and how can you do it? And now just now, we're talking about months in terms of this thing becoming more mainstream, researchers are being given the tools they need really to go out there and explore those billions and billions of microbes and understand all the benefits they can be bringing. That's why this is the fourth revolution in agriculture. This is why this is so exciting. And this is why Bio Revolution is so phenomenal because it allows our product with their technology to be this platform. So if you think about the fertilizer until pre-biorevolution, a fertilizer pre-biorevolution would be the equivalent of a note Nokia phone. You could use it to make phone calls, that was about it. With Bio Revolution, we're essentially creating or allowing our fertilizers to become a smartphone, to become an iPhone. And then all of those thousands of scientists and companies, doing an amazing stuff in terms of development, will be able to be using our platform. And farmers will be able to benefit from that as well. To kick start the revolution, we already have 1 microbe which is Bacillus aryabhattai. We have 3 other which are in the progress for being approved and being added to the product. But when I think more years, down the line, I will expect to see -- and I hope we'll see a significant greater number of microorganisms add to it as well as different products with different specific needs with different combinations of microbes. And the same way a Nokia phone, a conventional fertilizer, a Nokia phone lost its usage. Other than my grandmother who likes this, I hope our product with Bio Revolution will be this platform. So that is the presentation we had prepared. It's a shame I couldn't be sharing my screens, but I really hope we can find a way, unless Elon managed to join the call and will be able to help us. But I hope people can ask questions now. So that's it, you can talk to us. I think we can allow up to 2 people at a time. So I don't know, Jeff, you managed to speak. So let's see if Jeff has some questions. Or Adi, or anyone else, I don't know, tweet a question. I think I might be able to see a tweet if that is how this thing supposed to work.

Hello. Oh, I can hear you. I started to get a little bit embarrassed. No, think about you're in the big stage, there trying to figure out how should other people should ask you things. Thanks for joining me. Please go ahead.

Okay. So this is Albert Sung from Correlation Economics, and I have 5 questions for you.

Thanks, Albert, how can you talk? How -- is that like anyone can unmute the microphone and speak? How did you succeed doing that, please help me.

They need to click on the request button and then the mic should be put on if you assign them.

I see, well done, and thanks for [indiscernible]. So please explain again to everyone. So if anyone wants to ask a question, what he is supposed to do again?

Click on the request button, but it only works on a smartphone.

Not on a Nokia phone, or my grandmother's phone.

Yes, probably not.

Not on old fertilizer. Okay. Go ahead then. Please ask your question.

Yes, questions on the economics. So what is the price per ton of Bio Revolution?

Very good question, very good question. So at the moment, we are selling it for BRL 39, so about CAD 10 when you get it added to the project. However, it seems like we might be able to increase this price by anything from 100% to 150% very soon. We're testing the market at this point. And we've done some additional studies. So it looks like we can -- we will probably be able to be increasing a little bit more or significantly more.

Okay. Next question....

How much does it cost to -- is that the second question?

Yes. How much does it cost you indeed incrementally to produce it?

It costs BRL 3. So about $0.80.

Is that incrementally or is that production cost?

That's the total cost to produce and get it added to the product. So the time is 10 -- yes, that's a sort of margin. But that's -- it's still everything new. There might be other ways to think about it, but we're still learning, still new. But we already have some other interesting ideas about how to go with this, but that's how it is being launched.

Okay. So next question is how much does it increase the yield? I have seen that we need like half left of the fertilizer use from the patent, so we expand on that.

Yes. I mean that's something which we will need to wait a little bit longer before we make an official statement. As you've done your diligence and have read some of the information out there, the results can be very interesting. However, with any new technology, we still need more time to be fully able to validate something that's significant. And of course, the risk is if you go out there and say, yes, this is for sure. And if it doesn't work out that way, the consequence are pretty significant. And we don't want to -- we don't want to and we don't need to take this risk at this point in time. So we hope that this is something that will become clear as time progress. And then one might ask, well, why don't you fully validated and from a scientific point of view, the short answer is, from a scientific point of view, there's a lot we can do, and there's a lot we've done. But farmers are very skeptical, farmers are very conservative and they're bombarded every day with different products and different technologies offering, everything you may imagine in exchange for some money. So farmers really want to see it on their fields, on their actual results before they fully respect or validate to accept this. So I think the more you might be excited about what you've been reading, I think we need to be conservative here and allow farmers to reach some conclusions like that as well and in very large scale before we, as a company, can go around the market project like that.

