I hope someone francophone will correct any errors, but for now:
First of all, it was not a fluff interview, she asked some tough questions.
First part, she asks the new guy Yves Noël if he was hired to promote the product or the company -- "The product. HPA now, but we're also starting talks on SGA with all of the world's big smelters". She asks, who's the first name that comes to mind, he repeats "all of the big ones" ... he goes on to say in the last 2 weeks since the PEA came out, they've been getting lots of calls, and are in non-disclosure discussions with many of them.
He says on the HPA side, they're talking with electronic and LED manufacturers ... she asks what's been the reaction? He replies, very positive, in both markets there will be supply/demand problems in the coming years, so everyone is interested in talking to us, my schedule is already full.
She then turns to Boudreault and says a couple of weeks ago you pre-announced the PEA announcement which is kind of surprising, you don't hear of that often, and then the announcement gets the stock halted ... what's up with that?
RB starts off by saying, first of all we're a company that's developing rapidly -- we've gone from 10 to 50-some employees in a year -- so we have a lot of material news, have to have more NR's than the usual company ... goes on to say that it was the regulators who suggested that they pre-announce at least 24 hours before ... the morning of the release, the regulators say that's all fine, but we'd like you to clarify this "small detail" regarding the rare earths ... we told them, you've known about that for months, they said, never mind that, we'd like you to clarify, so we did ...
She says, actually, it's reassuring they handle things this way, because we all know of stories from the past ... but it must have been a bit of a bummer for you, took the wind out of your sails, the stock price gapped and crapped ... he agrees, but also agrees it doesn't change anything regarding the projects themselves, or their fundamental prospects ... we'll still be producing HPA next year ... it's obvious we're in uncertain economic times, but we're not the only ones affected by that ... she asks about funding, he says not in the short term.
She asks how long is that? He says maybe up to 2 years ... we're still well funded ($75M), more than enough to bring HPA into production ... as for the SGA in a couple of years, we already started looking into it, and it seems that we might possibly not have to return to the capital markets, but it's too soon to know, that's for the future ...
She asks if there's a risk that the production costs for HPA might be higher than expected ... he replies we've already had people look at the costs, and there's such a huge margin that the risks there are very very small. Our objective is to get this up and running, to satisfy an exploding market ... this is coming very soon, which is why we're calling ourselves a pre-commercial company at this point. The pilot plant will be switched to HPA in January, and commissioned in July, at which point we'll start doing tests with our eventual customers in order to get big contracts, which will make M. Noël very happy.
Noël jumps in at this point saying the pilot plant is already pretty much full scale for SGA ... two production lines running in parallel, it's just a matter of adding more to have an SGA plant. There's really no scale-up risk ...
I've only got a minute left, she says, one last question about your shareholder base ... I imagine you're making efforts to attract large institutional investors, or are they already approaching you? Boudreault replies it's a bit of both ... since the PEA, a lot of people are approaching us to become partners, to work with us -- obviously there's a lot I can't talk about, non-disclosure and all -- and, we don't necessarily want to start a new round of financing, but we're talking with people in New York, in Europe, we've started a process of 'evangelizing', so to speak.
She ends it thanking them, saying that would indeed be important for restoring small investors confidence in the company ...
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My impressions:
The chick is kinda hot ... smart too. <g>
Noël seemed credible.
Boudreault was on his best behaviour. Almost seemed he got the 'overly promotional' thing, once she smacked him upside the head with it a bit ... damage control? |
