Hi everyone, welcome to another conference call to present Verde AgriTech results for the second quarter of 2025. My name is Cristiano Veloso, I am the founder and CEO of Verde AgriTech. Thanks very much for attending our presentation live. I can see several people have joined, and if you're watching it later on or at any time on YouTube, thanks very much for your interest. If at any point you want to reach out to the company, we are always open to feedback, suggestions, comments. Please, please do not hesitate to reach out to us. Starting today's results call, as usual, in the first part of the presentation, we're going to go through the highlights. Our CFO, Felipe Paolucci, is going to go through the numbers, the results, the performance, and then at the end, I will be carrying out a Q&A.
If you have any questions throughout the presentation, please write your questions on the Q&A option on your screen, and we will make sure we can address as many or if not all of the questions that are asked us. If we could please share the screen, Felipe, I will start talking a little bit about this quarter, but I couldn't start our presentation without sharing that if you are in North America, if you're in the U.S., you should not waste an opportunity to go on amazon.com and buy one of our fantastic Super Greensand products. If you like it, leave a review. If you dislike it, leave a review and reach out. So far, we've had an overwhelming number of people approving the usage of Super Greensand in the United States.
If you want a 5% discount, there is a code you can add to your checkout on Amazon, and you will be able to get an amazing 5% discount from our Super Greensand product. Starting now with the highlights of our quarter. As we had already predicted, as we had already shared, all the way in the Q4 of last year, all the way when we started talking about it in the beginning of this year, the first half of 2025, we expected to see a reflection of what has been called now the great Brazilian agricultural crisis, which we are still in the midst of.
In all honesty, if you are old enough like us to remember the great financial crisis, if you were like us, marketing an early-stage startup company, exploration company in 2008, walking around Toronto or New York, it's just as bad now when it comes to agriculture in Brazil. There is a record level of farmers applying for creditor protection. There are some very eye-watering terms being achieved by farmers who are in financial trouble, and the mood is quite horrible among fertilizer or any other agricultural input product supplier in the Brazilian market. It's really bad. There was a big conference in Brazil last week, a conference called ANDAV, which is where you have the fertilizer distributors, all the imported distributors attend. It is a B2B conference, and the mood was terrible. The mood was terrible in what we're witnessing.
Above all, the general saying is that about half of all sales for delivery this year wouldn't have taken place yet, i.e., farmers haven't been able to bite the bullet yet and buy the agricultural inputs they will need for growing crops this season. It is a very challenging scenario. What we have a confirmation of as well is that farmers who are buying, they are not necessarily being able to choose the inputs they want. It has now all become about what they can get financed. For example, if you need several different agricultural inputs for your grow anything, all the way from pesticide, herbicides, seeds, you will be able to buy that as a package from whoever you have committed your assets to, your collateral, your farm, your equipment. It's been a very challenging market.
In spite of this terrible, great Brazilian agricultural crisis, which we've been talking about for the last couple of years, I am very pleased to report that the reduction in volume was insignificant in comparison to last year. For Q2, we were able to deliver about 80,000 tons of product in line with what we had done in Q2 2024. Hopefully, we're hitting bottom. Hopefully, we're going to start seeing an acceleration. Hopefully, we're going to start seeing a normalization of the market for the coming years. What I will add, I will ask Luisa is to get ready, Luisa, once we're finished here.
I want you, I will want you to switch and share very quickly our deck, which is in our website, because there's one slide I think it's important to show, and it's an important slide which helps people understand the proposition why I think what we're doing here is so important. Going through with the other highlights of the quarter, we had a slight increase in our gross margin. We had a slight reduction in our sales and marketing expenses. That is in line with a cost reduction. We keep doing those cost reductions. We've been replacing as many people as we possibly can with AI. The recent reduction, I had three PhD scientists who I got replaced with AI plus an intern who is doing exactly the same as they were doing before thanks to AI.
We try to use it actively. There are other examples, and this has been allowing us to reduce the number of people in the company without compromising performance and results. We had a positive operating cash inflow. Hopefully this is showing we're turning the curve. We're starting to consolidate before we can grow again. EBITDA, net loss, the numbers are there. We have a slight reduction in our cash position. However, when you consider our short-term receivables, they remain strong. More importantly, we've been able to negotiate or to renegotiate our debt, moving the bulk of it as a long-term debt, which I think is very important for all of you to understand because this shows how our creditors understand the challenging situation as a consequence of the great Brazilian agricultural crisis and how they've been willing to carry on supporting the company.
I have no doubt or no reason to suspect they won't carry on doing the same for the foreseeable future. I will now allow Felipe Paolucci, our CFO and shareholder, to go over some of the more details. I look forward to talking to you again to answer some of your questions. Thank you very much. Felipe, please go ahead.
Thank you, Cristiano. Thanks everyone for joining the conference today. I will speak a bit on the microeconomic scenario. First, as we can see here, we have the CDI rate, which is the interest rate that we have in Brazil, is currently very high. We are coming 15% average interest rate per year. We do expect a reduction to come. For example, the Brazilian central bank is projecting for the year end 12.5%. We have also JP Morgan foreseeing a better, higher reduction by next year, close to 10% per year. This has a direct impact in our business since we do have the loans currently based on CDI rate. Of course, the cost of cash for each farmer, for everyone in the country, is going to be cheaper, hopefully, in the coming periods.
This will help everyone to finance their activities and start to revert this cycle that we are currently on it.
Felipe, if we go back to the previous slide.
Yeah.
Okay. Farming is a highly leveraged business when you look at farmers. Nothing is, of course, the price of agricultural commodities rules everything, but alongside it is the cost of capital, alongside the cost of capital. There's no doubt that when the central bank in Brazil hikes interest rates all the way up to an eye-watering 15% per year, the central bank in Brazil wants stuff to break and is expecting stuff to break. This is happening. There's no doubt. There's an awareness among the central bank that they've managed to break the Brazilian agricultural sector. They've managed to throw gasoline in the fire of the great Brazilian agricultural crisis. We can see the results impacting Brazil's economy. The forecast, it's very hard, as you all know, to try to forecast interest rates.
