Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Tenet's Q3 webinar. My name is Cathy Hume from CHF Capital Markets. On today's agenda, Johnson, our CEO, will take you through the financial results for the quarter that was announced yesterday. At the conclusion of Johnson's highlights, Jean, our CFO, will review the financial statements, and following that, our new COO, that's Chief Operating Officer, Mayco, will provide the operational outlook. Final closing comments will be with Johnson, and there will be a Q&A section at the very end of the presentation section. In our press release, we ask that everyone who had questions submit them by email in advance. We will address the most prominent ones during the Q&A portion of the call. We will not be addressing any live questions, as there's no time for that.
Please note that this call is being recorded and that all participants have been muted. As a disclosure statement, any discussion about future financial results and industry prospects should be considered forward-looking statements. Johnson, please take over from here. Thank you.
Thank you, Cathy. Now, I'm gonna start quickly, and we're gonna do just a quick overview of the operating highlights. And as Cathy mentioned before, Jean's gonna take over and give you an overview of the financial highlights. Then I will come back with Mayco Quiroz, our new Chief Operating Officer, and we're gonna tell you what you can expect for the rest of the year and for 2024. So let's get to it with the Q3 operating highlights. Next slide, please. Thank you. Now, we've been talking about data for well over a year now, and although we've fallen behind our original schedule to get to that phase of our strategic plan, we really tried to get things going into gear in Q3, and that meant putting a lot of emphasis on our Canadian operations.
Now, one of the first things we needed to do was to make sure that we would have the capital we needed to execute our business plan. We estimated that we would need about CAD 20 million over the next 12 months. We're able to raise about half of that amount so far, and we expect to close on the balance by the end of the year, so that we should be in pretty good shape to execute our plan throughout 2024. We'll talk more about that in the outlook section in a few minutes. Our emphasis, or should I say, our transition to putting more emphasis on data in the third quarter, also meant that resuming the development of our Business Hub pillars and continuing with our business development and strategic partnership initiatives.
We're able to make good progress on both fronts during the quarter, and we expect that to continue for the balance of the year and throughout 2024. Now, when it comes to China, things were a little bit more difficult, obviously. After what happened in Q2, we still had a lot of work to do to restore confidence with our clients and our partners. Inevitably, that was reflected in our financial results for the quarter, which our CFO, Jean Landreville, will provide more details on shortly. But we still managed to make some important progress during the quarter by continuing to serve clients from different industries.
Again, going back to putting more emphasis on data, we're trying very hard to get to industrial diversification in China and setting up our distribution network in China, so we made some progress on that front as well during the third quarter of 2023. Now, one of the reasons why we're putting emphasis on networking and our distribution capabilities in China is to be able to eventually allow Business Hub clients from North America and other parts of the world, where we eventually operate the Business Hub, to have access to the Chinese market. So, as we've been talking about the Business Hub, we know that networking is going to be an extremely important pillar for us.
So it's not just the ability for people to connect with each other, to send messages, and explore business development opportunities, but also we want to open other markets for our clients, our Business Hub clients. And China is one of the first markets that we want to give people access to, and vice versa. We would like some of our Chinese clients right now to partner up with small business owners and distributors here in Canada to sell some of the wares in Canada as well through our platform. So that's it for Q3 from an operational standpoint. Now I'm going to pass it over to Jean for the financial overview, and then I'll come back with Mayco to give you an outlook on what to expect for the rest of the year and for 2024. Jean?
Well, thank you, Johnson, and welcome, everybody, to this call. Like Johnson said, mentioned, what's happened in the second quarter in Canada have an effect, a direct effect on the, on the financial. Can you move the slide, please? So revenue for the third quarter of 2023 is CAD 9.2 million, mainly, 100% mainly from China versus CAD 21.6 million last year.
