The Latest "Hot Trend" in Water
good evening everyone and um uh with me i've got tom marticello who's promoting tampa bay what why are we promoting tampa bay what's up with that let's go books super bowl first time ever the home team gets to play at home in the stadium how about that and uh i heard a joke this guy you heard you saw that joke today the guy goes i have this uh ticket you know to the to the the box and it's you know box seats and everything and unfortunately it's also my wedding so can someone take over from me she's waiting at the altar it's kind of it's kind of off color but hey anyway um so thank you all for joining um we've got a very exciting show today lots of lusts going on in fact uh i see people still arriving so but i'm going to start right away with um well in fact what i'm going to start right away with is our usual opener um water is a new gold and then i have a quick video but then early than the man down early we were working in the hospitality sector tessa with some customers uh in these hospitality customers hotels and resorts they understand that when they are taking public when they're driving source water from public drinking water systems they know that they need to implement this type of technology so we have we have several customers right now where we are providing point of use reverse osmosis and advanced drinking water filtration systems to take drinking water and to ensure that the institutional customer that resort or that hotel that they have safe drinking water for their system for their customers so we do we personally are now deploying we are seeing and we are deploying these types of solutions to those types of customers another example would be where we are working we're supplying decentralized drinking water systems for department of state customers when to say department store i'm talking about embassy facilities and consulate facilities overseas u.s u.s embassy facilities uh in those instances right there the u.s when the u.s government the u.s government goes overseas and they and they take their ambassadors and their staff over there and they occupy an embassy facility in a foreign country a lot of times they are bringing their driving their drinking water from the public youth the public water supplies of city of london or new delhi or places like that but then you get any sparkling places these uh in sub-saharan africa and in southeast asia where the the infrastructure's not there they still have drinking water systems but man that is you are taking your life in your own hands i mean mexico is a neighbor of ours and they say when you go to mexico don't drink the water there is a reason why they say that and so we are deploying these same technologies doing the exact same thing um at that level so yes we are those are two classic examples of where we're doing this so let me uh set the stage here i kind of threw this at you but as you recall we've been talking about the problem with biofilms and so this is a quick clip from and unfortunately i'm sorry it's a zoom of a zoom so uh you're gonna it's pretty blurry but what uh dan is talking about i really wanted him to start talking about how we are helping with this enormous biofilms problem tom you were in that conversation would you like to relate a little bit of what the context was yeah there's two simple answers which is we are working in that all the time through using reverse osmosis which is the most viable technology that deals with biofilms because biofilms made up of bacterias and funguses and things have particulate matter of a certain size so it means it's substantial you can you can put a filter in place and block that contaminant from coming through your water system and remove it so our reverse you know osmosis technologies and filtration systems are the the number one guard you have to put on site at locations like hotels or you know hospitals or military bases to prevent you know that kind of contamination yeah and this is the first time we've really been talking about the the work that dan has been um spearheading with this uh department of state and of course they're operating in strange places like you know afghanistan and so forth where water is dodgy and so not only biofilms but high bacterial levels streptococcus etc viruses so tell me a little bit about how without naming names of course how much how much do we do this kind of state department stuff well right now we're over a million dollars of that exact product line right now you know actively producing so i mean we're it's substantial i mean we're always producing i'd say about four or five units that are going into places like this so it's it's good good work nice yeah it is good work and it's growing so our partner there is excellent well thank you i'm gonna now go into the actual presentation i just wanted to get the clip out of the way i think it's fascinating what we're doing the stuff that that is doing this was the interview was actually for an article that is going to appear in a water trade and the deadline is literally tomorrow but nonetheless uh water is the new gold helping you thrive in the world's only vital scarce and recession-proof market briefing number 95. okay so further on we have the forward-looking statements so you've heard this before and we'll go into it and this is that biofilm interview that i was just talking about which is obviously fascinating there'll be much more of this as we um we developed a story because it's it's pretty key okay now uh before we go on to some of the meat of the uh of the uh briefing i wanted to talk a little bit about what is coming in terms of you know the new administration and interestingly enough there's bipartisan legislation coming out this article was written the day before the election so nobody knew yet what the administration was going to be and so it was published i think on november 3rd and what was obviously covert 19 fine and tax proposal so the two things which are not really germane to us but uh there's two there are and they're very very important so let's let's uh let's unpack these a little bit first of all infrastructure legislation from this article both parties know the value of infrastructure spending stimulate the economy etc very likely we will see infrastructure legislation passed in early 2021. and that tom we talk a lot