POSaBIT Systems Corporation (CSE:PBIT)
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Earnings Call: Q3 2023

Nov 30, 2023

Operator

Good day, everyone, and welcome to the POSaBIT Systems Corporation third quarter 2023 earnings call. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode, and we will open the floor for your questions and comments after the presentation. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, Oscar Dahl. Sir, the floor is yours.

Oscar Dahl
Chief of Staff, VP of Strategy and Operations, and Director of Sales and Marketing, POSaBIT Systems Corporation

Thank you, operator. With me on this call are Ryan Hamlin, Chief Executive Officer, and Matthew Fowler, Chief Financial Officer. I would like to begin the call by reading the Safe Harbor statement. This statement is made pursuant to the Safe Harbor for forward-looking statements described in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All statements made on this call, with the exception of historical facts, may be considered forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Although the company believes that expectations and assumptions reflected in these forward-looking statements are reasonable, it makes no assurances that such expectations will prove to have been correct. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements due to various risks and uncertainties.

For a discussion of such risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements, please see risk factors detailed in the company's annual report and subsequent filed reports, as well as in other reports that the company files from time to time with SEDAR. Any forward-looking statements included in this call are made only at the date of this call. We do not undertake any obligation to update or supplement any forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent knowledge, events, or circumstances. The company may also be citing Adjusted EBITDA in today's discussion. Adjusted EBITDA is a non-IFRS measure used by management that does not have any prescribed meaning by IFRS and that may not be comparable to similar measures presented by other companies.

The company defines Adjusted EBITDA as net income or loss generated for the period as reported before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, is further adjusted to remove changes in fair value and expected credit losses, foreign exchange gains and/or losses and impairments. The company believes this is a useful metric to evaluate its core operating performance. Now, I'd like to turn the call over to Ryan Hamlin, Chief Executive Officer. Ryan, please proceed.

Ryan Hamlin
CEO, POSaBIT Systems Corporation

Thanks, Oscar, and welcome, everyone. As a reminder, all the numbers that I'll be talking about today are in U.S. dollars. I want to actually start off by saying that, I'm actually doing this call from my hotel room in Las Vegas. I'm at the annual MJBiz Cannabis Conference. This is the biggest show each year, and I'm pleased with how well POSaBIT has been received these last couple of days by both current and new merchants. Our point-of-sale 2.0 version that completed its full rollout recently, has received much praise and adoption. In fact, we now have over 50% of the entire state of Washington using our point of sale. This is a great milestone for our team. I just wanted to start with that, so we'll jump right into our Q3 financial results.

Despite the massive service interruptions across the industry in Q3, Q3 and now into Q4, POSaBIT still had a small gain in quarter-over-quarter revenue. I attribute this to the fact we have redundant systems in place and a heroic effort from our POSaBIT team members, who work long hours to ensure our merchants had minimal disruption. For the quarter, revenue was $13.6 million, up 32% year-over-year, versus $10.3 million in Q3 of 2022. Transactional sales for our payment processing merchants increased to $157.9 million, up 11% year-over-year, versus $142 million in Q3 of 2022. Gross profit was $3.2 million. While the level of growth was not what we had anticipated, we are pleased given the massive disruption within payments in the cannabis industry over these last few months.

I'm very happy with how we responded, but also want to remind all of us of how unpredictable this industry has become. Even though our Q3 revenue had mild quarter-over-quarter growth, we were hit about two-thirds of the way through that quarter with the shutdown of the service that we had acquired from Hypur back in April. Fortunately, we were able to minimize this initial outage by migrating most of the merchants to an alternative solution. This outage did affect our Q3, but not as much as it would have without having redundant systems in place. This continues to show how important it is in this payments landscape to continue to build out multiple solutions with full redundancy to ensure minimal disruption to our customers. Now, I do want to, address quickly the PIN debit update from the early October press release we put out.

I know this release caused a bit of confusion with our investors, and I apologize for that, and not being able to provide more details in that release. It's always our priority to keep our investors aware of any changes that could affect our business. This is even more important, obviously, as a publicly traded company. In the end, our legal team recommended we keep the release short and to the point. We will do our best to continue to update our investors as necessary. On October 11th, we did announce a decline in PIN debit acceptance rates. The impact of this decline was felt throughout the cannabis industry and was not in any way isolated to just POSaBIT.