Probably the bank or the group of analysts operating in Brazil, probably the best paid ones sit with JP Morgan. I don't know if those guys are the best ones, but they're most certainly the best paid ones, better paid than the Brazilian banks, that's for sure. I would expect a high level of higher caliber of expertise, knowledge, and capability of forecasting stuff. I would really like to think that the expected decrease that JP Morgan has on interest rates will materialize. Because if it does, if JP Morgan is right and we can see the Brazilian interest rate cutting nearly half before the end of next year, this might really consolidate the end of the great Brazilian agricultural crisis and hopefully the beginning of a new virtuous cycle for Brazilian agriculture. Fingers crossed, JP Morgan is right. This is very material.
This would be a humongous change in what the next month would look like. Please go ahead, Felipe. Just going back, just we're going to, on the notes of the YouTube, but the source there is wrong. It's not the 5th of May. The date of this forecast is a week ago. That is wrong. Something else I've noticed, go back all the way to the beginning of the presentation, Felipe, please. Go all the way back, right at the beginning. Oh, no, it was there. It was my bad that right at the beginning, I didn't remind you that our presentation contains forward-looking statements that the actual results might differ, but it was all written there. Make sure you read this slide carefully before you carry on listening to what we're talking about. Please go ahead, Felipe. Thank you.
Yeah. In terms of currency exchange rate, what we see now is that we had the devaluation of Brazilian real in the last period, which helped in terms of cost. However, it does not help in terms of sales revenue per ton. However, even with this current situation, the global market, we can see that actually the exchange rate is quite stable, it's not changing a lot. In the last few weeks or a few months, we can see that yesterday or last Friday, for example, we had one Canadian dollar costing R$3.95, which is quite similar to what we had in the last two or three months. Expectations now are that this won't change a lot, at least according to what the banks are saying. Hopefully, the more stable it gets, the better for the business, better for everyone.
Although we know that once the Brazilian real gets weaker in terms of cost for the competitors, it gets higher, it's better for our clients, some of them, the exports, but that's the current situation. We're not seeing a lot of change in the short- term, actually, from what we're reading from the banks and analysts. In terms of KCL price, we have a chart here that shows from a couple of years ago, since 2022. We saw that we had a very high price of over $1,100 per ton, CFR prices. Then it went down up to Q2 last year of $309. In the last year, we see an increase of close to 20%. Currently, the KCL average price is close to $355- $360, and that's the last three months around. It's quite stable again as well.
Nobody knows yet what's coming, but at least it's better than last year. Hopefully, it gets like this. It's better for the business, better for us, for example. I do not have here anything for next year yet, but we do not have inputs saying that it should be higher or less than this current price. We're working with this price and being competitive with this current price that we have in the marketplace currently. In terms of Brazilian agricultural market, as Cristiano mentioned before, we remain in a situation which is very critical with a lot of farms being bankrupted in Chapter 11, among other strategies to try to postpone payments and try to renegotiate with creditors. This Q1, that's the number we have so far, we had an increase of 38% compared to last year.
We do not have yet up to June, but hopefully soon, we're going to have this information. What we believe is that the news won't be good. We remain in a situation where we see some clients from us also getting to try to get protection. Also, a lot of distributors who had the last couple of months, we had, as everyone knows, the public lab order situation. We had also AgroGalaxy, the two biggest and largest distributors in South America and Brazil. They are very big companies that they are trying to renegotiate as well their plans. What we saw is that, for example, AgroGalaxy has finalized the negotiation and Labor is also ongoing there. Hopefully, the situation gets more stable in the coming periods, avoiding credit risk and later receivables for everyone in the marketplace.
In terms of financial and operational results, I think it would be good to highlight here that year to date, for example, G&A, we had a reduction from $2.4 million- $2.1 million in this quarter. In terms of net loss, we also had a reduction in our loss from $7.4 million- $6.2 million. At the end of the day, we had a bit of improvement on these two numbers. I think these ones that I'd like to highlight. In terms of EBITDA, like we said before in the highlights chart, we had zero last year and this year were - $200K. We do expect improvement. Let's see what comes from Q3 and Q4. In terms of operations summary, now we can see here in the top of this chart, including freight, it's quite relevant to our business.
In the second table, we had an explanation and tailored numbers excluding the freight EBITDA, because when you sell CIF, of course, it increases our price. However, it increases in the same terms our expenses as well. We do not plan and do not work to have gains with freight, but to be as much more compatible as possible, trying to reduce the final cost to the farmers. The good point to be highlighting here is that we had an increase in gross margin. At the end of the day, we reduced when we removed freight from the numbers from 55%- 58% this quarter. Year- to- date, an even better improvement from 52%- 57% on gross margin. A bit on detail on sales, general and administrative expenses.
What we have here is like we have a reduction of 11% on total sales expense and a reduction of 13% in the general expenses. Just for example, year to date, legal and consultancy expenses, we had a reduction from $600,000- $360,000 in the same period. We had a lot of renegotiation. We are working hard to try to be able to reduce expenses that are not directly connected to sales, expenses that if we reduce, we do not impact sales, and trying to be prepared for the situation with lower volumes and prices as we had in the first semester. We keep with this strategy of trying to reduce and mitigate as much as we can costs, expenses that do not bring sales. We are focused on increased sales and volumes.