about the you know our our decentralization work and so forth but we have a heck of a lot going on with uh with municipalities and large corporations right absolutely you know we're always we're i'd say we're at least half half on both ends you know because we're always dealing corporations and industrial clients who need to do their on-site work and then on the municipal side you know you're dealing with state or city or small town level projects that always require updates upgrades changes to systems and everybody's dealing with the infrastructure issues aging infrastructure lacking infrastructure you know moving of people from the north to the south there's just this boom going on of having to deal with infrastructure issues and they're laggard issues where they made a may have put off those issues too long a few too many years and now they're faced with it and they're like oh my we really got to do this so yeah so you know we talk a lot about the new trends and i recall it you know like it was yesterday you presenting at the the water chain uh symposium we had in 2018 and showing the two buckets of the centralized stuff and the decentralized stuff and how the decentralized stuff was going to grow but still the centralized stuff is a big piece of our business and i think this this is going to be very helpful well they go together i mean you're not you always have a symbiotic relationship in the industry the water industry is a big industry that has needs on all ends just because something is decentralized doesn't mean it's not participating the truth is everybody's learning from each other and then implementing best solutions that help each other and over time these systems have gotten smaller and cheaper more compact and efficient to where they can be deployed to a commercial location versus in the past only governments could afford to do that right this simple topic of desalinization or reverse osmosis those are only the things of government dreams and then eventually big government spending and city spending and now because the technology's so matured after 20 30 years now you could have one in your house like it's really the technology curve just like every technology curve allows it to happen 100 okay so then we have the second thing and and this is i think something you've been pushing very heavily tom which is made in usa incentivizing businesses to conduct art research manufacturing domestically and both parties obviously you know and this is you know this is really interesting we talk a lot about division in our country but donald trump wanted was trying to bring business back to america and what's one of the first things that that biden said in this administration this week was we want to bring you know manufacturing back to the us so they both want the same thing and i think that's very important yeah made in usa is profitable for the usa obviously right when you're a manufacturer and you export products out you make the money i mean you don't want to be the guy importing and paying the tariffs you know so but in the end of the day it's also just good business because it it brings high skilled labor to the united states also brings innovation because we're innovators in the us and we tend to put more money into our r d and then create even better products which then you know get more streamlined so it's a real win for us across the board that's a really good point make tom because you know when i was uh raising my son who's who just turned 23 back then he was at a private school where there was a tremendous amount of demand from china and korea parents to send their kids to an american school to get out of the rote learning thing to learn something more outside the box and to become leaders basically and i think that's where uh we forget that the united states is a leader in terms of innovation in terms of this perhaps less regimentation now of course it makes us problem kids not that my son was ever a problem kid but you know how what i mean is that along with some of our you know tendency to misbehave we're also pretty good innovators look at elon musk musk is the perfect poster child bill gates steve jobs pick one i mean these guys understand the whole concept of not just opportunity but also working hard and making a product and making it you know getting out there with it like this is what we're great at in america we're innovative we're smart we're capitalistly minded like those are the good things that's the reason why we even have stock market the whole idea is you put money into things that allow it to grow because you're taking a picture on how things are going to grow into the future and i'd bet on america every time i mean that's the easiest plan that always works amen so with that said and i just want to quickly cover uh the big picture of how we are part of this new trend but there's an even bigger part that i'm going to talk about now and this is very very early you know literally this this has been developing i always like to tell you that we're the most transparent public company around so we have what you might call a skunk works what is a skunk works that's that was lockheed had the old skunk works they called it that because nobody in the in the in the advanced technologies department uh washed so they kind of turned into the skunk but there's some stuff happening here we're looking at breakthrough technology to turn sea water into drinking water and that's because you know you have been going on about you know 20 years into a quote unquote runoff our fresh water meaning major major disruptions and loss of life and so forth and the link is at the bottom there and common dreams but and for sure what we're working on on the main line is the the recycling uh the more water treatment all that stuff but there is something very important and that is we have you know 97.5 percent of the world's water
