Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to BluMetric Environmental Inc. Fiscal Year 2026 quarter 1 conference call. At this time, all lines are in listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. If at any time during this call you require immediate assistance, please press star zero for the operator. This call is being recorded on Thursday, February 26, 2026. I would now like to turn the conference over to Brandon Chow. Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator. Welcome everyone to BluMetric Environmental's quarterly and annual earnings conference call. This call will cover BluMetric's financial and operating results for the 2026 first fiscal quarter ended December 31, 2025. Following our prepared remarks, we will open the conference call to a Q&A session. Our call today will be led by Scott MacFabe, BluMetric's CEO, and Dan Hilton, the company's CFO. Before we begin with our forward remarks, I would like to remind everyone that some of the statements on this conference call may be forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements may include, but are not necessarily limited to, financial projections or other statements of the company's plans, risks, objectives, expectations, or intentions. These matters involve certain risks and uncertainties.
The company's actual results may differ significantly from those projected or suggested in any forward-looking statements due to a variety of factors, which are discussed in detail in our regulatory filings. There may also be references to certain non-IFRS measures such as EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA, backlog, working capital, free cash flow, and net cash. These non-IFRS measures are not recognized measures under International Financial Reporting Standards and do not have a standardized meaning prescribed by IFRS and are therefore unlikely to be compatible to similar measures presented by other companies. Please see our disclosures for further information and reconciliations of these non-IFRS measures. I will now hand the call over to Scott MacFabe. Please go ahead, Scott.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is the operator. I apologize, there will be a slight delay in today's conference call. Please hold, the conference will resume momentarily. Until that time, you will hear or you will remain on music hold. Thank you for your patience. Please go ahead.
Hello. Sorry, everybody. Looks like we were cut off. Hopefully, you can hear us okay. Brandon, apologies. Hello?
Yeah, no worries. Go ahead, Scott.
Okay, sorry about that, everybody. Just immediately got cut off. Thank you, Brandon. Welcome everybody to our first fiscal quarter, 2026 earnings call for BluMetric Environmental. Appreciate all of you having the time to join us in today's conference call, as per usual, I'll start off by providing an overview of the quarter, and Dan will go into more detail on the financial results. Firstly, we'd like to start off by giving those who are new to the story a reminder of who we are. BluMetric creates a better environment for business. What does that mean? Well, BluMetric is a full-service water technology and environmental engineering firm. We design, fabricate, and deliver sustainable solutions to complex water and environmental challenges and have a rich history that spans over 50 years.
We've evolved into a specialized integrator of environmental solutions in the fields of water, wastewater treatment, and professional environmental services for the natural and built environment. We aspire to be the environmental solutions and WaterTech company of choice globally. Now, let's discuss this quarter and first fiscal quarter for in more detail. The first fiscal quarter saw a significant increase in revenues of 45%, due primarily to the acquisition of DS Consultants, the production and delivery of WaterTech Canada's ASUWPS unit to Rheinmetall, and higher activity in our mining market. Note that the acquisition of DS Consultants closed on December tenth, and we did not see a full contribution from them.
Revenue growth was offset by a slight decrease from WaterTech USA, also known as Gemini Water, who's transitioning to higher volume, smaller projects after completing the flagship St. Kitts Bird Rock facility.
We're still actively in discussions with larger scale municipal-like projects. The sweet spot for Gemini Water has historically been on smaller to medium-sized projects, which are more numerous. We're happy with how we started the fiscal year so far, considering it was a record revenue quarter before we took into full consideration our largest acquisition to date, DS Consultants. We believe we're at another milestone as we see the key investments we've made in people, sales, and production facilities over the last year to help drive growth. In terms of our markets, the first fiscal quarter saw an impressive 225% year-over-year increase in revenues for our military market, mainly due to the delivery and production of Rheinmetall systems, which we expect to fully complete and deliver by the end of the third quarter of this year.