Unfortunately, as long as cannabis is still a Schedule I drug at the federal level, there will continue to be a lot of scrutiny and reviews of all payment types in this industry that are not cash only. We, along with the entire cannabis industry, are hopeful that the government will move forward with descheduling cannabis to help provide a safer environment for consumers to transact. For POSaBIT, since the announcement on October 11, we have returned to 98% acceptance rates on all debit cards and are able to offer our merchants multiple payment solutions they deserve. The work to get our merchants back up and running has been our number one focus for the past six weeks.

I challenged our team when this outage occurred in early October, and our team really rallied around that, working long hours and weekends to ensure our merchants could get back to processing as soon as possible. In fact, I'm really happy to confirm that as of this last holiday weekend, our transactional sales run rate is at nearly 75% of what it was prior to this disruption. The current volume, now coupled with the additional merchants either currently contracted or being onboarded, will put us on track to exceed our pre-October processing volumes by the end of this year. Throughout this process, we have not only focused on supporting current merchants, but have used it as an opportunity to approach and sign up new dispensaries who were left behind without a payment solution after the October industry-wide interruption.

The implications of this decline in acceptance rates, while painful in the short term, will prove beneficial to the company in the long run. For the last several years, we've been talking to all of you about the importance of having multiple payment methods besides just cash. We have been successful in bringing on new solutions that now provide up to four different types of payment offerings merchants can choose from. This is a must for this industry to reduce the volatility and create more predictability with our business and keep our customers delighted with our service. In addition to this ability to run multiple payment methods, POSaBIT has developed the ability to run all of these on a single payment terminal.

We heard our merchants loud and clear about having one solution and one partner they can count on for payments, and I'm happy to announce that POSaBIT now has that solution. In early Q1, early next year, POSaBIT will be releasing the first-ever cannabis payments device capable of processing multiple payments on one device. This will further differentiate POSaBIT as the leading provider of sustainable payments within the cannabis industry. Another key initiative for POSaBIT, in addition to having multiple payment methods, is to be capital independent by being cash flow positive. Even prior to the recent payment interruption, POSaBIT was focused on cost containment to ensure a clear path to profitability. With that in mind, in the first week of October, we actually implemented a series of cost reduction measures aimed at optimizing operations and put the company on the road to profitability in 2024.

The forecasted annual savings from these cost-cutting measures will result in an annual savings of approximately $4 million. This reduction was made up of a small decrease in our employee base, optimizing our partner contracts, and a reduction in travel and expenses. When building this cost reduction plan, we took extraordinary care to make sure that our best-in-class service was not adversely affected. Now, nearly two months later, we can confirm that POSaBIT service levels remain excellent and the company is operating with efficiency and precision. I also want to take this time to remind our investors of the point-of-sale licensing deal we made over a year ago with a large technology company in the cannabis industry. If you recall, we received the first year's cash payment last year upfront of approximately $5 million in cash.

Starting just two months ago, we began receiving a monthly cash payment of nearly $400,000. This increases to approximately $450,000 in the following 12 months, and then finally to $513,000 in the fourth and final year. At that point, the licensee will either continue to pay royalties per terminal or buy out the agreement for approximately $32 million. I wanted to bring this up and remind our investors of this very important and predictable infusion of cash on a monthly basis that goes straight to the bottom line for the next three years. Having this cash come in monthly, along with the combination of the cost reductions I just mentioned and a return to normal processing levels, we are very confident we'll be cash flow independent in 2024.

Getting to profitability has and will continue to be a high-level focus for us as we continue to not only grow, but run as a cash flow positive company. Before I turn it over to Matt for our detailed financials, I'm really excited to announce that POSaBIT intends to apply to list common shares on the TSX Venture Exchange. The listing of the common shares on the TSXV remains subject to the final submission by the company of a formal application, the review of the TSXV, and the satisfaction of all listing and regulatory requirements. This has been a lengthy process, but we are full steam ahead. This was a major milestone for the company and especially for you, our investors.

We do not believe our current stock price is in any way indicative of POSaBIT's true value and understand the limitations our current listing has imposed, unfortunately, on our North American investors. We, of course, will be sharing much more about this after we have the specific dates that we can share publicly. Moving to the TSXV is a goal we've had for some time, and I'm very happy that we're close to achieving that. Now, I'm going to turn the call over to Matt Fowler, our CFO, for a more detailed review of our financial results for the third quarter, ending September 30, 2023.