is salt and 40 of the world's population lives within 100 kilometers of coastlines and so there is an interesting opportunity here where we have there is really interesting technology and has not gotten out of the lab yet it needs it needs to well you know what origin clear is a platform and i think we can do something here now is it interesting how current desalination is not only expensive but it's very energy intensive and what is the focus of the new administration well i'll show it to you right now on screen what's the big one number one cut total emissions by up to 50 by 2030. that is just eight years from now that is you know a huge a huge goal so you know you look at what what's happening in saudi arabia the the they have these huge desalination plants and they have very cheap fossil fuels and so forth but these things are are not the sustainable way to make fresh water so there's something to be gained from doing something about turning as i was saying breakthrough technology to turn sea water into drinking water you will be hearing more about this none of this affects tom this has nothing as as i briefed you this has nothing to do with what you're doing it will be done completely like i say in the skunk works uh has nothing to do with the fun that we're developing etc this is an important thing that i think is going to make a huge difference you know it's really interesting there's all kinds of things you can do with water but people look at the ocean and they go what the heck is all this darn salt water and i get i get email all the time about what about desalination well we're going to be taking a look at this and there'll be more to report on it okay now here's the topic of the day and how funding is the key to speeding up water deals i'm going to just check um oh i checked chad and somebody from d uh said wow so that is uh is super cool that is super cool and i'm just checking here okay i was just checking participants lovely to have you guys on board so the problem is the slow water deal that is something that tom you and i have lived with you know there was that classic hotel deal that you that you did that we now have that we're gonna be delivering this quarter but i think you worked on it for like a year and a half it was ridiculous yeah and we did a lot of proposals multiple hotels until one really stuck in there yeah but it didn't work one of the things that happened of course because it was a big capital expenses the minute the chief engineer bought off on it and sent the mandate down to all the hotels every hotel had to prove that they had a better approach and we had to like work our way through all those right yeah no but but they they do count it like you said it's a catholic expense and they're just like going yeah but they're debating whether you know how to how to make this all fly through and then they have to redo their numbers and uh you know eventually they figure it out so it gets budgeted yeah so that's the first one capex is a big deal number two this is an important one for us because the more important the investment the more they want to go wow we'll we'll play it safe we'll go with the big guy now the big guy or gal because american water works there's actually a woman who's uh i think a chairman or ceo but anyway i don't want to be there's a lot of men in the water street but there are women too but the tendencies to go you know like what they used to say in high tech you could never be fired for choosing ibm even if ibm was crappy you would never be fired so for the innovative solutions these big capex decisions actually work against us and it makes it harder the other thing is is that there's resistance like this is not my business i don't treat water why am i trying to do this so they tend to resist it they may not have the money or their credit or they may not want to do personal guarantees this and that and the final problem that you and i have seen tom is that these things go on for months and months and months meetings on-site negotiations redrawing everything and after a while where's the margin right yeah well they're asking the question now uh the solution that is to fund the systems there's something called a water purchase agreement a wpa it's like uh what they have in solar which is the power purchase agreement you saw you peop you've heard of solarcity well that's that's uh very much the kind of model it's opex meaning it's in it's like paying rent you know it's just you're paying on the meter or there there's the water bill we're gonna pay the water bill no big deal and also because the vendor is already offering the machine up front then there's no concern about whether the vendor is big enough to to cover the the deal and so innovators tend to bubble to the top this is the final point is really important and i think is a major differentiator for us normally uh wpa's work with very long cycles we're talking 15 years like if you look at the example of our friends over at cambrian because they have to you know they're putting the system in the ground or or or you know bolted in well if if you can repossess then you can have shorter term agreements and that reduces risk you don't have to be quite so demanding of their commitment and so forth and it makes it harder for others to do because remember the technology we've licensed is patented five five excellent patents by dan early and the stuff is good gina lowe is asking a question you're talking about water will they be planned by origin clear to treat sewage well of course and that gina is a very good question we do that all day long in fact what's little known is that we actually do uh city deals we we we've done a couple cities in the last year or two and that is straight out sewage treatment in addition we had that wonderful project remember tom up in pennsylvania where there was that car dealer tell that story a little bit well there's a automobile dealership that had a desire to do a closed loop system which means any waste water produced on site from toilets to car washing to grease trapped water could be recycled through the unit then pushed back into the system and be used for toilet water or wash down water or irrigation water so you basically get to close loop it and use it again which is pretty innovative actually and that really reduces their use of water and their cost on water and also basically reduces their burden on you know the infrastructure you know the local community infrastructure it's a win-win so that all that you know closed-loop uh treatment and so forth taking people getting people off the grid pulling you know cutting the cord in in a in a waterway is very much what we do that again is what we're talking about when we're getting into these water purchase agreements because people are not just