We're on.
Okay, guys, we're going to keep it moving along. Once again, my name is Ty Hoffer, President of Winning Media. We've been around 20 years. We market NASDAQ companies, New York Stock Exchange companies, Canadian companies. We're going to introduce the next speaker. Mark Smith is the CEO of IBC Advanced Alloys. Take it away.
Very good. Thank you very much. Thanks, people, for coming out. It's late in the day and probably better things to do, not the way it looks out there right now. Boy, that's horrible. This is going to be a fun presentation because what you're basically going to hear, and I'm going to summarize it at the end again, you're going to hear it again. We've worked pretty hard to take this little company and really re-engineer it to become a really successful company now. What you're going to hear about is a foundational business that has kept us alive for a long time, 60+ years.
You're going to hear about four new growth areas that we're focused on after spending a tremendous amount of time studying these markets and figuring out where the best place was to take what we do best and turn it into higher margin and much larger volumes in terms of revenue. Bear with me as we go through all the fun part here. This is just some background information. When you think of IBC Advanced Alloys, you should primarily think about copper. We just love copper. You'll also hear that we are starting to love some other things too. I'll get into that when we talk about some of the growth areas. We have not only the ability to basically alloy copper with anything, we can also take that copper in billet form or ingot form, and we can make full end-use parts for our customers.
It's really what the customer wants is what we deliver to them. Some people just want a big billet of Copper-Nickel Alloy or something. We're more than happy just to pour that billet and send it to them. We can pour the billet, we can cut the billet, we can machine it into a finished part. We can do the full supply chain on what the customer needs. It's really what they want. One of the things that we really are good at, and we have good people in the company. I'm not the technical expert, but we have some really, really good technical folks at our company. Just to kind of hammer that home a little bit, we had a company that I can't name, but you would all know, come in and they wanted a Copper Nozzle for a Rocket Engine.
They came in with the drawings and the specs and met with our guys and said, "We want this. This is what we want the nozzle to be made out of." Our guys sat there and they said, "Okay, that won't work." They chose the wrong material and they had the wrong design for the nozzle. Our guys saw that right away. We helped them redesign the nozzle. We helped them get the right materials of construction, and it blasted off just fine. That's how good our Metallurgists are in the company. I think they're some of the best in the world. We can do a lot of things here. Like I said, we can take it all the way from—we can buy copper and sell it to you, or we can buy copper and we can melt it and mix it in with all kinds of other things.
We can go all the way to finished part. Nothing really to brag about here. You can see some company information off on the right. We are TSX Venture and OTCQB. Share price has done reasonably well as of late. I'll give you a hint as to why that happened in just a minute. It was good to see that for a while. I'm smiling again. These are all the areas that we work in. This is why I'm going to come to a discussion in a minute talking about the copper supercycle that we think is starting to come back now. There's been one before, kind of lulled to sleep for a little while, and boy, is it roaring back right now in all of these different applications where copper is used.
The way I like to think about it is EVs use 150 lbs of copper more than an internal combustion engine car. Take a look at the AI and data centers that we have to build in the world right now and the power requirements for these things. It's going to be all about copper. I mean, I think about copper and I get very excited and I'm glad we have the expertise that we have. Here's a very small listing of some of our customers. We have about probably 250 customers in total that we serve out of this business, but these are some of the bigger orders. Honeywell and Honda are probably two of our bigger customers. I really like them as customers because we actually make a copper part for them that goes into a manufacturing machine that they have, and it gets destroyed.
That means I have to replace that part and just replace that part, and boy, is that ever a good business. We've got a growth strategy here. What you'll see is that we're going to primarily focus on copper and copper going into the U.S. Navy in particular. We also have a little experiment that we tried and were very successful at and sent out a press release on just last week that I'll talk about. Here's this copper supercycle issue that we think is really hitting us front and center. This is going to. Really be felt by not just the United States, but the whole world as we start thinking about demand. Here was kind of the 1st supercycle from 1999 - 2012. You can see the two figures here that are kind of impressive. The demand rose by 46.7% and the price rose by 406%. Nice.
Here is where we think we're headed if you look at all of the estimates and forecasts that are out there from the specialists in this area. We're now talking about demand rising 63% from last year till 2035. We don't know what the price will do. We'll see what happens there. If it's anything like the last supercycle, prices are going to be up on copper quite a bit. They're up on copper significantly right now. I mean, it's over $5 a lbs right now. Here are some pretty interesting figures here as well. We're looking at massive increases in what we need for copper. Supply and Demand is going to take over again, and we're going to see some increased pricing. I remember I had to take one economics course when I went through my engineering curriculum.
The one thing I remembered from that is when there's not enough supply and there's more demand, you get increased pricing. When you're in the business, you kind of like that. We've got a four-stage growth program. Again, we've kind of taken the business and re-engineered it. We had two divisions in the company. We shut down one division. It's been shut down for about a year now, and all the costs with that are pretty well done and behind us. As part of the tariffs that we've been seeing worldwide since February, we saw a fairly significant slowdown in orders from our baseline business. That baseline business has been very strong and grows 3% - 4% every year, pretty reliable.