Every time we are able to reduce something, we work on it hard to try to reduce costs. The last chart that I have here is related to the very latest debt overview. It was also in the highlight where it's quite clear on how we were able to reduce what we had in the short- term to be paid and now what we have for the short- term and long- term. We came from a short- term of over $38 million, close to $38 million Canadian dollars to be paid in 12 months, and now we have only $227,000 to be paid. This will for sure help us a lot in the coming periods and bring more flexibility and alternatives and possibilities to invest in our commercial area and sales and field people, etc.
On the right side of the table, you can see that we had two types of creditors. We had the other end creditors and no other end creditors. There is a quite significant difference between both since the no other end creditors, for example, had a debt reduction of 75% of the principal. Another key point is that they have a very much lower interest rate as well compared to the other end creditors. The largest banks were other ends, which we expected and we negotiated with them, and they are the ones that we are willing to keep doing business and relationship for the coming periods and years. That's it, Cristiano. Thank you everyone. Now we can go to the Q&A sections, and also Salisha is here already. I'm not sure if you saw her, but thank you everyone.
Thanks, Felipe. Just to go back one slide on the debt renegotiation. When we started renegotiating our debt with banks, I remember sharing some of those calls, how important it was, but also how much support we're getting from the banks. I don't think a single shareholder expected for the renegotiated terms to be as good as they were. I might be wrong. Obviously, I didn't talk to every single investor, but after we put out the press release, everyone I spoke to was very surprised in a positive way in terms of how beneficial those terms were for Verde AgriTech and how much our supportive banks were. We are very thankful to the banks who continue supporting us. What I'd like to add here is that I have no reason to believe they won't continue to support us as the company evolves one way or another.
As a very large shareholder of the company, I am personally very chilled, relaxed about this issue. That has allowed us as a company really to be able to focus on what really matters, which is the relationship and doing the best and being obsessive about our clients. That's where we've been able to put our efforts, and that's where we will carry on focusing, knowing that whatever happens, we will carry on with this support from the banks one way or another. Before I start answering the questions, I would like to introduce Salisha. We are very pleased to have hired the services of Salisha. She is a very seasoned investor relations professional, highly recommended by one of the most successful IR executives in Canada, who I've known for nearly a couple of decades now.
The interaction with Salisha and what she will be able to help us or how she will be able to help us, I'm pretty very confident about it. Felipe, do you want to stop sharing your screen so people can have a full view of the team and Salisha as well? For those of you who have been following the company for several years, you will remember the different investor relations professionals we had. To name a couple, we had Jud Richardson, who left as an analyst from Cormark to join us as VP Corporate Development for a few years. We did an amazing job.
We had Jarett Anderson, who equally did a very good job until we had to cut costs in 2012 when there was another crisis we faced with the President of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff , making a lot of nice stuff or stupid stuff, in addition to the craziness of cannabis stocks in Canada, which you all might remember how it already sucked all the interest from resources for several years. Some people might argue until nowadays it hasn't gone back to what it was before that. We never had a Toronto-based investor relations professional since 2012. I'm very pleased to have now Salisha helping us, who has a ton of experience. I'll allow her to talk a little bit about herself in a minute.
The way I see it is if those analysts are correct and if indeed the great Brazilian agricultural crisis might be coming to an end, when you look at the potential of what we can generate without any additional CapEx investment or without any additional hiring or increase in costs, what the sort of level of revenues we might be able to achieve, we believe it's very important if as many market participants as possible are fully aware of what's going on.
If as many market participants are fully aware of the cycles we went through, fully aware of what happened from 2022 at least until now, the stage of consolidation, what were the crises, what were the triggers, why it wasn't a Verde AgriTech issue, why it was a market issue, and above all, why we believe that as the great Brazilian agricultural crisis comes to an end, why we believe we will be one of the strongest companies coming out of it with a strong base of customers, with a phenomenal portfolio of low-carbon specialty products, and above all, with a very large production facility capable of jointly getting to three million tons per year and achieving a very significant EPS providing we can carry on developing the market.
We believe it's very important that those news don't fall as a surprise to the market once the cycle resumes and things start recovering again. We want people to be aware of it and we don't want it to be a surprise. That's the key mission Salisha will have, making sure as many people as expect. It's a great pleasure, Salisha, to have you on the team. We're very excited and I'll allow you to introduce yourself to our co-owners. Thank you.
Yes, thank you and thank you for the introduction. It's a pleasure to be working with Verde and the executive team and hopefully down the road I'll have an opportunity as I get up to speed and start interacting with shareholders directly. A little bit about myself and my team. I spent nearly two decades focusing on resources. Small cap is my origin within the space and this is my sweet spot. I do think Verde is uniquely positioned, as Cristiano mentioned, not dependent on the markets to raise funds, which is unique in this market today. I think as the market turns, we're going to be seeing a different profile for the company. I've worked both in the U.K., and in the U.S., markets, so I think our reach will be great as we roll out our IR strategy.
I really look forward to seeing our shareholders continue to follow the story and reach out to us and engage with us. You're going to be seeing us be a little bit more visible out there and we want to hear from you. We want to know what your concerns are and we want to know how to communicate the key points that you're looking for. I think we're doing a good job, but there's always room to elevate and that's what we're here for. That's what I'd like to say. Looking forward to connecting with you as we continue on.
Thank you. Thank you, Salisha. One thing you will learn now is that our investor calls have been compared to a former Cuban dictator who was famous for hosting very long, very long speeches. It won't be a speech because I'm going to be answering questions, but every Q&A, I do my best to try to address every single question we receive, which has resulted in some of those calls lasting up to, I think our record was close to three hours or something like that. Starting with the questions, if you feel like I didn't answer your question and you want to go back and complain and repost your question, I'll go over it again. See it as a dialogue and let's start. The first question here is about enhanced rock weathering. Enhanced rock weathering is an issue where the science is evolving.