Matthew Fowler
CFO, POSaBIT Systems Corporation

Thank you, Ryan. Transactional sales through our payments platform were $157.9 million, up 11% compared with $142 million in the third quarter of 2022. Sequentially, transactional sales were down 3% compared to the $162.6 million in the second quarter of 2023. Transactional sales is a non-IFRS measure and one of the key drivers for our business....Total revenue was $13.6 million, up 32% compared to $10.3 million in the third quarter of 2022. Gross profit was $3.2 million, or 23% of revenue, up 10% on a dollar basis compared with $2.9 million, or 28% of revenue in the third quarter of 2022.

The decrease in gross margin percent year-over-year is tied to a change in the products we offered in Q3 2022 versus Q3 2023. Operating expenses were $3.4 million compared to $2.9 million in the prior year's quarter. The primary driver in the increase in operating expense was hiring that has taken place over the last 12 months and higher professional fees. Sequentially, operating expenses were down 43% to $6 million in the second quarter ended June 30.

The decrease in operating expenses sequentially is largely driven by lower non-cash share-based compensation of $418,000 versus $761,000 in Q2, a benefit in non-cash foreign exchange of $249,000 versus a cost of $123,000 in Q2, and a one-time adjustment tied to legal settlement, which resulted in reclassing legal expense of approximately $949,000 from operating expense to other income expense. Administrative expenses were $3.8 million for the quarter. The largest driver of administrative expenses are people costs. These were $3.3 million for the quarter. This compares to $1.8 million in the prior year quarter. The increase year-over-year is driven by hiring and the addition of headcounts from the Hypur acquisition.

Regarding the Hypur acquisition, during the quarter, the company recognized an impairment to the intangible assets it recorded from the purchase of Hypur assets. Total impairment recognized was $5.16 million. This was primarily made up of $5.1 million allocated to a third-party payment processing contract that was acquired as part of the Hypur acquisition, and to a lesser extent, $60,000 tied to technology. The impairment of intangible assets was as a result of Hypur's payment processing terminating its processing activity during the quarter. Once notified, we engaged with the merchants we acquired as part of the Hypur acquisition and worked to move them to alternative POSaBIT payment programs. As a reminder, a large portion of value in asset-light mergers is ascribed to intangible assets.

Net loss was $7.5 million, inclusive of the impact of $395,000 non-cash change in the fair value of derivative liabilities and a $5.2 million impairment of intangible assets tied to the Hypur acquisition. This compares to a net loss of $1.2 million, inclusive of the impact of a $1 million non-cash change in the fair value of derivative liabilities for the third quarter of 2022. The mark-to-market of embedded derivative liabilities is tied to our convertible debt and is a non-cash accounting entry required by IFRS. It can cause significant differences in net income or loss quarter to quarter. Fluctuations in this line item of our income statement may be more extreme to encourage the increased volatility in company's stock.

Adjusted EBITDA was a loss of $33,000, or -0.2% of revenue, compared to an adjusted EBITDA loss of $2.2 million, or -16% of revenue in the third quarter of 2022. Our adjusted EBITDA was influenced by the legal settlement. If we were to exclude the impact of the legal settlement, our adjusted EBITDA for the loss for the period would have been $2.2 million, or 17% of revenue. Cash on hand at the end of the third quarter was $3.2 million. This compares to $3.1 million at the end of 2022. Our debted balance remains low at $3.3 million of debt, consisting of an SBA loan, convertible notes, and a three-year term loan. With that, I'll turn the call back to you, Ryan, for closing remarks.

Ryan Hamlin
CEO, POSaBIT Systems Corporation

Thanks, Matt. Before we finish up, I want to reiterate the resilience of our company. As you know, cannabis is a challenging industry, but we also look at that as a positive. It's a barrier to entry and part of our moat. There are things out of our control that can impact our business with little warning. We pride ourselves on being equipped to weather those storms and come out on the other side stronger. This is what we've done now for over eight years, and it's no different today. Positive has had short-term outages in the past, but that is all they are, short-term. The Positive team has seen it all. We are battle-tested, and we will always find a way to fight back through this adversity. We've proven it time and time again.