An important development in the industry was the announcement of Canada's Defence Industrial Strategy, which we believe presents a unique opportunity for BluMetric. There appears to be significantly expansion opportunities for small and medium-sized Canadian defense and dual use firms, which we likely fall into. Our WaterTech systems have a strong history being used by the Canadian military and are also unique in their ability to offer dual use for civilian deployments. Our mining market saw strength as the increasing mining activity in response to better unit economics from higher commodity prices. We expect the momentum to continue in mining throughout the fiscal year. I'm also happy to report that our professional services division has recovered to more normalized utilization levels, showing significant improvements from previous quarters.
If you recall, we had run into significantly lower utilization with our professional services division last fiscal year, which resulted in both lower revenues and higher relative costs for the segment. By retaining our talent, we have ourselves up to recover things and are back, and as evidenced by the fiscal quarter. I want to leave off reminding everyone of the acquisition of DS Consultants, who is our largest acquisition to date. It will be an important piece in augmenting our overall professional services division in Canada. We're looking forward to seeing the full benefit in the second quarter of 2026 and onward. They strongly complement what it is that we do in the built environment, improve our presence and capabilities in the Greater Toronto area.
Similar to Gemini Water, our goal is to provide the resources and support to help DS Consultants thrive and achieve its targeted growth goals, including progress annual EBITDA targets of CAD 4 million, CAD 5 million, and CAD 6 million over the next three years. Professional services has always been central to BluMetric's history and long-term success. It's a business which has historically been very profitable and helped fund our higher growth water initiatives. Overall, we had a strong start to the year and hope to carry the momentum into the remaining quarters. Our team has been working hard to lay the foundation for a solid 2026, and we expect that with our diversified markets approach, along with DS Consultants, we'll be able to achieve a balance of revenues between professional services and WaterTech.
We have a pathway to achieving our goal of being a CAD 100 million annual revenue plus company. Beyond this, we're contingent to our continued execution and making sure that we strive for excellence across all major functions. We're a unique company with unique water technologies. This, combined with talented and committed people, creates a flywheel for us to become a larger and more dominant player in our markets. I'd like now to hand it over to Dan for a more detailed overview of the financials. Please go ahead, Dan.
Thank you, Scott. Today, I'll be presenting BluMetric's 2026 first fiscal quarter results in more detail. Revenue for the 2026 first fiscal quarter was CAD 20.3 million, compared to CAD 14 million in the prior year. As Scott mentioned, the revenues for both periods increased primarily due to the acquisition of DS Consultants, who contributed CAD 1.5 million in revenues this quarter, along with the delivery of the Rheinmetall units and a stronger mining market activity. It should be noted that DS Consultants played an exciting but small role in terms of its impact in the period. DS was only part of the BluMetric family for 20 days in the period, of which the holidays consumed nearly a week.
We are excited to see this line of our business contribute, as it has historically achieved annualized EBITDA in excess of 10%, their targets are in line with past results. As noted in the acquisition, note 4 in our quarterly financials, had DS been with BluMetric for the entire quarter, their revenue impact would have been CAD 5.7 million, and impact to EBITDA would have been CAD 550,000. Across the company's key markets for the first fiscal quarter, the commercial and industrial markets saw modest revenue growth due to DS Consultants, which is mainly classified under this market. As Scott mentioned previously, this market was offset by a slightly lower revenue from WaterTech USA as they make their transition from their flagship St. Kitts project to their traditional water and wastewater systems.
Our government market remains a stable pillar with a slight increase in revenue. Our military market saw significant growth of 225% due to the Rheinmetall contract. We expect to complete manufacturing and all deliveries by the end of this fiscal Q3. Lastly, our mining market is solid, with a 72% revenue increase as we take advantage of the broader mining cycle with higher metal prices. Our gross margin for the fiscal quarter was 28%, compared to 33% for the prior fiscal year. The decrease in gross margin for the fiscal year is mainly attributable to an increase in material and subcontractor costs within our WaterTech segment. Our professional services segment remained consistent in gross margin. On a consolidated basis, we're within our target range.
Operating expenses, net of depreciation and amortization, increased by CAD 1.8 million to CAD 5.2 million compared to the prior year. The increase is driven by operating expenses related primarily to DS Consultants in the amount of CAD 527,000, along with increased general corporate overhead relating to professional fees and non-cash share-based compensation. Operating expenses also included one-time fees associated with the acquisition of DS Consultants, the concurrent financing, and CAD 240,000 worth of workforce restructuring costs. These one-time transactions and restructuring costs equated to approximately CAD 573,000 in the fiscal quarter. Adjusted EBITDA for the fiscal quarter increased from last quarter to CAD 0.9 million, compared to CAD 1.3 million for the prior period. The prior year, sorry. The decrease in adjusted EBITDA is primarily attributable to higher operating expenses and lower gross margin.