You see the market participants in this space. You see the certifiers like Puro, for example, we're part of a working group by Puro, NASDAQ, that's trying to come up with the standards and it's evolving. Even Puro is trying to figure out how they're going to be measuring carbon and be able to issue carbon credits. It's not easy and it's evolving and we won't speculate. Once we have something material, not just from ourselves, but also from the market itself, we will come back and make an announcement. In terms of a head of enhanced rock weathering, we haven't hired one yet. We had some good interviews and it's something we're looking at in a lot of detail. The other comment here from the question is a thorough update.
We won't make a thorough update until there's something material and a lot of it is beyond our control, unfortunately, at this stage. The other question here is about the status of OBI and then talks about OBI, of course, our spin-off. Then we have Meteoric, to mention about Meteoric, which is another relevant player that raised a bunch of money alongside all the companies that have also raised money and about brokers and everything else. The status on OBI, I will defer to the correct forum. I know plenty of you are also shareholders in OBI, but I think because now it's a Verde AgriTech call, we won't be able to steal time to talk about OBI, but if there's any shareholder here who wants more detail on OBI, please do reach out and we can go in detail.
What I can comment, because Verde is bang in the middle of that very exciting cluster of rare earths, is that there is a lot of interest, of course, in rare earths. I think people are realizing how fast we're going to have robots, or we already have plenty of them, but how much faster we're going to have humanoid robots and drones and how warfares will rely on the robots and how everything and how all of that is dependent on magnets. You don't have magnets without your magnetic rare earths oxides. I watched this weekend a film called The Boy Who Haunts the Wind. Very good film to watch with the family. It's very interesting, without spoiling, but you see in that film the importance of magnets to the world back then, and nowadays it's just going to carry on.
What I can say before I move on to the other question is that Verde AgriTech has a bunch of concessions, dozens of concessions in that cluster. It's true, it did a spin-out of some concessions with rare earths, but it's a very prospective region for rare earths. The other question here, there was no update on the order book for H2. Have the sales team lost its pace and/or have there been cancellations? There hasn't been any cancellations of placed orders. I think that was the problem of putting that update in terms of being very optimistic about H2. At the moment we stopped giving those updates, people were going to question the way you're very brightly here doing. There was nothing, I think we had said enough in terms of us seeing market improvements for the second half of the year.
We still believe and we're still working for an improvement during the second half of this year and hopefully beyond. A question here by ChatGPT. Brazilian ag sector recovery could take could be several years off, if not longer, due to prolonged debt repayments and exorbitant borrowing costs. How can Verde grow its sales in such a terrible market? I love the fact you're using GPT. Funny enough, I was having a call with a consultant right now about GPT. I think GPT really, you need to understand two things, or AI, you need to understand two things. The first one, which model are you using?
Are you using the free version, which frankly isn't much better than just doing a Google search, or are you using the $20 version, which is meh, or if you're really serious about AI, you should do what I'm doing and what Verde is doing, at least with myself, which is go for the $200 per month version. What you get from reasoning capability is absolutely amazing what has been created. I won't go in detail with this business opportunity we're pursuing right now for Verde AgriTech, but I can tell you the ROI on this thing can be just millions of AIs of what came up from some hard work with GPT this weekend. It's very exciting, but it's really about the dialogue. It's really about the prompt. There's no like AI. I like to say that AI isn't independent from you.
You can't, oh, I know, I checked with AI because of this conference, because of this interaction in terms of prompts and how it evolves and how it criticizes and has a follow-up. It really, really, really depends. It also depends whether you're using the reasoning ones and even the reasoning ones, how you're using it. If you do a scenario analysis, it can take a long time. When you look at cycles for agriculture and even look at short term, we've seen and we've all seen how fast it can recover. There's an article I'm actually going to write as well. I should post this in the coming weeks. There's a very interesting scientific paper which was published a few years ago that looked at how you have accidents in potash mine with a certain frequency.
I want to revisit, of course, with GPT this article and try to understand and publish something about whether or not there's another one due at any time. There's a lot. As a company, the only thing we can do, as the stoics would be proud of us, is to focus on what we can control. What we can control is listening to our customers, having the best relationship we can possibly have with them, delivering the best products that we can possibly deliver. That's where our energy really is. In that regard, GPT has been phenomenal, absolutely phenomenal. For example, you guys talk about AI getting me very excited. For example, and that's one of the things we got with Salisha.
Salisha, when she was joining, I said, okay, Salisha, the condition for you to join, you're going to have to subscribe yourself to the $200 per month version and start using it on everything you do from now on. Going back to just one example, for those of you who are more familiar with Verde AgriTech and what we're doing, you know that one of the big advantages we have in our project is the fact that if you're a farmer in Brazil and if you grow corn and soybeans, it's usually soybeans and then corn, with our product, you can apply just once. You can apply potash just once. That will supply enough nutrients for both soybeans and corn. That's something we've been very verbal. We talk to the farmers and everything else. One thing GPT really helped us do comes now.
There was a lot of interactions, exchanges with it, which is, how can we make it even better for farmers? I'm here talking about using the, for those of you who are familiar, I'm talking here about using Pi, Pro, and either deep thinking or deep research, or now there is a thinking option as well where he thinks even further. What he came up with, which is more important, is in Brazil, it's very common for farmers to, when they're planting, to apply phosphate via MAP while they're planting, which is a box. You have a box in your machine that will have seeds. You have another box in your machine which will have MAP. It's very common for those farmers to apply both.
While you're planting, you're applying those, which we knew that the performance of the equipment wouldn't be as material because of that, but we never really were able to quantify it. With GPT, after all those discussions, it came up, by adding the phosphate to our product and allowing farmers only to have seeds when they're planting, the gains GPT calculated in productivity for equipment for farmers is astronomical. It's so advantageous once you take it out. He came up with a list of equipments which are customized only for planting when you don't need to have your MAP box where you're applying that at the same time. The gains are material.