It's this ability to be resilient that does and will continue to set us apart from our competitors. Now, I want to end by addressing our guidance for the year. Given the recent disruption in the industry, we are withdrawing our 2023 guidance. At this stage of the year, our 2023 guidance is effectively Q4 guidance. We thought a better data point for our investors would be to share the current run rate and implied financial impact based on the outage we had in October. I also want to stress that given the multiple payment types we now offer and the mix shift of those different payment types by our merchants, it's a little harder to forecast our top-line revenue. Instead, we believe our investors are most interested in gross margin dollars and gross margin dollar growth.

If you look at our exit run rate here at the end of November, and based on the 75% transactional sales attainment we reached last week, we are tracking a run rate of approximately $11 million in gross margin dollars. And more importantly, given the line of sight of the merchants that are in the pipeline today and the ones that are just waiting to be implemented in the next few weeks before the end of the year, we believe we will achieve 85%-90% attainment. This would then put us right back to where we were roughly at the midpoint of our gross margin, margin prior guidance, which we gave of $12.5 million-$14.5 million for 2023. Lastly, I want to mention that adversity can also be a catalyst for growth.

This industry-wide service interruption affected everyone, including all of our competitors. This has created an opportunity for our sales team to reengage with past merchants that we may have lost to a competitor, and also reach out to the entire industry at large to sell our services. In fact, several of the merchants that we have onboarded are now new to POSaBIT. I know this was a lot, and thank you for your time. I appreciate you listening in, and I hope we addressed most of your concerns, and especially those that were maybe a little vague from the last press release. If we didn't, please send an email to investors@posabit.com, or feel free to ask your question right now. So we're gonna open it up, operator, to any questions that there may be.

Operator

Certainly. Everyone at this time, we'll be conducting a question and answer session. If you have any questions or comments, please press star one on your phone at this time. We do ask that while posing your question, please pick up your handset if you're listening on speakerphone, to provide optimum sound quality. Once again, if you have any questions or comments, please press star one on your phone. Please hold while we poll for questions. Your first question is coming from James Baglanis. Your line is live.

James Baglanis
Head of Investor Relations and Treasury, Sonos

Right, Matt, good afternoon.

Ryan Hamlin
CEO, POSaBIT Systems Corporation

Hey, James.

James Baglanis
Head of Investor Relations and Treasury, Sonos

I just wanted to start by saying great job navigating the disruption, because that seems like a pretty scary time. But before we get into that, can we just kind of big picture talk about the state of the industry? Are you seeing signs of stabilization broadly within the cannabis market? Because it looks like MSO revenues were kind of stable sequentially, and their growth margins are starting to recover. So I just wanted to first kind of talk about that before we get into POSaBIT specific.

Ryan Hamlin
CEO, POSaBIT Systems Corporation

Yeah, sure. And it is a good question. I think you have to layer on that there's been a lot of discussion, particularly in the last, you know, 3-6 months, about what the government's gonna do. You know, is this- is there a version of SAFER Banking coming? Is descheduling gonna actually happen? And I think that kind of unknown left the industry a little bit, I would say, you know, at a pause of trying to figure out, okay, where do we go? And particularly in our space, where do we go as far as, like, what's happening in the payments landscape?

If you look besides the payment side, and you just look at cannabis as a whole, yeah, sales, for the most part, have, you know, we've been seeing them lining up pretty much in line with everything that the MSOs have been reporting. That our sales have started, I think I reported to you last quarter, that they had plateaued and now starting to grow again. So we're starting to see growth. We're starting to see a small uptick in the average ticket. Not a ton, but a little bit, and that's, you know, I guess, good signs that, you know, at least the industry is feeling more comfortable about it. But it still is this, you know, this unfortunate unknown that everybody has around, okay, what's the next step the government might take?

James Baglanis
Head of Investor Relations and Treasury, Sonos

Right. Makes sense. And that's ... Look, I mean, that will work itself out, but just seeing that stabilization, you know, whether it's per ticket or same store sales, I think is a really-

Ryan Hamlin
CEO, POSaBIT Systems Corporation

Yep

James Baglanis
Head of Investor Relations and Treasury, Sonos

Good starting point for you guys, so that's great. On Q3, can you size what the revenue and, and payment volume impact was from the Hypur disruptions? Because it, it looks like it kind of would've rolled in and, and affected those October, or, the September numbers.