A net loss of CAD 67,000 was reported for the fiscal quarter, compared to net earnings of CAD 378,000 in the prior year. I'd like to remind everyone that the professional services experiences seasonality, with lower revenues in the winter months, our Q1 and Q2. During Q1, the professional services segment accounted for 50% of the earnings before administrative costs, and we are expecting similar contributions in Q2 from this segment and then stronger performance in Q3 and Q4. On December 31, 2025, BluMetric had a net cash balance of CAD 1.8 million, compared to a net cash balance of CAD 3.7 million at December 31, 2024. As at December 31, 2025, the company had approximately CAD 5.8 million in cash availability between its operating line and cash balances and is not bound by any debt covenants.
Accounts receivable are higher this period due to the acquisition of DS Consultants and the timing of some of the large billings related to our defense contract partner at the end of the period. This fiscal quarter gave us a strong start to the fiscal year, coming off the back of a transformative 2025. While there will always be challenges, we believe our diversified approach, along with operating in markets with significant tailwinds, position us well for our overall revenue growth and earnings goals. There's a lot to work toward this fiscal year, including the successful integration of DS Consultants, ensuring we capitalize on potential larger scale commitments in the military market, ride the stronger wave happening in mining, and keep our traction in the Caribbean with WaterTech USA.
We have the capabilities of becoming a significantly larger enterprise. We'll be working towards unlocking that potential in the coming quarters ahead as we continue to drive efficiency as we implement initiatives to strengthen our EBITDA. We are a world-class environmental consulting and water technologies firm, delivered by world-class people who do meaningful work every day. Water is ever scarcer. The environmental concerns of our clients continue to require our world-class assistance. I'd like to thank everyone for taking the time to allow us to present our results today. Now I'll hand it back over to Scott.
Thanks, Dan. That was a great update, and I echo the excitement surrounding the opportunities that lie ahead of us this year. At this point, we'll take questions from call participants, and we'll pass it back over to the operator.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question-and-answer session. Should you have a question, please press the star followed by 1 on your touch-tone phone. You will hear a prompt that your hand has been raised. Should you wish to decline from the polling process, please press the star followed by 2. If you are using a speakerphone, please lift the handset before pressing any keys. One moment, please, for our first question. For our first question, it comes from Steve Kammermayer of Clarus Securities. Please go ahead.
Hello, can you hear me?
Yeah, Steve, how are you? Good to hear from you.
Good, good. The first question on DS here. Now that you've had it for a few months, how comfortable are you guys now with the EBIT targets they've set for the next few years?
I think it's hard to gauge year 2 and year 3. Certainly, the target that's been set for 2026, they look to be comfortably in line to achieve that target. Last year, they realized about $3.8 million in EBITDA. We don't feel that $4 million is a stretch. I think for them, this year is about broadening their scope of services as retail housing slowed in the Toronto market a little bit. They're having a lot of success in doing that. And in fact, they have as many responses to proposals out this year as they did at the same time last year. They're pivoting well to larger municipal projects and things that are not reliant on the commercial real estate market. I think that will really set us up for growth in the long term.
Depending on when we start to see improvements in retail in Toronto, that will only fuel rapid growth because they'll already have now a broader platform upon which to grow. I think in addition to that, we are starting. In fact, they're in Ottawa today with our team, looking at cross-selling opportunities and the ability to expand into the Ottawa market, where the real estate market continues to be strong. I think they're very well-positioned for 2026. 2027 and 2028, there's no doubt they will continue to grow, but at what pace will be a little bit dependent upon the recovery of the retail space.
Okay, good. Maybe turning to the military. Good growth there on the Rheinmetall contract. You mentioned you should be through that through the end of Q3. You've mentioned in the past that there's the opportunity maybe to add additional units to that contract. Do you have any update on that?