buying water coming in they're also paying for the water being treated so that's what that's about and then gina has a follow-up question cleaning gray water absolutely we we have those are called the purple pipes purple pipes where they're separated in america we don't always have the the plumbing separate between black and gray water where it is gray it's very easy to treat for irrigation and that is actually you know the leader the world leader in treating gray water is australia that a major drought about you know 10 12 years ago uh longer actually about now 20 years ago and they went thoroughly into great grey water treatment to water their lawns and so forth and we've got the technology but all too often the greywater pipes are not separate unless the the building is is much newer so yeah we love doing that and gina these are great questions so carrying on here let me talk a little bit about mo about the cycle now we have a shortened cycle where customer sign signs sign sign a long-term water purchase agreement wpa just like those solar deals and then of course we build it and the customer pays on the meter deal is done that is a very fast deal so what does that mean in terms of revenues you know gina you're asking all the great questions so could you replace septic systems is that economically feasible very good question here's what's happening with septic's cheap for sure now there's several problems number one increasingly fha the federal housing authority is more and more prohibiting septic tanks by making it they have to be farther the the the drain field has to be uh i don't know 100 yards from the well things like that there are there are regulations that are locking people out of fha loans if they go with septic tanks is that the additional problem is that we we have a lot of problems with viral loads and you know these days we become very sensitive to viral loads and so we can replace them is it more expensive perhaps so but i think that it's going to you know happen more and more so with that and uh i'm going to continue but these are wonderful questions thank you gina now another big reason and this is another thing that we do especially that other people don't what is a career program puts entrepreneurs into the water business we have a whole package we've built it's a great career building package that we're going to review again because it's going live on our website in the next couple days and what they are is like a bunch of amway sales people but they're selling water systems and these are larger systems right so but think about this if i go to sell to a hotel and it's going to take me a year or a year and a half to sell the deal well i'm not going to last for a long time as an independent salesperson not going to happen so pre-funding is critical to making these waterpreneurs succeed because they can come in and go hey i've got a system here it is sign here and we'll get the thing going let me tell you about this example because we have this premium hotel system now going in and we're going to be delivering it this quarter i hope to be able to tell you more about it in detail but that's 140 000 system for a 212 room hotel luxury hotel all the water going into that hotel will be super premium water great that is actually going to be a reference site for us and from there we can actually give that reference site to waterpreneurs who go out there and secondly they have a like i say the the fully specified priced out all the options as a standard product and we can now pre-fund it the way it works okay all right so let's talk a little bit about this fund then as you know we're building origin clear financial what's that about well first of all what we're tapping into is the real estate investors contributing assets directly all right now this is cool because instead of requiring someone to come up with a million dollars we say you know what you've got a property you can go ahead we'll do an asset purchase agreement we'll bring the asset in and there will be potential tax benefits that is to be determined um it doesn't always work but there's ways for that to work for example you know share for share swaps which uh defers taxes things like that there's a variety of of um systems and here's the thing they can just go ahead and sign over the asset and we'll leverage it now they will remain secured because there will be security agreements on the equipment that's financed so they'll have recourse on the equipment and of course they'll have a profit share we have some early indications that people want to be involved as business partners as well not just passive investors in other words to go ahead and sell these ponsters and so forth that's something you i just heard today tom was that we have these guys who who want one investor who wants to take his property put it into the system and then have a business that actually sends the machines out so that's kind of cool so where do we stand with that we have these preliminary commitments and as i've been reporting to you that's we have non-binding memorandums of understanding mousse for three million dollars they're good faith and there's much more happening there's up to 12 million dollars more but again that we don't even have the mou for that so let's just say that for now we have these good faith but non-binding commitments for three million dollars which is great news okay let's continue here revenue sources this is something i want i want you to talk to um tom is is these four revenue sources and how you see this as really growing our our business sure no problem so obviously you know for dealing with water systems and you're putting them on a pay-as-you-go model you know the the first fundamental issue is that pwt makes the equipment so obviously if it's a drinking water system or some other type of unit there's just a fundamental cost to it that we we build the unit we basically get that put on a truck and shipped out and sent to a location to be operated so we have the ability to operate the system on the location and or place it with a subcontractor in the field so often there's field operators out there who can basically you know do the installation and the maintenance out in the field as well so we can have our folks engineer or we can have subs basically managing it so there's an entire supply chain there