The reason planting is so important, if you watch the film, The Boy Who Haunts the Wind, with the family, kids, especially it's a good one for kids as well to see a different reality, different perspective, you will see how the planting, the planting is very important. You will see how in the film he's waiting for a certain level of humidity before he can start planting. That's why this is so beautiful, so phenomenal, because by moving MAP, as soon as there's humidity, you can go really fast and get planting done, which enlarges your growth, your window, and makes it easier for you to come up with a second crop, which in Brazil is either corn or cotton, and gives more time for the other crop as well to reach full productivity.
I don't know why I started talking so much about it, but I just got really excited, and I hope that was informative for everyone else. Another question here about carbon. I think I went over it. You know, once we have something material, talks about some research, people saying they can do that in a certain time horizon. Yeah, you know, it depends then on the methodologies. It depends on the interpretation of data. It depends on a number of factors. I think the bottom line is, if even Puro and NASDAQ hasn't fully validated the methodology yet, which they will be relying on to issue carbon credits, how can anyone say for sure that they can come up with whatever is needed in 250 days? This is really evolving.
There's no doubt there's a lot of outfits trying to make money from different ways, but we're doing our best. We're doing our best there. There's one question here that talks about Manning's initial results. He did the tests. He came up with a potential for carbon capture. What I can say is that from a potential perspective, the number can be even higher because that was using an average for three billion tons of resources. If you use an average for, for example, what we're mining, that number is even greater than what we saw in the press release, but not material. It's not, I think it's just too speculative really to address this issue because the science isn't there yet, but we're doing our best.
The other question, you mentioned in the last call that there are available options to address the extremely high adherent credit to debt and the debt servicing challenge that Verde will face next April. Can you please tell us what specific options are available and the anticipated timeline for execution? Execution has started already, working hard, and we're always preparing for the worst and hoping for the best. As I said right at the beginning, we've been able really to focus on what matters the most. We're quite chilled about how to resolve or, you know, in all sorts of different scenarios. The other question, is there an avenue to improve accessibility to high potential buyers?
Specifically, are sales reps able to pitch to grower co-ops, dealer networks, or larger carbon quotient growers for where they can engage multiple line producers at once rather than the slow and expensive sales method of going farm to farm with little insight into customer fit? We do a lot, and we hope you're doing the best. If you want to share some ideas, which I think you might have some ideas, please, please, please send an email, reach out. I want to listen to your ideas here. In the U.S., there is rapid growth in product-based, carbon-based programs such as the Blue T eller Carbon program that combines the sale of biological inputs like microhydrogen nucleons. This model is opening new income streams.
There's a similar opportunity exploring, yeah, there's a company called Indigo in Brazil trying to do that with, it's a big American company with not as much success as one wished. It's something that is plausible. It's something that's plausible both from a carbon avoidance and a carbon reduction perspective, both from sucking from URW, but also from avoiding the amount of carbon that gets issued when you apply KCL. We've spoken to a bunch of people from the players, from the partners, but we haven't really had any material success in that regard. Likewise, I'm not aware of any farmer doing that in scale in Brazil, despite some very interesting programs, for example, hosted by Bayer and other multinational companies. There hasn't been anything meaningful, but something which most certainly is in our radar. Brazil is beginning to scale its next question.
Brazil is beginning to scale its traceable cotton ecosystem from field level tagging to retail rollout and green homes which position itself in this market. Does the company have a dedicated rep or focused team working to integrate K Forte into carbon transparency-focused supply chains, whether through partnerships with traceability platforms? No, no. We had one conversation with one executive who's behind the Brazilian exporter, but if you will have a look, Luisa, can you write down Almagrinos, see what they are? And if you have any other ideas, this is something certainly worth because to put more context here for more people. For example, in the European Union, in a few years, everything you buy here, like clothes-wise, will need to come up with the CO2, the carbon footprint.
This is an immediate gain we can offer to farmers because we have a much smaller footprint in comparison to KCL. This is something in our radar. One other thing we're doing, we're doing an important agronomic trial for soybeans and cotton as a system starting in a couple of months. That's something else important from an agronomic perspective. It's relevant. This is a, and it's a massive market, as you know. Something else which is quite interesting for any of you who has already been reading about microplastics is, of course, once you wear 100% cotton, how you minimize microplastics getting into your body. I think natural fiber, organic, I think will be a growing market. Even if there's even need to grow, you know, just the fact that we can get into it with carbon is big on its own. Next slide.
Over a year ago, we did the press release about the biofuel industry with a reduction. We're still pursuing. One thing we're doing, I did this cost reduction I've mentioned, and I allocated that money to do even more trials, agronomic trials. We're going to be starting three, four agronomic trials with some of the main consultants in sugarcane. We already, of course, have some customers. It is a sector that we're looking at. The benefit you have both from sugarcane and eucalyptus, those are very large corporate growers that very quickly can turn our luck around. That can be no doubt explosive in terms of growth, and we are fully aware of that. Another one. With growing evidence that soil-based MRV had been overestimating ERW carbon removal. That's right.
As Verde AgriTech updates protocol to align with newer standards like soil water gas phase measurements, there's a bunch we're doing a lot. I guess we can say yes. Since we've seen carbon bias more cautious towards ERW projects, correct. As founders like Milky Wine and our only fund research focus ERW project knowledge program, if adjusted MRV sense can accurately measure sequestration, is Verde adapting its ERW program to stay competitive for early stage carbon funding. Yeah, that's exactly, exactly very well put what's going on and why we think it's not material yet to be talking too much about it. I think some of the challenges are in the question there.