Yeah, as of today, we haven't heard yet for another tranche. What we are hearing, though, is that there's an appetite for perhaps expansion into other areas within water for the military. From the standpoint of positioning ourselves to continuing to grow that part of our business, I think the opportunities are quite right. From the standpoint of the ASUWPS unit, it is a key piece of the Invest in Canada and growth in the military investments. We're also seeing others as larger that are starting to develop, that we need to really stay focused on as well, Steve.
Procurement right now within the military continues to be a bit challenging in that we know our clients want us to immediately act on what it is that we can provide them, while at the same time, the federal government is pushing hard on their own cuts. In terms of the speed to getting ink on new contracts, it's improved significantly, but we're still working with that dynamic and we don't want to overstate it. The pipeline for the work that we're doing, especially for Canada and the military, and is very, very strong. The other side of this, too, is when we always see these aspects of workflow within not just the professional services, but for within WaterTech.
We're leveraging a lot of our skill base, up here in Canada to many other projects all through the Caribbean. We do a lot of people sharing. We have invested in a design system that is very specific to what it is that we do. Now we've got everybody on that same system. We can do design work up here and share that with the work we do in the Caribbean and the U.S. That's all part of the integration, is to do what we can to smooth out those aspects of workflow and make sure everybody stays busy and profitable.
Okay, good. now that's great. Just maybe one more question, if I may. In the MD&A.
Sure.
You guys talked about, growing your fabrication facilities to take advantage of opportunities, Canada, the U.S., and the Caribbean. Do you have a sense of the size of expansion you're looking at? Would this be imminent or is this down the road, you're looking at this expansion?
I can talk to both aspects. In the United States, the market remains very strong. We just came off the St. Kitts project. We're using that as a showcase in May at the largest reverse osmosis conference, which is being held in Grand Cayman. I think that will give us an opportunity to really showcase what we did there and get more of these larger scale water facilities in place. You know, the advantage of building these big units, and these are 40-year assets, and we sign O&M contracts associated with them. It's pivotal to the long-term growth of our business that we land some of those contracts.
That being said, the Gemini solution that's been provided for water and wastewater has typically been at a smaller scale, but in much higher volume for private resorts that are run by, you know, private island owners like Disney and Carnival and so on. We continue to see massive opportunity there. The pipeline for Gemini has never been stronger than it is today with those smaller scale water facilities, and so we see that continuing to expand. In fact, we have a group from our Ottawa team going down to assist in August when they have a very challenging workflow period. The opportunity in the States, we have another 25,000 sq ft of contiguous space to where we are now, which is a 25,000 sq ft facility. That would essentially double our footprint in the U.S.
We are in discussions with the landlord today to negotiate pricing on that. We believe the demand is there, and that's a decision that will be made in the current quarter. I would say there's a high probability that we'll be materially increasing our footprint in Florida based on the demand that we're seeing. In Canada, as you know, we've got the strong military tailwinds, and we certainly don't want to commit ahead of putting ink on contracts. The pipeline, and the opportunities that we're seeing have never been stronger, we are trying to plan for that. We currently, in Canada, build out of three facilities in the west end of Ottawa. We have plans to consolidate that space in the beginning of 2027, is what we're looking for.
Today, that's about 27,000 sq ft of space, and I think we're looking for opportunities to move into something in the 40,000-50,000 sq ft range. We're definitely confident that we will land some of these contracts, but, you know, certainly nothing we can announce before we get ink. Hopefully, the scale of the square footage increase gives you a sense of our expectations for what we can produce out of those facilities. It is relatively linear. You know, our limitations as we grow are really due to the square footage and the capacity that we can produce, you know, in a footprint. Square footage and access to labor are the drivers. We believe we've got strong workforce in both areas and access to the right people.
I think when you see announcements for increases in square footage, you should assume that that's a strong indication of management, that we believe there's going to be growth in those sectors.
Great. No, that's all my questions. Thanks, guys.
Thanks, Steve.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Doug Johnson. Please go ahead.
Hello, I'm name is Doug Johnson. I'm a private shareholder. I live in Ottawa. I first invest in BluMetric without a lot of information, basically what your website had to say. A, it was an Ottawa company, which I try to encourage. B, it sounded like your products were for clear social good, unlike a lot of investments we might invest in. I appreciate the access to the management. I had also had three questions. I'd like to get a bit of clarity on the restructuring.