Ryan Hamlin
CEO, POSaBIT Systems Corporation

Yeah. Yeah, so if you look at the timeline, kind of what had happened in this industry, the first was. And it's one of the things we, you know, when we announced our Hypur acquisition, one of the great things was that we had, you know, diversified. We had multiple master licensing relationships, which gave us that kind of coverage that we were, we were desiring, one of the reasons that it made Hypur very attractive. Unfortunately, that was one of the first processors that were affected, and that only affected our Hypur business. So all of our other clients it were unaffected by that initial Q3 blip, or you want to call it. Fortunately, we were able to move over literally all of that Hypur business to an alternative solution within about a week and a half.

So we had about a week and a half hit to the Hypur, and then I would say not all, but there was a handful that still didn't migrate over, so the majority, though, did go. And then soon after that, you know, right there in early October, is when we got the, kind of the, the second whammy, I guess, so to speak, in that, you know, our current business, our non-Hypur business, also had the minor shutdown. So we kind of were hit with, and I hate saying it, but a bit of a perfect storm in that, you know, in September, we got hit once with the Hypur acquisition, processing side of it, and then early October, kind of all the rest of our business.

So that's why we, you know, we're very aggressive in making sure that we built out the redundant systems. And in some cases, when that Hypur initial one happened, it really, I, I guess I'd like to say, I'll make a little bit of lemonade here. I mean, it was positive in that it forced us to really look for the alternatives, and so that when the, the rest of the impact happened in October, we had already lined up alternatives, so we weren't starting from a net zero. So long answer to your question is, you know, it, it impacted our Q3 by call it a couple weeks.

We were able to migrate them over, but then really, you know, some of this is most of it carried into the beginning of October, and then, like I, you know, announced, you know, it's great, we're back up and running now, but, you know, you're gonna see a little bit more effect on Q4 than obviously you did in Q3.

James Baglanis
Head of Investor Relations and Treasury, Sonos

Yeah. Okay. No, I, I appreciate the long answer because that really helps me understand everything that happened, and I think it's great, again, how you've navigated to get everything in order, you know, and kind of respond to this. Although obviously, I'm sure we all wish it didn't happen, but that's-

Ryan Hamlin
CEO, POSaBIT Systems Corporation

Yeah.

James Baglanis
Head of Investor Relations and Treasury, Sonos

No, that's, that's fantastic. And it sounds like the cost-cutting actions you announced were underway before this disruption, at least before-

Ryan Hamlin
CEO, POSaBIT Systems Corporation

Yeah.

James Baglanis
Head of Investor Relations and Treasury, Sonos

the bigger second whammy. Is that, am I understanding the timeline correctly?

Ryan Hamlin
CEO, POSaBIT Systems Corporation

Yes. I'm glad you're adopting my wham nomenclature now. The what we had done, and part of it, you know, the reason I want to call out in this script about the point-of-sale license agreement, that's a really important event because we got that one cash upfront. Yes, we have the revenue recognition, but the cash is what's really important to help us be cash flow neutral.

And so we had looked at, we knew this, this new cash would be coming in in September, and we looked at where our expenses were, and we said, "Okay, well, with that new cash coming in, what would we need to do to, to do a cash, cash reduction of operations to be able to immediately get to a profitability state?" And so we had started that whole exercise, honestly, as, as early as August, where we started to really look at it and then, you know, formalized it in September and then got board approval and everything, and then actually, actually announced it to our team, for some of the members that were affected, on October 6th.

So yeah, it was something we were already planning on doing because, again, it goes back to the whole, you know, being fiscally responsible and getting us to be cash flow neutral and positive going forward.

James Baglanis
Head of Investor Relations and Treasury, Sonos

Yeah. No, that all makes sense, and I think that's, no, that's great. And I guess I had this question before you gave that final kind of closing run rate comment, and thank you for that detail too. But I guess, what was the pre-disruption payment volume or revenue, gross profit level, whichever metric you want to focus on, when you're saying-

Ryan Hamlin
CEO, POSaBIT Systems Corporation

Yep.

James Baglanis
Head of Investor Relations and Treasury, Sonos

-you returned to kind of 75%?