that basically lets people get paid to do work and services and obviously then you know we have to go back out and service the contract usually we put things on a five-year you know contract is a fairly common thing to for warranties and that includes annual maintenance or sometimes every three years maintenance for certain parts and labor and then there's refurbishment you know replacement some filters or housings and so forth tubes and gaskets so there's you know there's upfit you know kind of things which basically we can either repair something for costs or we can even make upgrades uh so there's always an ability to continue to to get some uh ancillary service fees as we go along and then obviously your origin clear you know nets a management fee on you know deploying this stuff because they're essentially the third party you know financier against this activity yeah so you know it was you know right now we only have number one right this is the the classic formula dbo design build own operate so so far right now we only do design and build where we're giving up a huge amount of revenues i remember back in the day we built a major major uh frac system for someone and we just built it no no it was actually an entire city in texas and then the other company we sold it to uh so we sold it for that we were the subcontractor they got all the revenue from operating the system for the city so here this this opens up the both the operating system and of course owning it and then at the corporate level you and me will be managing the fund and get you know uh fair management fees so that's the exciting part so with that said i'm going to tell you that there unfortunately we have a a a rights problem i wanted to get ivan into this he and artie are doing amazing things for us they are bringing these these investors from their real estate base and they are doing amazing things to support us their real estate venture is now in the inc well it's number 85 on the inc 500 and is number three the number three company in florida in all of florida on the inc 500 and they're doing the introduction work very helpful we have a you know we license their their their wonderful invest with a purpose process and you know they have a rule of thumb which is that when someone invests a hundred thousand dollars in this future model not the current one because that that is the old school one but the new school model they invest a hundred thousand dollars that it purifies a million liters per month so that's the concept there that is a save the world kind of concept it's a wonderful one so what i'm going to be doing here is there is actually an amazing announcement that ivan has but i'm actually going to have to hold back on it it's there is a huge announcement coming from something that ivan has done to commit himself personally he and his wife bella are just doing something stellar for in terms of committing themselves to the company we're blown away i'm not going to get into it today because uh i wanted him on the show and i think that there was a zoom issue that's fine because next week we'll we will be able to announce it properly and we'll devote much longer show to ivan and what he's done here i can tell you it is super exciting so quickly to just discuss how you can participate and ken behringer and i work super closely on all strategy literally we talk several times a day and fortunately i do not have a jealous wife and um you know basically he has the inside track on what we're doing strategically and and he can you know he will of course never tell you non-public uh information that he shouldn't he's very good about that but he will give you more flavor more context than i can possibly do in this call and he is brilliant i strongly recommend you schedule a call oc dot gold slash ken in your browser talk to him i believe you will have a very very good experience now before i go on there was also a chat request about doing a water treatment outside the country and that question is a very good one that's where this department of state stuff comes in for example and now we're starting to expand with the philanthropic relationship they they're in 19 countries and that i believe is going to bring us some deal flow even further we also have partners we have partners all over the world we have a european partner with the animal treatment in spain we have a romanian partner middle eastern partner who is actually the number one all-services company in the middle east el mansour and uh also a major player in oman that we're working with as well as our wonderful partner in india permianics and more so yes we are all over the world and obviously we're not just u.s centric all right i was talking about the trusted investor conference and you will be hearing about this basically we are going to if you have invested more than once in an origin clear of private placement then we would like to get you in there this is very very important feedback for us and we will not be sitting there with a white board you know getting the leaderboards going on and you investing that's not what this is about we would actually we trust our investors deeply you you've really put yourself on the line for us and as you know we take good care of you to make sure that you are in good shape so more on the fun progress next next week and specifically this this news from ivan which i guarantee you will blow your mind so that will be the end of the show tonight it's gone a few minutes over but i think it's been super exciting i want to thank you all tom it's it's really great as far as uh as far as tampa bay since i'm here too come on baby tom brady and bronk cassie and all the other guys they brought a team together it's been fun so much fun voa t for sure for sure it's gonna be a good game it'll be fun good well with that thank you all i appreciate it we've had excellent attendance tonight i am privileged as always to have that kind of attendance you care i love it i hope i've given you a lot of information there'll be more and more next week uh and i think this desalination thing is also gonna grow uh into something interesting without disturbing anything that i've been telling you about and from star to the panelists thanks for the information you're welcome and thank you all good night and enjoy your weekend [Music]
2021-02-06 01:12