Mm-hmm.
Sounds like a fairly modest restructuring, but what part of the company and why, for example, did it after merging with whatever, did it find there was excess capacity in some part?
Okay, well, I'll do my best to answer that first question. When you look at the various aspects of our business and markets we're in, the one place that we felt that we needed to adjust immediately, this was almost a year ago, was in our professional services side of the business. The margins there are enviable, they're high, we weren't seeing the efficiencies in terms of deployment and sales in that part of the business. You'll see some restructuring costs that have hit our numbers this quarter, this last quarter. Has to do with making a change out in terms of who is, in fact, leading the operations of that business.
Quite frankly, I was not seeing the kind of results that I think that were appropriate, and so we changed leaderships and leadership and operations. The individual who is leading that now, I work with on a near-daily basis, making sure that we are advancing the business to improve EBITDA, to improve profitability, reduce write-offs, all the aspects of running base hit baseball, business, where we're producing a better outcome. That's come a long way in a short period of time, and then that applies to the rest of the organization. Making sure that we're driving deeper discipline on business aspects of the business. Takes a little time to produce those results, but at the same time, we are seeing, as noted, a very strong top line.
We understand clearly that with the top line that we're producing, that we need to start seeing a better improvement on the bottom line. When you're seeing restructuring, really it comes down to more surgical adjustments within our workforce to put better individuals with more business discipline in place to be able to deliver what we think are more appropriate results. You often hear from us, our stated ambition is to be a hundred million dollar top-line company and 10% EBITDA. That's very achievable. Three years ago, we were CAD 35 million top line. Last year, we closed out at CAD 62 million. Now we're closing in on CAD 80 million. It's a lot harder to grow the top line than it is necessarily to tighten up and produce a better bottom line, but it doesn't say that that's easy.
What I appreciate from the question is really coming back to it, is the restructuring really is surgical adjustments within our workforce to develop or to put people in place with a higher sense of confidence to produce a better business outcome.
Thank you. Your comments lead me to my second question: profit versus growth. Obviously, they're both desirable. Profits have been hard to achieve the last little while, last few years, or really forever, which is not necessarily a bad thing, as they say. I understand there's a, an interest in obviously in growth, too. To what extent can we see a significant existence of profit in the next while?
Well, the short answer to that is, it can't happen fast enough for us, number one. While at the same time, you know, we have to have one foot on the gas, one foot on the brake, because we can't choke off our investments that are going to produce the future we need. I think the best way to answer this is, it's not one or the other, it's both we need. The companies that we're bringing in and integrating, they're used to being operated as private enterprises, of course. In order to bring them into the fold, we're operating as a public entity. That takes a little time for them to get supported. We have the back office to do that.
Really, we have to grow in such a way that the costs associated with the back office to operate a publicly traded company becomes less of an impact. As we grow, the expectation is that we'll integrate, we'll improve our profitability, but we're also gonna scale up to be able to match the back office we need to operate as an integrated company that's publicly traded.
Thank you. My last question is, relating to the management information circular, forthcoming. It turned out last year, I discovered at the meeting, that a small employee group, owns about 35% of the company and also has the right to appoint 1 board member. Neither of those were in the MIC last year, which to me, those 2 are critical pieces of information. Are you considering providing that information in the forthcoming MIC?
Yeah. certainly there is no. Thank you for the question. There's no ... obligation to provide a board seat to that group. There is an individual who does represent that group who, you know, who has been on the board and is standing for re-election. There's no requirement to have that group represented at the board level.
Yeah.
That was not my understanding at the annual meeting. I'm sorry.
Okay.
The representative of the group specifically stated, "We appreciate the opportunity to have a board member." Maybe that's the same thing, but I think that is relevant to the approach that that person is being nominated on behalf of or representing, this major membership group, this major owner group.