The CAD 12 million negative variation is 100% from the supply chain business in all the subsidiary that we have in China that is doing supply chain business, the supply chain business, like ASSC, the retail business, AGP, the petroleum business. SteelChain was flat, but in total, we have a CAD 12 million reduction in the revenue for the third quarter, for a total of CAD 6.3 million supply chain business revenue in Q3. The rest of the business is flat year-over-year, including Heartbeat, ASSC, and other business that is generating revenue in China. Just a word on Heartbeat, that we're gonna talk later on the improvement of one of the platforms, which is Heartbeat.
In China, so it was flat, and we were expecting, during last year to have an increase in the revenue in Heartbeat, and it did not happen with all, with the, the effect of the second quarter in Canada. So we have to make an improvement, and I'm gonna talk a little bit later. So, all into CAD 9.2 million revenue this year, in Q3 versus 21.6. That has an effect on the cost of service. Cost of service is CAD 5.7 million, this year versus 16.9 million, 17 million last year, and this is the direct cost of the supply chain. In general, the, the volume of the business in, in China is now more, going through, other than supply chain.
So the proportion of revenue and the expense on the cost of service was 68% this year versus 84% in total revenue and cost for the cost of service. And the cost of service is a little bit lower than last year by 2% if you compare the percentage of the cost of the cost of service of this year versus last year. So there's a small improvement on the cost of the service cost. Service, software delivery service, directly related to the Heartbeat business. This is flat, and it's normal. It's flat because the revenue was flat from year-over-year for the software delivery service. Salary, fringe and benefits.
So there is the average, there was a reduction in the effective in Canada and in China in the third quarter of this year compared to the third quarter of last year. So the average headcount is 163 last year versus 113. So there's a reduction on the average headcount from year-over-year by 50 employees, full-time equivalent employees, and mainly it's 30 in Canada and 20 in China. So that have a direct effect on the cost of the salary, fringe, and benefits. In addition to that, well, we can have a higher reduction if last year we can capitalize some cost of the salary into the platform in Canada and China that we didn't do this year because of the improvement that was coming that we have to register this year.
So, we can have a CAD 400,000 last year that was not in the expense that was capitalized last year, so that's reducing the positive variance or negative, less expense on the salary, fringe, and benefits. But overall, for the third quarter, just in salary, it was about roughly CAD 1 million less in the expense. Service fees, the costs related to the SaaS business in China, so it's normal that it's a bit higher than last year.
Also, the capitalization in that, yeah, last year reduced the expense, comparable expense within this year. Consulting fees, we, r eduction, we have cost reduction initiative in Canada and China, so we reduced mainly to almost nil the consulting fees for this year, but we're gonna pick up some in the fourth quarter of this year. Outsource service, same explanation. Then salary and other costs, we don't capitalize some outsource service but and compared to last year. Also, one of the phenomenon is that in China, the platform is getting more mature, so you cannot capitalize some costs that we're able to capitalize it before. These have to be in the expense as a maintenance cost over the software services. Marketing, public relation was flat in the third quarter.
Last year, we have initiative over the Cubeler platform that we put on pause, waiting for the fourth quarter or the first quarter. I think Mayco's gonna make some explanation on that later. Financial costs, just to highlight, is the convertible debenture private placement that we made at the beginning of the year and this summer. But in that, just to note that in that 448, there is CAD 250,000 that is non-cash item, which is the accretion of the interest to take the difference between the fair market value and the actual cost of the interest. So there's CAD 250,000 in that 448 that is non-cash item. The rest is related to the convertible debenture.
Expected ECL this last reduction of CAD 300,000 over last year, but last year there was a one-time item of CAD 250,000 in one of the subsidiary in China. So it's all year-over-year comparison is almost the same, so there's no deterioration on the loan that we have in China. The quality of the loan still very good, so we minimize the expense on the expected ECL last. From now on, this is all non-cash items, so you have the depreciation, amortization of the intangible asset.
Now, in the third quarter, as you know, when you have a business combination or acquisition, you have to make a test to support the value that you have in your book from the acquisition, the goodwill, and intangible asset. We have two business or two acquisitions that we have to revise, and following what's happened in the second quarter, it was obvious that the delay for the Cubeler and Heartbeat business have an impact on the projection that we made last year. So we, you know, we bite the bullet right now, and we make the following adjustment on the goodwill and intangible asset for Cubeler and Heartbeat.