Since K- Forte's low potassium concentration requires a six-fold higher application rate compared to KCL, has a company run trials blending the product with various potassium solubilizing microbeads to enhance nutrient availability and reduce the required application volume in order to reduce delivery economics. We are actually doing some trials. We're going to be starting a bunch of trials where we're going to be trying to do that a curve, and hopefully we're going to be able to show how you can reduce applications. We're not just looking at K- Forte alone, but we're looking at the full-on combination. One thing, those of you who like GPT, use PI Pro, use the thinking model if you don't have PI Pro, but talk to it about how elemental sulfur added to our product increases the availability of all nutrients and brings an overall benefit.
You need to work out on the prompt. Also do a prompt on when we combine our product to different phosphate sources, for example, MAP, where the synergy comes from and what the benefits are. There'll be a lot of interesting insights there. Of course, we have the insights, we have the science. What we're doing now is with this phenomenal tool, we're doing the actual field trials to bring the hard field evidence for farmers. We're doing the regressions, we're doing the four points, and we're looking at 50, 100, 50, 75. Anyway, the percentage, so we can draw the curve and look at what the dosage looks like or if there's going to be any sort of reduction, especially when we put sulfur and phosphate. In addition to that, yes, we add the microbes, as you know, when you have similar trials going on there.
Next question, with customers to prove and quantify very superior benefits and cost savings, which is the leading training for breakthroughs in strategy where the sticking points are often found. The sticking point is credit. Farmers aren't really flexible at the moment to buy what they want to buy. They're buying what they can get credit to buy. That's where there has been the big problem with the great Brazilian agriculture crisis. Made superior benefits, cost savings, leading enemy for me for breakthroughs in strategy where the sticking points are for farmers getting large scale permits. I think I've shared this. They continue ongoing direct expense dialogue a ton. Yes, up to 20%. Rather than just second guessing experimentation, narrowing down on farms personally openly from direct asking a question or they need to be offered and proven. Yes, yes, yes. The answer here, Mark, is yes to those questions.
We're doing our best. We're doing our best. I'm very confident as well with the new team and how we've specialized our teams as well. As you know, we have a team that only does only prospects, a team that does sales, and we have this customer success team that looks after the whole relationship and growing this relationship. There's a fully equipped team just doing that. Could potentially, or is Verde considering or making significant moves or making meaningful contact and dialogue with the biofuel industry and long-haul couriers on both supplying and partnering with their business on developing unused degraded pasture with various added capture qualities, especially in context of potential spy weights on couriers and they need a long high volume weight conversion presumably inhibited on many fronts and many true electric but seek interest in developing low carbon developments for their own business opportunities.
What are the added businesses that enhanced rock weathering carbon offsets for all involved in the green VEGs future on carbon figures regarding freight? The answer is yes, and there's of course the pushback in terms of methodology to quantify inorganic soil or carbon being captured, but we have those dialogues also going on. Unfortunately, it seems Amazon Potash is going forward as it currently stands, and I felt the company's position was a little innocently naive in feeling this was unlikely to find a way forward. Will VHG be at least cautiously lightly monitoring the potential threat going forward? It's not to become surprised, out of the blue, by any strategy we use to break any major success of imported. Okay, I still don't think this will ever be funded and become a mine.
Even if it does, the level of production there is a fraction of what Brazil consumes. It's a tiny, tiny fraction of what Brazil needs. Even if it scales up massively, it's not going to make it. Let's just remember, let's just pause here. Luisa, can you share the screen of the investor? Luisa, can you hear me?
Yes, I can.
Can you please share the screen of the investor deck, the slide where we have that financial model? As I would like to remind you, our presentation contains forward-looking statements. Everything should be read in conjunction with our National Instrument 43-101 filed reports, as it contains in all the forward-looking statements, all the legal work, and everything else. If we go to the page where there's a financial model, which looks at what economics would look like when we can hit full utilization of our existing production facilities. Once we can get to 100% of production capacity, and by hitting 100% of production capacity, all we need to sell is for about 3% of the current market. 3% of the current market, that grows about 3% per year. We won't even splice anyone. It's purely the market growth.
If we can get to that 3% of market share, you can see what happens to our economics if you go on the deck and share the presentation. Luisa, I was giving you lots of time talking about it. I hope it was going to be on the screen by now. What you will see as an assumption from that deck, which hopefully will be very soon on the screen, it looks.
Sorry, I had a problem.
No worries, no worries. We will look at a potash price, which is much lower than current potash prices in that assumption. Much lower potash prices. You will see on that slide what sort of market share, you know, weighted average we're looking at. We're not really doing that model looking to sell just in adjacent to our operation. We're looking at a big radius of just short of 1,000 km so we can spread the product. Very importantly, the capital expenditure to get to that number is nothing. There's no CapEx required. Even the additional investment required in terms of sales team or marketing, it's non-material. We don't need much more.
If you just look at some of the stuff that we're working on, just some of the relationships some of our customer success team has with some of those corporate players where we're doing the trials, working with consultants, everything else, just that alone can generate that sort of number, which I was hoping would be on the screen when I finished saying that, and it's not. While you share the screen, let me carry on to the other question here, which has gone all the way up to the top. Next question, could potentially Verde give a more serious thought and forward-look analysis for Brazilian listing for the company? We've looked at the Brazilian market. I guess we know the Brazilian Bovespa relatively well. It's not that liquid, you know, especially for small caps. If you're in the index, then it makes a big difference.
If you're a small cap, it's not that great. The other problem you currently have in Brazil, you can see, for example, Agro Galaxy, one of the fertilizer distributors in Brazil that had serious financial troubles, had to restructure its debt. A lot of investors in Brazil lost a lot of money out of debt. There was a lot of dilution as a result of their troubles. A lot of investors are a bit wary at the moment of Brazil. It's short term. It's not a great market. Going back here, I can see Luis is sharing his screen. You can all see after we went through the forward-looking statements, you can all see this potential economics at fully installed production capacity. You can see up an EPS of about $0.90, earnings per share of about $0.90.