Yeah. Yeah, I think maybe a little more clarity on that. We have some founders that are still substantial shareholders in the company that are also employees. I believe it's our position that we wanna make sure that is, their and other employees' interests are well represented on the board and brought to our attention beyond my purview. As Dan mentioned, we have one fellow, he's been with the company 40 years. He's highly respected, and he not only provides that perspective but other aspects of the business that really is a valuable piece of how we operate in our governance. As Dan mentioned, it's not a requirement. It, in many ways, it's an accommodation we think is a good aspect of our governance.
I would add as well that we do have an independent board despite that. Scott and that one individual would be the only two that are employees of the company, and the balance of the board are all independent.
Al right. Thank you.
Thank you for your questions.
Thank you. Our next question comes from George Dumit, a private investor as well. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning, guys.
Hi, George.
Hey, good morning. Congrats on the strong top line. I just wanted to ask a little bit more on the margin side. Just to confirm, I think you guys, on the last conference call, mentioned high single-digit kind of margin. I'm wondering if you can kinda walk me through that, how you expect that margin expansion to unfold. Is it mainly gonna be back half-weighted, or are we gonna see a pickup in Q3, or is it more Q2? Just maybe the evolution of that margin as we go through the year, please. Thanks.
Sure. Let me just talk to seasonality a little bit, and then I'll talk to some of the specific levers that we have to improve EBITDA. I think the first thing, just to remind everyone, is that Q1 and Q2 are typically our softer periods overall as a business. While WaterTech is somewhat, you know, protected from the seasonal climate issues that we face in Canada, the professional services team does experience slower revenues during the winter months. March, you know, we're just getting into March right now. This is when field opportunities typically open up, and all of our professional service team become fully deployed again. Q3 and Q4 will likely be the strongest quarters in the history of the business, certainly based on the size and the scale of our recent acquisitions.
Those will be exciting quarters for us to talk through. In terms of the major lever that we have, there's certainly a number of initiatives that we're looking at to tighten up costs and ensure that we can drop a little bit more to EBITDA. We do know that our peers can achieve 10% in scale. We know it's an achievable target for our industry. There's nothing that would preclude us to get there other than running efficiently. In the quarter that just ended, we had just over CAD 2 million of indirect labor that we carried on the books. We always carry indirect labor. We can't expect the team that we have to deliver, you know, 100% bill utilization.
We have a phenomenal group of professional service and WaterTech employees that work hard, and I think it's on us as a management team to ensure that they're deployed efficiently. That is the pool from which we will be driving more profitability. That CAD 2 million, if you can imagine even a 10% improvement in that, would result in a CAD 800,000 increase in EBITDA. I think that's the number that we're focused on, and that's the mandate of the new head of operations, is to ensure that we're creating an environment where our people are load balanced, fully deployed, and billable to our clients. There's lots of work out there, and we need to ensure that everybody is deployed efficiently, and that's our primary objective to drive EBITDA.
Okay. By my math, it looks like you guys are targeting kind of CAD 5 million-6 million EBITDA contribution in the second half. Is that right?
In the second half? you know, I think from a pro forma perspective, we're gonna be somewhere in the mid CAD 80 million top line, you know, just based on the straight math of adding together all the, you know, the last year's activity of all the entities that we've acquired. We know that by the time we get to CAD 100 million, we can achieve 10%. We've done a lot of analysis on that front. I think, you know, it's a path to get there. We've not really provided guidance on EBITDA, but we would hope definitely, you know, to be high single digits for sure this calendar year. Don't know that we'll achieve 10%, but certainly, we have a path to improve the current EBITDA.
Okay. Last question I had for me, on the working capital, quite a large drag in the quarter. I think you called out receivables. Can you talk a little bit about when you expect that to convert to cash? Thanks.
Yeah, we had. Sure. Just the timing of the contract with Rheinmetall, we had a CAD 3 million payment that was required after a milestone that was achieved just at the end of the quarter, so we billed for that. We have a CAD 3 million receivable through Rheinmetall and the government of Canada tied to a deliverable in that contract. Usually they're pretty good with paying in sort of 45-60-day terms, so that should be collected imminently.
Great. Thanks.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Bruce Lazenby of National Capital Investment. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Great presentation.
Morning, Bruce.