So, if you add the two, the impairment of goodwill and impairment of the intangible asset, you have CAD 36.4 million that we affect the Q3 result. Again, this is important, this is non-cash item, right? So, at the end, it's not a cash item we have to pay, it's just an adjustment in the book that is non-cash. But, right, so, this is conservative approach. We do that normally in the fourth quarter, but, well, I was in the opinion that what's happened in the second quarter was obviously we have some delay, especially in Canada with Cubeler and the Heartbeat have an effect in the third quarter that compared to last year, what was the projection. So we decided to take the hit in the third quarter.
So with this CAD 36.4 million expense, non-cash item relating to the impairment, the total expense of the business is CAD 52 million, including this CAD 36.4 million of the impairment in Q3 versus CAD 30 million of last year, and the net loss is CAD 43 million versus CAD 7.7 million compared to last year. But if you look in the MD&A with, i f you take out all the item that is non-cash, and you look at the adjusted EBITDA, it's flat year-over-year, so it's CAD 3.8 million negative still, but it's not, you know, it's not at the level of CAD 43 million. It's CAD 3.8 million of adjusted EBITDA year-over-year. So that was my review of the P&L for the third quarter. I'll switch that over to Johnson. Thank you.
Thank you, Jean. Okay, now we're gonna take a very quick look here at what is to be expected for the outlook for 2023. It should be 2024 here also, by the way. So it's 2023, Q3 2023, and then the balance of 2024. Next slide, please. Okay, so as a development stage company, financing is always going to be one of the most important aspects of our business. So the first thing that we wanna do is we want to secure, for the balance of 2023, the first thing we wanna do is we wanna secure the financings that the capital that we will need in order to be able to execute our business plan. As I mentioned earlier, we were successful in closing about half of the CAD 20 million that we had estimated needing.
Now, we're gonna be working on closing the second half, and you can expect an announcement related to the financing, the products, and the terms of the financing in the next few days. So, we're gonna be working with an investment banking firm here to be able to close that, hopefully, like I said, before the end of this year, so that we're in pretty good shape for 2024. Now, the capital markets are always going, like I said, are always going to be an important part of our strategy. And if you're an investor of this company, you know that we have big ambitions, and big ambitions take big money, and the big money is in the U.S.
Not only is the market for the Business Hub greater in the U.S., but the capital markets also. So again, as some of you know, we used to be a NASDAQ-listed company. Right now, we are not a NASDAQ-listed company for reasons you already know. But believe me, we have been working very, very hard behind the scenes. We have not given up on eventually getting back to a senior listing to enhance the profile of this company. We believe the company's got a tremendous amount of potential. It was once listed on the NASDAQ, and we're working very, very hard to be able to eventually get there. Now that being said, I can't obviously provide too much details on that.
That being said, I'm gonna switch it over to Mayco, who's going to talk a little bit about the Business Hub from an operational standpoint, because everything that we wanna do, from a data standpoint, starts with the Business Hub. Mayco?
Yes, thank you, Johnson. Good morning. My name is Mayco Quiroz. I'm the Chief Operating Officer for Tenet, and, it'll be my pleasure to provide you with an operational update, regarding our business, beginning with the, Cubeler Business Hub. I can let you know that we continue to make, significant progress regarding the development of the additional three pillars, will complement and actually complete the services that we offer to our members via the Cubeler Business Hub, that being the advertising, the networking, and the business insights pillars. We currently, as you know, have the financing, pillar fully operational.
We expect for the three additional pillars to be ready and available, to new and, of course, future members of the hub, for that to be available in the early part of the first half of 2024. In parallel, our marketing department is currently developing and building the marketing campaigns that we expect will create significant awareness, as well as conversion, in our case, meaning new registrations of once again additional members.