For about three to four months, customers were afraid to order much because they didn't know what the impacts of the tariffs were going to be on any of this. A little slow when they ordered it. That's all picking up right now. The other piece that made us think through things a little harder was we had two very large projects that we did in fiscal year 2024. If you take a look at our fiscal year 2024 revenue, it was about $25+ million . Our fiscal 2025 revenue was about $18 million. When you first look at that, you're thinking, "Oh my gosh, what's happening?" All of that difference was those two special projects that we did. If you take a look at the $18 million that we registered for 2025, it's actually percentage points above what the base business was in 2024.
The base business continues to do well. We want to find more of these special projects that can add $5 - $10 million to your bottom line in a single year. We are out looking for these projects and trying to find them. In the meantime, we want to continue to grow our base business at 3% - 4% per year. We have started up a new part of our business where we can take these copper alloys, any copper alloy you want, and we can actually pour that copper alloy into a near net-shaped part using Sand cast. We are now doing that. We can do parts up to 500 lbs each, which is very significant. Here is one of the parts that we actually cast. It's really a thing of beauty if you like alloys and castings and whatnot, which I do.
This is a new business, and we're seeing orders already starting in this area. This is definitely a good choice to be made. We have made that choice, and we're headed down this direction. I think we've had upwards of about 130 parts that we've made utilizing this new growth part of our business. I'm going to actually skip over stage two and come back to that because I want to stick with copper here for a little while. I think it's pretty public knowledge that the U.S. Navy is a little bit behind China right now. Numbers of boats, numbers of submarines, everything. We're behind. The White House is literally pouring money into the Navy. They want more ships built. They want more submarines built. They want more spare parts. Copper is just a huge part of that.
Copper-Nickel Alloys in particular are a huge part of what they need. Currently, there's one producer of Copper-Nickel Alloy in the United States, and everything else is made around the rest of the world. Our military buys about 90% of what they need for Copper-Nickel Alloys out of France right now. We have got new tariffs on France, so the cost of those parts coming from France to the United States is going up. France continues to subsidize those parts, and it's made it very difficult for anyone in the U.S. to get into this business. Those tariffs have helped tremendously to take a lot of that unfairness out of those trade practices. The Navy will not allow a single point of failure. They need more than one supplier for something. They've come to us because they know we're experts in copper.
They would like us to be a copper-nickel supplier for them. We are going to get into the copper-nickel area. To be quite honest, we're pretty good at it already. You have to have a special furnace to make Copper-Nickel Alloy. It has to be a Vacuum Cap Furnace, rather than the open air furnaces that we otherwise operate in our foundry. That Vacuum Cap Furnace will cost about $5 million. We're actually working with the Navy on a grant or through their two primes. They have two prime shipbuilders, and they have special programs funded by the Navy as well. We're going to try to get our $5 million to buy this furnace from one or both of those programs.
That $5 million investment, making these new Copper-Nickel Alloys, will probably, I'm going to say within two to three years, result in about $10 million of additional revenue coming into the company. No additional people. We have to pay for the feed stock to feed that, but that's otherwise going to be a pretty good addition to revenues for the company. I think you'll see the margins from these materials will end up being pretty good too. This is pretty exciting. We need to finish up the work on the $5 million. We have invested about $500,000 of our own money into this already, trying to get there and be ready for when we get the furnace on site. After we get this furnace on site, all we can do is make ingots or billets out of this furnace. It's a little bit limited.
That's not exactly what the Navy wants. What the Navy wants ultimately is they want that alloy, and they then want us to purchase a Radial Forge Machine so we can make bars. We can make tubes. You can see the different things that they want. You just think about that. That's what they want. They want that round tubing to be put into the submarine. It's a very good use of space. It's light. It's corrosion resistant. That's what they ultimately want. That radio forge costs about $25 million. It's probably three to five years out before we do that project, but that's where this is headed. That $25 million spending on that radio forge will probably take our revenue up by $50 - $75 million. Now we're going to be up. The goal here is to try to hit that $100 million revenue or more for the company.
We need very few additional people to do that. The margins are going to be pretty attractive in this business. Those are our three copper growth areas. Just last week, we sent out a press release letting the world know that we successfully poured aluminum-scandium alloy ingots. These are ingots that are not done on a mass basis in the United States. As a matter of fact, we don't produce any scandium in the United States. We don't produce any scandium metal. Nobody produces the master alloy to any extent, and nobody produces the actual alloy, except at some universities, they'll do like a single ingot there. Nobody does anything on a mass basis. We have demonstrated that we can do that on a mass basis. We sent out three times the number of samples that would be required to actually certify your material.
All three of the analyses that came back were exactly the same. I say that again to complement our Metallurgists. That was the 1st time they've ever made this alloy, and they hit it spot on. We wanted a 0.2% Scandium in the aluminum, and they got 0.21%, which is well within the spec. Every one of the results came back 0.21, 0.21, 0.21. That's good metallurgy work there. This is going to be a pretty big area. This is an area that the Department of Defense or War or Pentagon wants to be built out in the country. We have none of the supply chain capability in this country right now. We're going to build this out, and IBC is going to be part of that growth strategy. What we like about the growth strategy that we have is that these are very real paths to growth.