Okay. So what percent of total production capacity will you be using for Bio Revolution?

Very good question. So on Plant 1, theoretically, we are already capable of adding it to 100% of food production. I say theoretically because we're in ramp-up mode, so we need to wait as well and see exactly what percentage it would be. But I am confident we -- the ramp-up will be successful and will be able to be done in a relatively short period of time. For Plant 2, we hope by the end of the year, we will be able to start adding microbes on Plant 2 as well. For the obvious reasons, the focus on Plant 2 has really been to complete Phase 1 of Plant 2 as soon as possible, where at the same time, trying to accelerate Phase 2 or Phase 2, i.e., the additional 1.2 million tonnes of production we've put on the top of the 1.2 million tonnes we we're already building. So after those 2 is when we hope to really be able to concentrate on adding microbes.

Okay. So the last question is about licensing. What are your plans for that?

Early days, early days. I think with any licensing, you have to do -- you have really -- if you want to get recognition and value and the negotiating from a position of strength, you really need to completely validate what you're proposing and prove it and scale it. And then I'm pretty sure there will be a lot of very interesting discussions and opportunities to be had. I mean I have no doubt that a lot of those very exciting companies investing a lot of money coming up with microbes, will appreciate the importance of our technology and how this smartphone analogy will hopefully be not just applying from a conceptual point of view, but also from a practical point of view in the very short term. Thanks for joining, and thanks very much for helping us to understand a little bit more better how to use this new space here, this new Twitter space. Thank you.

Chris, can you hear me?

I can hear you.

Two questions for you. One, I'm curious about 2 aspects of this Bio Revolution. The first is identifying the microbes that you put into this product, how challenging was that given the preamble that you gave us about 10 minutes ago about what sort of science or lack of has occurred around the space? And then my second question is pertaining to actually mixing it in with the glauconite. How challenging is that? Is this like making a soup at home? Or is it much more complex from a chemistry perspective?

Thanks, Jeff. It was difficult, but not very difficult. We tested and we carry on testing other microbes. This one, this is a specific one, Bacillus aryabhattai, I personally like it for a few different reasons. There are very interesting papers if you type in the name of it on Google Scholar, you will see the number of very interesting papers you have published about what you can do. And part of which is really making sure it does what it's supposed to do. But a lot of that you can rely on papers. Some of it you will be needing to rely on long-term few trials. So those are some of the strongest statements we have in the next few years. We and other people are going to be able to make about it. And then the question about how easy it is to deploy the technology, it's not easy, but it's also not -- it's easier -- it's far easier than trying to land a rocket back on earth. So -- and that was the key result we had, because I remember from earlier on talking to people about what we wanted to do. And the consensus, what I heard from pretty much everyone I spoke to was, well, you're going to do that, but then the microbes are going to die. You're going to need to do it and apply straight away. Otherwise, the microbes are going to die, how you're going to be able to manage that. But we had somewhat technology. We kind of had done some work alongside where we had learned some of the stuff. So we were relatively encouraged that results would be possible. So when we started measuring weeks after weeks and we saw how microbes would remain alive. All the way up to 6 months, and we stopped the experiment after 6 months, not because we thought we think they will die afterwards just because it's expensive to keep measuring them. And there was no point. I mean when we produce -- essentially all our products which we produce gets delivered the same day or the day before, it's so -- I can't envisage any scenario where we would have our product in stock or even a farmer would have our product in stock for longer than 6 months. So that's -- those would be the answers to your questions, Jeff. Thank you. Hoping we have more questions. If anyone wants to ask a question, not just about Bio Revolution, but about the company itself, please feel free to...

Cristiano?

Yes.

About the first bacteria you're adding, its primary purpose is to make the phosphate -- or I'm sorry, the potash more available? And also will you be doing studies to see if the bacteria add to the carbon absorption capacity of the soil so that farmers could get carbon credits for using these products?