Regarding the financial institutions and lending partners that currently support the financing of credit applications that are put forth by members of the Cubeler Business Hub, I can report to you, and I'm happy to share with you, that we have recently added two new financial institutions or lending partners to the hub, that being eCapital and Growth Street Capital, the first one being an accounts receivable financing type of company, and the second one being an alternative lender, which once again complements nicely the roster of lenders or financial institutions that we currently have available to our members. On the strategic alliances side of things, I am also glad to share with you the fact that we have recently entered into two new strategic, strategic alliances, which are of significant size.
The first one, that I would like to mention and share, details about with you is that which relates to, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. The Canadian Chamber of Commerce has over 200,000 members, therefore, giving us enormous potential, and access to that, member base, for them to obviously, at one point in time, become members of the Cubeler Business Hub. The second, you know, strategic alliance that we recently entered into is with the Certified Professional Bookkeepers of Canada. That association has over 4,000 members, so once again, enormous potential for us to attract some of these members to, to the Cubeler Business Hub.
Those are some of the highlights that I thought it would be worth sharing with you at this moment, and I will now pass the microphone back to Johnson. Thank you.
Thank you, Mayco. So with that being said, ladies and gentlemen, one of the most important, I would say the most important objective that we have for 2024 is to commercialize our first data-driven products. Now, why have we been putting so much emphasis on data? Now, listen, I really believe that if you are an investor in Cubeler, you understand our concept, you understand our business model, you're there for a reason. So what I'm going to tell you, I don't expect you to just take my word for it. So the information I'm gonna be sharing with you here in a second about the value of our data can easily be verified by anybody.
I would encourage you, if you're a serious investor in this company, take the time, do the research, and validate the information so that you understand why we believe this company has so much potential. Just start with the data sets that we have, the unique sets of data. We're talking about having information on thousands of small and medium-sized businesses in China, in Canada, eventually the U.S., and all over the world. As we've said in past presentations, small businesses are the bellwether of economic activity around the world, and the capital markets are based on economic activity. The information that we have through the chart of accounts of the accounting software of the small and medium-sized businesses, give us access to inventory levels, cash balances, accounts payable, accounts receivable. These are data sets that the capital markets have not seen.
So we are introducing new sets of data that the capital markets are going to be able to utilize to make decisions, to buy and sell stock, and this has a tremendous amount of value. Now, in the MD&A, we've spelled it out. We've talked about the potential market size for our first two data-driven products, iePulse and Equity Insider. iePulse is a product that will give capital markets participants, economists, governments, whatever, will give them insights that they simply just do not have right now. So we're creating a series of indices, and we strongly believe that we can sell these, access to these indices on monthly subscription plans ranging from CAD 1,000 to CAD 10,000 a month.
And this is not. This is information that can easily be verified because there are competitors out there that are already selling data, and again, what makes us unique is the data sets that we have that nobody else has. So I would even challenge you, challenge some of our investors and shareholders, go and see for yourselves to see if any competitor out there has the level of data, the details that we have, and that we're gonna be offering to the, that we're gonna be offering to the capital markets. That's what makes us unique, and that's why the data that we have is so important. Now, the second product that we're gonna be looking to commercialize before the end of 2024 is a product called Equity Insider.
Okay, so as the name suggests, okay, we are, and it, it's a bit of a play on words, Equity Insider. So what we're doing here is we are looking at providing trading opportunities to people who would be subscribing to the service, trading opportunities from the time that a quarter ends and the time that a publicly traded company actually files their results. So take a look at, I mean, take a look at our company, for example, right? So we are November 30th, and we just filed yesterday our results for the third quarter, which ended on September 30th. So this is two months later. So the Equity Insider product will play on that gap.
So at the end of the quarter, when the quarter ends, let's say on September thirtieth, and people are buying and selling the stock, they're trading the stock of a publicly traded company while the quarter has ended, but the quarter, the publicly traded company has not yet filed their results, right? So insiders of that corporation may know the results while the company is tabulating, calculating and, and, and gathering all the information, preparing to be able to file the results, obviously, the insiders of the company know what the results are. The results just have not been published. So what we're looking to do with the Equity Insider product is not to forecast what the company is going to be filing, but rather to infer the results based on data that we have coming from our small businesses.