Ryan Hamlin
CEO, POSaBIT Systems Corporation

Yeah. So our prior guidance was more, maybe this is a question to totally revisit, but it was $12.5 million-$14.5 million. And what I'm-

James Baglanis
Head of Investor Relations and Treasury, Sonos

Yeah

Ryan Hamlin
CEO, POSaBIT Systems Corporation

Trying to explain is that given our run rate and given what's in the queue, that basically puts us back to the midpoint. You know, I'll do the math, $13.5 million, roughly, for the year. So what we're trying to do is just show that, hey, we've recovered, and now as we exit, we're at that, basically puts us back in kind of the middle of where we had already stated our guidance for 2023 was.

James Baglanis
Head of Investor Relations and Treasury, Sonos

Right. Okay, and final point on that, and then, I'll give my line up here, is so the 100 that you have in the pipeline that are going to be going live kind of by year-end time, that's what takes you-

Ryan Hamlin
CEO, POSaBIT Systems Corporation

Yep

James Baglanis
Head of Investor Relations and Treasury, Sonos

up to kind of that midpoint run rate level, just, right?

Ryan Hamlin
CEO, POSaBIT Systems Corporation

Correct. That is correct.

James Baglanis
Head of Investor Relations and Treasury, Sonos

Okay, great.

Ryan Hamlin
CEO, POSaBIT Systems Corporation

In fact, we should. Yeah, we'll exit the year actually hopefully exceeding that. That's, there is a significant number of merchants that, it's just, you can imagine when you transition to a different payment offering, you have to be methodical and make sure you're training your new customers how to use different things.

James Baglanis
Head of Investor Relations and Treasury, Sonos

Sure.

Ryan Hamlin
CEO, POSaBIT Systems Corporation

So, you know, we've been going crazy onboarding, like, you know, literally 20+ a day are coming live. It's just, you know, I, hopefully, our, some of our team members are listening because our team truly have been heroic and, and working extremely long hours and, and getting our merchants back up, which I'm very much appreciative of.

James Baglanis
Head of Investor Relations and Treasury, Sonos

Yeah, no, it sounds like it, and I believe it. But look, I guess, I mean, the quarterly results, there's a bit of a hiccup, and they're a little bit messy, but it sounds like from where I sit, you're going to be exiting the year as a much better company in a much stronger position-

Ryan Hamlin
CEO, POSaBIT Systems Corporation

Yep

James Baglanis
Head of Investor Relations and Treasury, Sonos

with a hopeful line of sight to a listing on an exchange that might get us an actual-

Ryan Hamlin
CEO, POSaBIT Systems Corporation

Yep

James Baglanis
Head of Investor Relations and Treasury, Sonos

real price discovery and volume in the stock. So I think this is a fantastic opportunity.

Ryan Hamlin
CEO, POSaBIT Systems Corporation

Yes

James Baglanis
Head of Investor Relations and Treasury, Sonos

in development. Great job to all of you guys.

Ryan Hamlin
CEO, POSaBIT Systems Corporation

Well-

James Baglanis
Head of Investor Relations and Treasury, Sonos

I'm looking forward to the next update.

Ryan Hamlin
CEO, POSaBIT Systems Corporation

All right. Thank you. Appreciate it.

Operator

Thank you. Your next question is coming from Joshua Horowitz from Palm. Your line is live.

Joshua Horowitz
Portfolio Manager and Managing Director, Palm Ventures

Thank you very much. Thank you, Ryan, for your transparency and resilience managing the company through the tough period, and it looks like you've come out the other side pretty strong. We appreciate that.

Ryan Hamlin
CEO, POSaBIT Systems Corporation

Thanks, Josh.

Joshua Horowitz
Portfolio Manager and Managing Director, Palm Ventures

Question for you, you know, maybe a little bit more color on just the sequencing as you see it, as far as rescheduling, you know, the DEA, HHS, how that all works. You know, if they have to sort of, you know, slip that all in by a certain time period before the end of the current presidential administration, in order for it, you know, to stand the best chance of it not being reversed. I mean, you know, not asking for, like, any expert political analysis, but just from the company's point of view, how do you look at that? Because clearly, it's a major catalyst for all of your customers and, by extension, you guys.