The answer to your first question is -- it is one of the mechanisms, but they are the mechanisms. And I would encourage you to go and read about it. Someone sent me a very interesting paper last week showing how someone proved that Bacillus aryabhattai can be used for soil bioremediation, the first time I -- well, how soil bioremediation, okay? But is there like soil that was used for industry that's contaminated that people are going to come. And -- but then it's a bit different to that. It's all the residues of herbicides and pesticides and for chemical agriculture and how that can help. So that's what was being tested. And this specific paper was testing the microbe on something called glyphosate. So glyphosate is a herbicide, was developed by Monsanto. It was sold as Roundup, and it was later on, linked to cancer by some researchers and Monsanto, there was a litigation. And I think for the first time ever, an agriculture company or an agrochemical company was ruled to pay because of herbicides like that. And then that company was taken over. Monsanto was taken over by BASF. And this shareholder sent me an article showing how BASF had already set aside about $15 billion just on litigation in connection to cancer. And then talking to him he was saying, what about all the residues of the soil? You have a microbe, there's a research or you guys [indiscernible]. And my answer was we haven't had a chance. We haven't had the time or the potential to focus on that specific potential. It's good to see the interest of independent researchers. And I think this will help us accelerate and learn more from other opportunities. But I think that just proves the point. I think that, that just really illustrates what an amazing new world we're talking about. It's phenomenal. It's so exciting, I mean it's so, so, so exciting. When I went to the plant to see the startup of this bio plant, I had with me, one of our customers who -- we're visiting some other customers in the area together. But this other customer, he's a bit -- he is a fantastic guy and has won awards as being like the -- was having the better yields in Brazil, they will do all those competitions. You see who can harvest more, and he held the record, he had won a competition. And when two of us went and saw it, I saw the process, and all the microbes being added, touching the product with microbes, it was literally like 2 children in a candy shop able to buy and get whatever they wanted in terms of the excitement with people then, they were looking at us. But this is the level of excitement, we are with the benefits. This will bring to farmers the whole potential this has. So that was a very long answer to your question, and I would like to answer your second question, however, I forgotten it. Do you mind repeating, please?

Yes. Would the -- are you doing studies on the carbon sequestration capabilities of bacteria and would farmers be able to claim credits?

We're not at the moment. I've received a couple of proposals from scientists to explore that, one from a university in Brazil, another one from a university in Canada that seems to have done some similar types of studies. So the answer is not yet, but it's in the radar. There is another researcher in the U.K. But then it isn't really about microbes. It's more about what it calls bioweathering. So essentially, he has seen that when you apply a ground-up silicate, as part of the weathering, it will be absorbing carbon and fixate that. He did some calculations. The numbers are pretty interesting in terms of what can be done. But again, there's more research which needs to be done before you can prove that. I feel like there is a -- we will -- okay, we all here as shareholders, we'll be able to benefit somehow via those technologies, via what's going on. I think there is a lot of potential. However, after speaking to some people, a little bit of my feeling is that it might still be a little bit early days from a regulatory point of view and more research will be needed regardless of what's going on. So the voluntary carbon credit market at the moment is a little bit like a Wild West with people making a lot of claims and companies using a lot of those claims too for marketing. I know at least a couple of cases where this has gone wrong and hurt credibility for a bunch of people. So I would hate to put at stake everything we've built over the last 17 years just to try to be the first one jumping in this new trend. So it's something we will carry on developing, but we're very -- being very careful that whenever we make a statement, whenever we go out, it's something that it would be bulletproof as we've always tried to be with our launches and products and technologies.

So in conclusion, your key selling points to farmers right now are -- what would you say the key selling points you're going to make to customers now would be?

With microbes?

Yes.