So we are establishing correlations between a publicly traded company and private companies that operate in the same industrial sector, and once the quarter ends, we can backdate information, verify, use proprietary algorithms and a little bit of artificial intelligence so that we are not forecasting. The analysts are forecasting. They're trying to predict in advance what the publicly traded companies are going to or the results of, I should say, of the publicly traded companies. That's not what Equity Insider is going to be doing. Equity Insider is going to basically wait until the quarter has ended, gather the information from the business of small and medium-sized businesses, correlate that information with a publicly traded company. To give you an example, right?
So small and medium-sized businesses operating in the retail sector, for example, their data, their information could be correlated with a publicly traded company that operates in the retail sector. So once the quarter has ended, we know in general, we will know, Tenet will know how the retail sector has performed in general, before pretty much anybody else does, because we will have access to data that Statistics Canada won't even have access to in Canada, right?
So we're going to take this information, we're going to establish correlations, and then following the end of the quarter, within days of the quarter, the idea is that within days of the quarter, we will be able to tell the Equity Insider subscribers, "Hey, you know what? This publicly traded company, for this publicly traded company, the analysts were forecasting X, and our data basically has inferred that the public company, the publicly traded company, their results will be Y."
So essentially, what we're doing with this product is we are giving trading opportunities to people, excuse me, to people who buy and sell stocks of publicly traded companies between the time that a quarter has ended and the company has filed their results. So for this particular product, the market potential, just in North America alone, and in terms of potential monthly service fee revenues is over $1 billion. Now, this is based on a monthly subscription fee of $5 to $20.
When you multiply this by the number of individuals that have discount brokerage accounts, which is well over 100 million, when you take Canada and the U.S. combined. So this is the kind of market that we're going after. And again, this is a product that we believe will be unique when we come out with it. And we believe that this product can be sold not just to individual traders one-on-one, but our plan is to work with platform vendors, discount brokerage platform vendors, and then offer them the service on a retail basis that they can resell to their clients, essentially. So that's the idea behind Equity Insider, and that's one of the reasons why we are so excited about the potential of the data that we have access to. Now, I've just named two products, okay?
But eventually, we will develop other products from the data that we collect, not just in Canada, China, the U.S., but eventually all over the world where we operate. Now, that's the potential behind the first data-driven products that we plan on coming out with. Now, what's the impact of that for China? Now, these products. Oh, I should say that the data that we accumulate in China will also serve for these purposes, particularly for the iePulse product, because what happens in China matters, right? So China is the, I guess, you can call China the manufacturing engine, if you will, of the world, right? So we have data right now on. We've already serviced thousands of businesses in China.
We're gonna be structuring how we collect data in China to make sure that we have industrial data diversification, as I mentioned earlier. We're gonna be working on new partnerships, basically to give us access to even more data. So for instance, bookkeepers, business associations, and so on and so forth. So you're gonna start to see in 2024, new types of partnerships that we're gonna be announcing in China. And in addition to the revenues that we are currently generating in China, which, by the way, we don't expect to stop, the transaction fee revenues that we're currently earning in China. We just expect to add these data-driven revenue streams to the current revenue streams that we have in China.
So in addition to the subscription, excuse me, to the transaction fee revenue that we're gonna be generating in China, we will also introduce the subscription fee-based revenues to China. So again, China is always going to play a key role for us, so we're not abandoning China by any means. So I understand right now that the Q3 numbers may have been disappointing, but I really would urge our shareholders and investors to keep an eye on the big picture. You know, we had some difficulties in China for the reasons that we've already mentioned. We expect the transaction fee revenues to also pick up, eventually to pick up to the pre-pandemic levels over the next.