Good morning. My question comes down to the approach. I mean, first of all, it's a great time to be in anything water-related for sure. The question is how to capitalize on that. I think conventional wisdom, especially for smaller companies, is either you're in the product business or you're in the services business. Managing a product company versus a service company is different marketing, different hiring, different financing, different everything. I had the impression you were leaning towards becoming a technology provider, in other words, a product company. Then the acquisition of DS surprised me a little bit.
Mm-hmm.
How are you thinking about managing that so that you can really capitalize? If you're getting into residential and commercial and Caribbean and WaterTech and consulting, that sounds like a pretty difficult piece to manage, especially in a small footprint.
Well, it's a good question, Bruce. Let me back up a little bit and say that part of our success has been making sure that we service what we sell. We've driven a lot of the competition, certainly in Canada, away because the clients come back to us, and they ultimately help us design our business, 'cause that's who we cater to. Have said that in the past, they've purchased technology from some bigger companies. Once it fails, it just sits on the shelf, and it's an expensive boat anchor. As a result, we have to design a business that actually is a lucrative side of the technology business, and that's operation and maintenance. For the military, we have field service representatives. Most of them are ex-military, and the clients love it.
When something doesn't, you know, pops up, and there's always something in technology, we're there immediately. We make sure it's up and running. That's how we have 20 years' worth of deployment without failure. In terms of what goes on in the Caribbean with the systems that they install, the same thing. They used to just focus on the technology side, which actually has a lower margin. The higher margins is really in the operation and maintenance side of the business that, you know, for instance, as Dan mentioned, for St. Kitts, that's a 40-year asset, and that has to run for 40 years to produce the water that people are paying for. We need to have a staff. We do have a staff.
We need to have a program that's in place. Now we have long, steady tail on this project that gives us nice, reliable revenue. As far as DS is concerned, that was the third leg of the stool. Everything relates to, one way or another, some kind of development or improvement. That's why we need water, that's why we need the assessment to be able to support an understanding of how to develop it without impacting the environment. Well, DS Consultants brings to us the built environment.
Whatever our clients come to us, for the most part, and say, "Here's our plans to name the development," we can do the front-end assessment with our classic consulting, we can do the design and support the design and execution of the build, and then we can put in the infrastructure to support it independently. It may sound a little confusing, and I should apologize if it is. Maybe I should do a better job of communicating it, but what we now have right now is a suite of services and technologies to deliver on full services to those clients and have a way to improve our margins long term by maintaining and operating it.
do I understand fundamentally then, that the services is either a lead into the product opportunity or support to existing product deployments?
Yes.
It's fundamentally a product play. The question is whether you're that you're using services to either create the opportunity or support the delivery.
Yeah, one of the things...
Primarily a product.
Sorry, go ahead.
Yeah, go ahead. No, so primarily a product company.
I wouldn't say that. I'd say it's a, it's a key piece of what we do, Bruce.
Okay.
The solutions that we offer require typically some involvement with technology. The advisory, the consultancy is the assessment of the impact of executing a project. The built environment is how it becomes executed and realized, and then the technology supports its operation into the future for water, wastewater, what have you. We have a flywheel approach that we deploy, where we're very close with our clients to understand their biggest issues or their ambitions, their business ambitions. As a result of that, we hear directly from those clients the problems they have, and then we have to solve them.
Okay.
That not only improves our consultancy, but it improves our technology.
Okay. That's great. On a personal level, I'm way overweight on BLM. I'm looking forward to some great progress. Congratulations, guys. I think it's a very promising future.
Thank you so much. Great to hear from you, Bruce.
Thank you. If there are no further questions at this time, I would now like to turn the call back over to Scott for his closing remarks. Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator. To all on the call, we really appreciate your calling in. We really appreciate the commentary, the questions. We hope that you take away from this call that we are laser focused on what we know we're all needing to focus on, and that is really the EBITDA of the company. While at the same time achieving these great top-line results, it has to produce a bottom line that we're all proud of, and that is part of the plan. Back to our stated ambition of CAD 100 million top line, 10% EBITDA. Remind everybody, we're not at CAD 100 million yet, but we're well on our way.
As we scale up and as we make surgical adjustments and restructuring, as we put deeper discipline, business discipline into the business, better systems, and such, we expect to see those results happen. With that, we appreciate your investment, your time today, and we look forward to our next call next quarter. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.