Ryan Hamlin
CEO, POSaBIT Systems Corporation

Yeah. No, good, good question, Joshua. I was actually asked this same question yesterday by an analyst that I was talking with, and I'm gonna give an answer, and then I'm gonna kind of explain a little bit about it. I mean, and it's, when I said it to him, I said: This is not a lazy answer, this is just a realist answer that, having been in the space now for a long time, this is how I view it. I truly believe, unfortunately, I don't think there's going to be any activity on this, at least in the next two years. And I know there's a lot of people that are saying there will be movement prior to the presidential election.

I don't see it happening, and in fact, if you look at some of the even most recent articles that have been written in the last seven days, there's very much the opinion of not only is the SAFER bill being extremely watered down, but that it's losing its support on the Republican side of the house. And so when I say House, I don't mean House, I mean the Republican side in general. And then on the descheduling, I mean, if you look at it, these things have to come out together. That's the thing I keep explaining to a lot of different people. A SAFER standalone or a descheduling standalone really means nothing. The only impact will be when they come together. When they come together, then, as we've shared with you, you know, we're not fearful of that.

We feel like we're in a really great position. We have multiple processors. We already have our credit capabilities approved and ready to turn on, so we're ready for that. But just an honest answer that, you know, I feel convicted about is that I don't see any, these, these two things happening before the presidential election. Then once you get to the presidential election, you know, just again, to be candid, if a Republican, if the Republicans control two of the three, right, the House, Senate, and the presidency, you're probably not gonna see any movement on this for potentially four years. So, at least two, until the next, you know, election comes up on the House.

So I think you're in a, I mean, the summary, and I apologize for the kind of length here, but I don't think it's happening. I think the soonest it would happen is if the Democrats were to control potentially all three, House, Senate, and presidency, then I think you could see something, you know, in that new presidential year. But otherwise, I think we're in it for a little longer here.

Joshua Horowitz
Portfolio Manager and Managing Director, Palm Ventures

Interesting. I mean, I've heard all sides of the story. I appreciate that. I, you know, I've spoken to people that are way more bullish. I've spoken to people that, you know, share your opinion. So, you know, barring any movement there, you know, what do you see is happening, you know, in the next 12-18 months to more rationalize the space in so far as, you know, the health of your customers? You know, what economic factors should we be looking at? Is it, you know-

Ryan Hamlin
CEO, POSaBIT Systems Corporation

Yeah.

Joshua Horowitz
Portfolio Manager and Managing Director, Palm Ventures

Just very state specific? Is it, is it more macro? You know, 'cause clearly, you know, we need these, these businesses to be healthy for POSaBIT to do well.

Ryan Hamlin
CEO, POSaBIT Systems Corporation

Yeah. Another good question, and I think the best way to answer the future is to look at the past. And, you know, it—we have, we're in our eighth year, soon to be our ninth year, and I think what we've been able to prove is that through all of the changes that have happened, you know, when we were a crypto company, and then, you know, migrated and did point-of-banking, and we've gone through a lot, the consistent theme, however, through those eight years is we've continued to grow. In fact, we've grown, you know, we've grown at, you know, roughly doubling, like we've always said, almost doubling every year. So I'm confident in our ability as a company to kind of take on whatever, you know, the future may hold because I am confident in our past.

Like I said, past is the best view of the future. And so I think that's how I view it, and what I would share with all of our investors is, you know, look at what we've done. Don't be, you know, don't be scared of the unknown or the instability, a little bit of this industry. I think you just have to look at, okay, how has the company performed, and how has it responded in times of, you know, unknowns and, you know, like we had these last couple months. So yeah, I'm bullish on our growth. I'm bullish on, you know, obviously getting us into profitability. Getting us on a bigger board is gonna certainly help the stock itself. We're confident on that. So yeah, I guess that's my answer, Josh.

You know, I think that's what I would say to an investor is, you know, look at the company, look at the past, and evaluate us based on how we've done in the past, 'cause that's how we're gonna do it in the future.

Joshua Horowitz
Portfolio Manager and Managing Director, Palm Ventures

Excellent. Thank you very much for that. Congrats.

Ryan Hamlin
CEO, POSaBIT Systems Corporation

Yeah, thanks.

Operator

Thank you. That completes our Q&A session. Everyone, this concludes today's event. You may disconnect at this time and have a wonderful day. Thank you for your participation.

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