If we can deliver what we're focused on, that's what the team's focused on. That's what we are working very hard to achieve, is getting to that $0.90. It's getting to that full plant usage. You can see the weighted average market share there of about 4%. 3% would be of the total market, but you can see how we've spread it. Of course, that has an impact on the overall costs. This is what I get everyone in the company, including myself, focused on and going to bed and thinking about how to get that, how to work harder to get there as fast as possible. This is it, you know. More importantly, I have no reason to suspect why or to think why this shouldn't be within our control. This has to be within our control.
As a team, as a sales team, as a market team, it has to be within our control. We have to carry on working hard and getting towards that full plant utilization and hopefully coming up with those numbers as soon as possible. Anything that really changes the focus from us for delivering that is, I think, energy that we're wasting. I think that is where the energy is, that is where the conversations are with our sales team. That's where our priority is. That's where 100% of our priority is right now. It's so easy to focus, as Steve Jobs likes to say, you know, you're really only focusing on when we stop doing stuff you would love to be doing alongside. There's a lot of stuff we would love to be doing alongside what we're doing and thinking and looking at.
This is, and this only depends on us. That 90% EPS, that's what we're pursuing. That's the number in front of everyone in the company, you know, right now. Going back to the questions, thanks, thanks, Luisa. We go back to the Q&A, which is phenomenal because every time we go back, it goes all the way to the top again. The listing, there's another question. Do you have any mentors to your occasion to meet who are successfully veterans of mining companies that may be able to give you thought or insight into your own strategies having navigated through many market cycles and changing world over many decades? Experience in the form perspective, obviously, always useful to learn to develop and perhaps someone who can help and relate to your stress and situation. That's a very good one. Thank you for that. I'm part of an organization called YPO.
Have a look on the Internet, YPO, but it's a phenomenal organization and it's all about sharing your challenges. I won't go into much detail. The website will have plenty. If you're interested, I can see, but it's all about what you wrote in this question. I'm very lucky to have this support network. Thank you for your comment there. It was a good one. Going back, this network addresses not just the mine issues, but the financial issues, the government relationship issues, the being a public company issue. All of those are the personal impact it has. It's a phenomenal organization, ypo.org. If anyone in the call, if you don't watch on YouTube, is interested in knowing more, please do reach out and I can collaborate. It was introduced to me by one of our shareholders out of California. He told me it was going to change my life.
That was a few years ago and it has truly changed my life. It's a phenomenal, absolutely phenomenal organization. Next one, Verde has put a lot of money into R&D. Given the current financials, managing what, when, and necessity and need, being given a more direct calculated model, the tension calculated opportunity with an eye for cutting costs and concentrating time and resource, rather than rolling forward with everything at once on all fronts. Completely agree. It's all about what we've just spoken now in terms of focusing and 100% agree. Next one, with the introduction of Brazil's regulated carbon market and the Plano Clima initiative promoting low carbon ag and supply chain efficiency, Brazil appears to be entering a new phase of climate governance. How are you positioned in the section of policy and implementation? Is this shift a near-term opportunity? I don't think it's a near-term opportunity.
We're not seeing anything concrete going on with farmers or any change. I think it's a step in the right direction, but nothing material has happened. We're certainly monitoring and as it evolves and matures, hopefully, we will benefit from that. Next question. The rare earths market has seen a resurgence of investor interest and liquidity flow. What's the status of completing oversharing issues to holders and what is the timeline for an IPO? The share issuance to holders has taken place. Every Verde AgriTech shareholder who was a shareholder on, I guess, Januar, which was a record date, has an entitlement to shares in OBI. You should reach out to your broker. Your broker has already received a bulletin by CDS, the Canadian Depository System, covering that. Your broker will have to contact the registrar for OBI in Australia called Automic.
The broker has a bulletin, has all of that in writing, came officially from the Canadian Securities to them. He will be able to allocate those shares to you. This is all taking place. In terms of timeline and strategy discussions for OBI, I think we need to have a designated forum for OBI to talk about. Next question. Luisa, there's lots of interesting startups and names mentioned in those questions. Can you please write all of them down at the links so we can look into detail? There's another one here called Syntopa, proving that microbes can significantly enhance silicon mineral dissolution, accelerating the weathering rate. Let's have a look at what they're doing with. We have our Bio Revolution. We have our Bacillus aryabhattai, Bacillus megaterium . We're going to be adding other microbes as well. Let's see what else they have.
Next question, how are things moving regarding OBI Nautica? As I said, yes, it's exciting. In terms of OBI, we can talk that in another forum, reach out and we can address that. How rigorously with your own human PhD scientists are you reviewing AI-generated research? You show no causal errors of machine understanding. That's a good one. We're probably responding to the fact we've reduced three of the 10 we have that were more like desktop, and they were more like doing reports and validating statistics treatments. This is something we have someone else, which is this intern we hired to replace, who is going through everything and cross-checking, cross-validating to make sure there's no colossal errors. When you use the free, cheaper models, there's a lot of that. Once you migrate to what we have now, for example, an old O5 Pro, it goes down a lot.
It's still not zero error, but it goes down significantly. We try to, within the broader team, make sure anything going out to any assumption gets properly reviewed. For example, I spoke a little bit earlier about this phenomenal opportunity. There's an opportunity that AI has helped us to uncover. It's not the planting one, it's something else. I was talking just before this call began, I was talking to this consultant who has been helping us and selling some, and he has never used AI. I did a lot, you know, I was bringing all of that to him. Of course, he's an expert. He's a technical guy, a great expert. I asked him, I shared the first, the first good piece of work that was done after probably 20 hours of work in this thing. I told him, I want you to go through, comb everything there.