They aren't hopes and hype. These are actual needs and demands by our military and commercial areas. Here's our board of directors. We just added Chris Huskamp to the board about a week or two weeks ago. Chris actually holds multiple patents on Scandium-Aluminum Alloys and production of Scandium-Aluminum Alloys. He's going to be a fantastic new member. He'll open up doors for where we can sell these new materials out in the market. Here's the management team. You'll see that between Mark and Rajiv and Ken, I have three of the finest Metallurgists in the world, in my humble opinion. Great people to work with. That's our story. Would welcome any questions you may have.
This forge that you're talking about, the $25 million, are you going to try and get grants and stuff for that as well?
That's a big number. It's a big number for us, right?
Not very big for the Department of Defense. We will probably look at several ways to do that. One would be to go to the Department of Defense and just get a grant from them. They have multiple programs that you can apply for, and they've got buckets of money waiting to be spent on these types of things. We could also go through the appropriation process, which I think would be more normal in our political world that we live in in the U.S., where we would go to the Indiana senators and get them to support having a $25 million appropriation put into the national budget that would then ultimately come to IBC . The only problem with that is that process can take about three years all by itself.
If we want to get it and have it ready to go in three years, we need to start lobbying for that now. If we get the grants, that can happen pretty quick. The Secretary of Defense can make a decision on that and get you that money very quickly. I think we're going to see some pretty good success in that regard because they have to have Copper-Nickel Alloys to make all these ships and all these submarines. You can't make these things without the Copper-Nickel Alloy. We're getting 90% of what we need today from France at a subsidized cost.
How many people do you have employed in your factory?
We have a total of about 48 people in the company, probably six of us that are kind of more corporate and investor relations.
You never considered, I know this may be an off-target or off-subject question, but additive manufacturing. It's a new area.
Yeah.
Great question. Thank you for the lead-in on that. In this stage two, this is the alloy that the additive manufacturers want to use. We have plenty of supply chain capabilities. It's growing, but there's plenty there. IBC doesn't need to do additive manufacturing. We don't need to do it. We supply the alloy. There's another step in between where it gets powderized, and there's companies that do that. We don't need to add to that. We just need to get them the alloy.
It's great because you're involved because it's a growing area.
It's going to be huge. I mean, they're talking about on Ships and Aircraft Carriers and Submarines.
These are nacelles of jet engines.
Yeah, yeah.
They're going to actually have 3D printing devices on board and the powders on board so that when you need a new part, you don't go to the, yeah, you make it and you put it in. What a brilliant way to do business.
Yeah. Capital markets question. How many shareholders do you have? Do you have any idea what's the ratio of institutional versus retail?
I don't have a good idea on the number of shareholders. We have by far and away more retail than we do institutional. That would be nice as we're maturing and growing.
You guys are up on the Canadian?
No, we have way more in the U.S.
Why are you listed in Canada?
That's what I was handed with. We're dual-listed, OTC and Canada. Probably the right thing to do.
I think it's really a good thing to start a company, either OTC or the venture exchange. It's kind of the right size and the right flexibility. I will tell you that I can't wait to maybe use somebody like Think Equity and Uplift. We need to grow a little bit more. Yeah. Sure.
What happened at the beginning of October that spiked this year?
Oh, that's right here. We issued the press release indicating that we had successfully made the pour of Scandium Aluminum Alloy. That's not done in the U.S. today. It was very well received. The White House likes this because we're onshoring. We're onshoring.
That's the whole theme. What's your current manufacturing capacity in dollar value? What was your utilization rate of capacity?
That's a good question. We did about $25 million in 2025. I'm sorry, fiscal year 2024.
I would say we were pretty topped out at that point. That's why we've got to keep adding more CNC machines, more furnaces. We've got to add more saws. We've got hammers and whatnot that are 60 years old. They have to be repaired from time.
Do you have the space in the warehouse or the facility to add those machines?
Yeah. Another great question. The radio forge would be too big. We'd have to build another building for that. We have the land. We're only using 12 acres of about 20 acres that we own out there. Plenty of room right to the east of our current facility. We just refurbished the whole center part of the plant, and the foundry is brand new. It operates like a charm. It's very efficient, very high yields that we get out of the foundry right now.
We need to pick up the utilization rate. That's why we're looking at these growth programs. I want to use that furnace more. I don't want it sitting idle. One more question. Happy to stay after too, by the way.
What are some of the, I guess, what's the reason for kind of a challenge on the operating margin side over the last year? What does that look like going forward? Some of that is product mix. Some of our products have excellent margins, and some are a little lower margins. We don't want to give up any of those margins. If we have a month where you're making more of the lower-end stuff, you're going to have a lower margin. If you take a look at our overall margins, our gross margins for a 12-month period, you'll find that it's very consistent year after year.
If it goes up or down a percent, it's surprising. At Base Business is a really good business. We had that other division that was taking a whole bunch of cash, and we could just never get that division up and going. It's shut down. We're not pouring money into a losing division anymore.