It's -- I mean it's -- there's so much the microbe can do that it will -- it's really like crop and situation-specific. So that's why I -- again, it's a little bit like an iPhone in that answer, isn't it? So if it's a -- let's say, a grower with very low potassium in the field, growing a crop with short term crop, I don't know, potato or something like that and wants to use our product. For a farmer like that, we can say that the product will accelerate the availability of potash from the product itself. However, agriculture is so fast, and there's so many different situations like looking at what the shareholder had shared with us from that paper. You have some people who want to convert their soil to organic culture, but you have the residues issue. So perhaps that's another market. You have some areas, for example, vegetables where you have so much phosphate and some -- and then they know how much of it is already in the soil [indiscernible] point available. That's alone you have another possibility. There's some like interesting stuff with nematodes as well, which is another big problem tropical culture. So it really varies depending on the specific needs of a farmer. That's why in our presentation, I think there's that statement there where we talk about providing sustainable solutions with a combination of crop and microbes carefully perfected to the specific needs of each crop and soil.

Fair enough. It does sound like a bit of an abstract situation based on whether it's a forage crop or an annual. And I'm excited to be on this journey with you. So thanks again.

Ladies and gentleman, anymore questions? I think we have time for one more. Umer, thanks for participating. Please go ahead.

So my question is a quick one really, what is the time line with regards to the products you spoke initially about 1 microbe being utilized and then roll up -- it continues to roll up for up to 3 others are coming. Just wanted to know when that will happen?

I hope -- thanks for participating. I hope it will happen this year. That's our target. There are some news. So from a regulatory point of view, some of it is new as well. So there might be some holdups, I hope not, but that would be the target. Thank you for the question. Ian, you requested to ask question as well.

You -- 2 questions, if I may. The first question being would it be right to assume that these microbes would not be compatible for use with regular traditional potash with a chlorine content?

I would think so. I don't know. I didn't test, but I would think that would be a problem, yes.

I mean that should and could give the company significant advantage, especially from a license point of view if the feedstock is compatible.

Yes.

Good, good. And then the second question, I'm afraid you may have bought this upon yourself. You invited more general questions about the company. May I say -- may I ask how are sales? How is your Plant 2 Stage 1 build progressing?

Sure. Plant 2, it's on track. So our guidance to get it commissioned by Q3 this year stands. I hope we will execute on that one. I have no reason to believe it won't. The other question you asked about sales, how our sales are going. Our sales are going very well, which probably isn't a surprise for you guys who have been following us. So anyone contacting us to try to buy product will hear from our sales team that we are sold out until July at least for product deliveries? So I do think that's material and [indiscernible] information because anyone in the public could have contacted us and tried to buy product and it's sold, there is no availability until July this year. So sales are going well.

Okay. May I offer my congratulations to you for the urgency with which you are progressing things. And the best of luck for the future, I look forward to, I think, a communication on the 25th of Wednesday -- Wednesday, 25th of May with a little bit of an update.

Yes. Thanks very much. It's a joy and a great pleasure to have all you guys as fellow honorees of Verde Agritech. I saw there is another request here. So let's allow [ Chondorito ] to ask a question. Thank you, Ian. [ Chondorito ], please talk to us. How can we help you?

Congratulations for everything. I have a question regarding capital allocation. So if I may. So look, you gave guidance $0.87, assuming 1 million tonnes on sales, and that's given a $500 on potash, which we know is even more than double or has been more than double for a lot of time. And it will be substantially higher at least for the immediate weeks, months so who knows at the end of the year. When we -- and that's just for 2022, when we go to 2023, you gave around 2 million tonnes, so that will be at least double and not assuming the potash price. So would it make sense to make a substantial buyback of the shares right now at these prices, given that anything above $500 is not even included in our mind or included in your mind, that would be extremely accretive if the execution continues as it is for the future. I just want your thoughts on that.

Thanks for the question. Thanks for your interest. Thanks. We have an independent Board committee that is working on that. So we made an announcement earlier in the year, launching our profit for growth program. And I hope to be able to -- or they will be able to make an announcement at some point as well. There is -- yes, I think there will be an announcement. And then they're looking at buybacks, dividends, a combination of both, none of them. So hopefully, we'll know more about that soon. But I do hear what you're saying and I appreciate your comments. Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to thank you all for attending our very first attempt to do a Twitter space. I'm sorry, Elon hasn't allowed us to share our screen, but I trust this hopefully will change. So it can also be used for investor presentations, share some more media rather than just being conversation. But having said that, I equally enjoyed the questions, the comments and having had this conversation. Thank you very much for your interest, and I look forward to talking to you again very soon. Thank you very much. Bye-bye.