I want you to tell me what's correct, what you're not sure about and you're going to research, and what you know is not accurate. We don't take it, we don't go blindly on in terms of the deliverables of AI. There's no doubt it's amazing to see how it has improved since it began a couple of years ago. As Sam likes to say, you know, what you're using today is the worst AI you're ever going to use, because tomorrow it's just going to get better. On a practical side, I sent several questions by the website to our form and never received any answer. That's not very professional in my honest opinion. Thanks for your feedback. I will hope with Salisha, we can now review that and make sure that doesn't happen again.
If there's any of the questions you sent and haven't been answered yet, Gabriel, please send it again, and we will address it. Has there been any meaningful process on establishing clearly what is stopping farmers and addressing successfully or progressing forward with solutions with many of the most receptive to Verd 's products in trying them or not committing to converting at large scale or completely and continually each application over KCR? You have talked to the teams working more closely and scientifically with customers to prove and quantify Verde' s security benefits and cost savings. Is this leading to any meaningful breakthroughs in strategy or where the sticking points are for farmers forgetting large-scale permanent conversion commitments or committing some of them coming if farmers' certain requests are met?
Is there continuing ongoing direct and explicit dialogue rather than just second-guessing experimentation, narrowing down with farmers personally openly and from direct asking of requests? I will spend a little bit longer answering this question. I'll try to unfold and go into more detail. Please feel free to send a follow-up question. There are several questions here. There isn't one reason, okay? If you're a farmer, you use our product and you don't carry on using it, there isn't just one reason where that was the trigger. There are several reasons. We have mapped them, and we try to address all of them, and we're trying to get better at addressing all of them. I won't be exhaustive in terms of listing the reasons, but I will give a few examples here. I hope by giving those examples, I can also answer the other questions which you asked here, Mark.
The answer would be credit. We can't always be as aggressive in terms of providing credit as some of our competitors. Lots of the reasons are because sometimes they've already done a barter, or that collateral is committed, or the rates which are offering are more aggressive. That still happens. Another reason is farmers in Brazil, or they have a lot of attention, of course, you have lots of salespeople going on. Sometimes we just clearly still lose a sale because our relationship wasn't as strong as it should be. It's getting better, but it's still a reason. There's a third reason, which is sometimes farmers, they expected a material improvement by switching from KCL to our product, and they didn't necessarily see it because there weren't enough people or farmers following it up, which is also what, but from our technical team.
That's why we now have this customer success team that's really following closely every farmer or every larger farmer who's using our product and ensuring on a continuous basis the improvement it is having. The fourth reason is that depending on the situation, our product will resolve some issues which you have with KCL, but it won't resolve others. For example, someone said the product is less concentrated than KCL, so he has to apply more. Sometimes we fail to fill the other benefits we have when, for example, we combine other nutrients and create new materials out of our product. In those research protocols I've mentioned, we are really focusing on how using the new generation of products we have with added nutrients, how you can reduce the number of applications. What I want to do is just ask the marketing team to do that in Portuguese.
It's nearly ready, so we can have that translated as well, and we can circulate that. I want to show how when we use our new product, Ussu, how we can reduce the number of applications from seven down to four, the number of times a farmer needs to go in the field and apply something. It comes down from seven down to four. In terms of eucalyptus, how it can go down to three, four, down to one. I want something in terms of that sort of operational benefit written both in Portuguese to our blog, then also let's get it translated, and then we can share that sort of... This is something we're showing, we're doing the ground trials, and it's a construction, especially for the farmers who use the product, they're happy with the result, but they say, hey, you know, what else?
The other one I want you to do, Lisa, can you hear me over all of that?
Yes, I can.
Okay. The other one I want is with coffee. Coffee, especially with Ussu and the phenomenal results we have as well. I think that article is already published, but it shows another example where instead of making like three applications, you're cutting it down just to one application of potash and how we make it easy for the farmer. This is something which takes time, you need to talk, but we'll get there, we'll get there. That's why when I talk about those economics and getting to a $0.90 EPS, that's why I like to say it has to be within our control, has to be within our control of our team, has to be within our control as management.
All we need to do is to carry on working as effectively as possible, carry on, of course, look for the situations where we can have bigger volumes coming out of some developments, which is what we're doing out of sugarcane, for example, out of eucalyptus. Hopefully we will get there. Hopefully when we get there, Salisha will have done a lot to prepare the market for that. Hopefully the great Brazilian agricultural crisis is coming to an end, and we should all go back to the good old glory where we should be. Could potentially or is Verde considering or making significant moves or making meaningful contact and dialogue with the biofuel industry and long haul. We've answered this one. I just want to talk again. I'm starting from the bottom now. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that Verde owns 53,000 hectares of land in Brazil.
That's wrong. That's exploration concessions. That's not actual land. Does it exist in a possibility of finding more rare earths outside of the land that was spun off? Yes, yes, yes. It's highly prospective. Anyone who looks at the geological maps, anyone, you know, I don't need to fool anyone. The rest of the concessions Verde AgriTech has are extremely prospective for rare earths, no doubt about that. If so, how much of the 52,000 hectares might that potentially apply? I don't know, but it's something we will have a look into. Potentially sample, and if we get results, we can report. How many hectares does Verde own or control, and is there any possibility of rare earths of them outside of OBI? Yes, as an answer we have. Do you vigorously analyze and review any AI research with human PhDs to ensure the catastrophe?
Yes, that's the answer we review. I think we finished. We finished all the 36 questions. I think Salisha, because it was your first day, people went easy on you. Next quarter, there'll probably be more questions. As I said right at the beginning of this call, it's a great pleasure to be the co-owner of this company alongside all of our shareholders, everyone in this call. If you're watching this on YouTube and you think anyone else should be listening to this, should know more about the company, please do not hesitate to like this video and to share it with other people. Thank you very much. I look forward to seeing you again, talking to you again throughout the next few months, but certainly in our next quarterly results call. Bye-bye.