I'm not. I don't think that will happen over the next quarter or second quarter or next two quarters, but certainly by the end of 2024, we would expect China to be back to the pre-pandemic levels from a transaction fee revenue base, and then introduce slowly the subscription fee, data-driven subscription fee revenue stream to what we're earning in China. With that being said, ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to wrap up the outlook section of the presentation. I believe, Cathy, that we do have a few questions from the audience, so I'm gonna turn it over to you right now for the Q&A portion of this presentation. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you, Johnson. A lot of the questions have been answered throughout the, the webinar, so, the list is rather short now. But I'll start with one that seemed to come up a few times, is the concerns about the money locked up in China. You know, everybody had expected to see the financing close sometime after the end of October, and here we are, entering December. You said it would happen in December. What was the cause of that delay? If you can give a bit more color to that.
Sure. There are two separate things here, Cathy. First of all, the bulk, I would say, of the first half of the financing was conducted with a strategic partner in China, and we were debating whether to keep the funds in China or to bring the funds back here for our Canadian operations. And finally, we kind of like started basically bringing some of the funds over. We've had discussions basically with our team in China to address their cash needs as well. So, at the end of the day, it was determined that we would bring the funds back here to Canada, and we've started the process basically of bringing the funds back here to our f or the needs of our Canadian operations, as opposed to leaving them in China.
So the process is ongoing right now, and we expect that all of the funds basically that were in China to be available to us here in Canada before the end of this year. So that's to answer the first part of your question. The second part, which relates, I believe, to the second half of the financing that we're looking to close. We basically, y es, we did get the approval of the shareholders to be able to get this financing for insiders to participate, I should say.
That was done at the end of October, but we were questioning what kind of financial product we should use to be able to close the second half of the financing. We talked with our investment banking partners. We do believe we have the right product offering right now, as I and as I mentioned earlier, you can expect an announcement related to that in the coming days that should allow us to close the financing before the end of this year. Now, again, I have to say that this is a disclaimer, I cannot guarantee that we're gonna be able to close this financing, but we certainly expect to be able to close it. We think we have, we'll have the right product to be able to do so, and we have, we believe we should have enough interested investors to be able to close it.
Okay. Thank you. Thanks for that information. So related also to the financing, can Tenet operate until mid-2024 with the funds that you're currently raising?
Yes, absolutely. There's no question about that. In fact, we think that we should have enough for the next 12 months. So certainly, yes.
Okay, there are a few questions about uplisting to larger exchanges. When do you think, realistically, that could happen, and when will we begin operating Cubeler in the United States?
This is something that, in terms of the operations in the U.S., I believe that's something that's addressed in the MD&A, but certainly we would be looking to be in the U.S., around, I would say, end of second quarter, early third quarter. The U.S. market is very important for us. We certainly expect to be there before the end of 2024. Now, when it comes to uplisting to a larger exchange, as I mentioned before, I mean, we can't discuss these things publicly, but I really just want our shareholders to know that we have been working very hard behind the scenes, and we believe we are making progress to be able to get there.
But in terms of timeline, unfortunately, I cannot, I can't give you a timeline on that because securities regulators here in Canada, in the U.S. But like I said, we're trying our best. Basically, we're answering questions, and we're hoping that the files are moving forward to be able to eventually get our NASDAQ listing restored.
Great. Okay, well, that's pretty much it for the questions from our shareholders. So I could say that maybe you have a few closing remarks, Johnson, and we'll let everybody get back to their day.
Okay. Thank you so much, Cathy. As I mentioned, listen, I understand the disappointment with the Q3 results, but I would really want our shareholders to keep their eyes on the big picture. We have had a couple of setbacks here in the last couple of quarters, but again, the importance of data is. I can't stress that enough, and we are uniquely positioned, in my opinion, to have an impact on capital markets, and the data sets that we have are unique, and they're extremely valuable. I would encourage you to take the time to read the MD&A, and take the time also to do your own research. If you are a serious investor and you've been following this company, you owe it to yourself. Don't take our word for it.
Do the research for yourself. Look at the data sets that we have access to, and look at what the potential competitors have out there, and then you will realize why we are uniquely positioned. So again, once again, thank you so much for your time. We appreciate you continuing to support the company. We do believe the company has got a bright future. We've turned the corner. We've entered the data phase of our, of our operations. We believe there are exciting days ahead for us. So thank you again for your time. Have a great day, and we'll see you guys next quarter.