Planet MicroCap Showcase: TORONTO 2025

Oct 22, 2025

For Isabella, I am the Chief Legal Officer and Secretary of Ispire Technology Inc. We are a Nasdaq-traded company that is primarily in the nicotine space. We also have some business in the cannabis space, but we are a provider of hardware and technology solutions to nicotine companies and consumers the world around. We are publicly traded on the Nasdaq. We have been now for almost three years, coming up here in February. A global footprint. We are based in Los Angeles. I think why a lawyer is talking to you is because I live in Buffalo and I got picked to do this speech. They didn't want to fly out from LA and they said, "You Steve, you got to drive up." Forgive me if I don't have the really nitty-gritty finance stuff done, but I can answer basically any other question about the business. We have an extensive intellectual property portfolio that we rely on for essentially our market differentiator. Again, we operate out of Los Angeles. Our factories are in Shenzhen, China, as well as Johor, Malaysia. Those provide products to really over 30 countries worldwide and a variety of product types from open system nicotine vaping, closed system nicotine vaping. We've even recently gotten to certain pouch manufacturing for customers, as well as some other technologies we'll talk about here in a minute. The company has a long history in the space. Our Founder, Chairman, Mr. Tony Liu, was one of the original creators of the e-cigarette back in 2010. He created a brand called Aspire, A-S-P-I-R-E, which was a, still is a worldwide, well-known brand of open system products. Before JUUL came on the scene in 2015-2016, it was the largest unified brand of e-cigarette products to be sold globally. Obviously, JUUL eclipsed that extensively with, you know, I think a lot of different marketing tactics that perhaps move the industry forward, perhaps set the industry back in a variety of ways. Our historical vision has been innovation in the space, whether it's the way the atomizer works, whether it's the airflow, the temperature, the battery life. We continue to innovate in the space and we're able to provide solutions to brands who are our primary customers that are looking for differentiators when it comes to a good consumer product. Our revenues for last year are broken down here on this slide, where as you can see, we're heavy in Europe and North America, our primary markets. North America is essentially a majority cannabis products. We don't touch the plant. We just make unfilled vapor hardware. Our customers are LPs up here in Canada or MSOs in the United States or single-state operators in the United States. They will give us a spec that they want for their oils. We'll make a custom device for them. We'll go through extensive testing. Some of our customers include Acreage Holdings, Raw Garden, Juicy Inc., so many well-known brands that we service here in the U.S. That's been a part of our business really for the last five years, but longer term, this has been an e-cigarette company now for about 15. I'm going to spend a lot of time on this slide. This is where we have a lot of excitement, a lot of growth. There are four areas that the company has really invested a lot of time and energy into, and we believe will fuel both top-line revenue growth and overall notoriety of the business. The first is a proprietary age-gating technology through a joint venture with two other companies. Two years ago, we started a joint venture called IKE Tech. That company has created a Bluetooth-based, blockchain-based, point-of-use age-gating system for a vaporizer. What does that mean? That means in your vape, there's a Bluetooth chip. That Bluetooth chip connects to the power management of your vape, and that vape will not turn on unless you scan your face on your phone. It goes through a third-party IDV provider, whether it's Clear or Encode or Yoti, and that will essentially send a message to the vape and say, "Okay, you're authenticated." The vape knows who you are, that you're the right age, and that will allow the power management of the vape to turn on. What have we done with that technology? For now, we've applied for a U.S. PMTA for that technology on a component basis, saying that we could put that tech into any vape, any vape really that's not a disposable. We could do it on a disposable, which wouldn't make sense price-wise, but any vape could be equipped with this technology in the United States or elsewhere. We have an app on the App Store. We have an app on the Google Play Store. Our competitors do not have apps like that. They do not have proprietary apps. They have web-based apps. It makes it clunky. It's a tough interface. Ours is a seamless system. You store no personal information on your cell phone. It all goes through the blockchain and a tokenized bridge to the IDV provider. We're really excited about this technology. We submitted our PMTA in April of last year. The FDA came back with an acceptance letter 28 days later, which we think is, you know, extremely fast. Some companies are still waiting for acceptance letters after years and years. We know they're focused on this tech. We believe that will allow for the expansion of vapes with characterizing flavors to be approved by the FDA in the United States, which is a multi, multi-billion dollar market. For those that don't know, the U.S. has only approved menthol and tobacco-flavored vapes formally for sale. Obviously, there's a massive illicit problem in the U.S. To combat that illicit problem, they're going to need to have flavored vapes on there. By preventing youth access through point-of-use age gating, we believe that is a pathway to getting flavored vapes onto the market in the U.S. and in other countries. There are other countries interested in mandating this technology across their whole country. We're talking to a country in Southeast Asia and a country in the Middle East at the highest level, the royalty level and the parliament levels, about mandating this technology in their country, both from an age verification perspective, but also a tax and traceability perspective. Those countries don't have the same privacy laws as the U.S. We can create an amazing amount of data from this technology in terms of user experience, how often they're using the device, where they're using the device, their puff counts, their usage increments, all that. That can be licensed back to either the country that we're in or the ultimate producer of the vape itself. We're really all in on age-gating technology. We think that's the future of nicotine vape going forward, on a global basis, not just here in the West, but also in the East as well. As you've seen vape get demonized for, you know, the flavors and maybe youth addiction, we believe age-gating at the point of use is far more effective than age-gating at the point of sale. We've done clinical trials on this. We had a 100% effectiveness rate. We're really excited about that age-gating technology. Separately, we have expanded our manufacturing operations really to diversify our supply chain out of China. I think we've all seen President Trump's erratic behavior related to tariffs in terms of international trade, China being maybe his biggest target. Those erratic tariffs have led to a trade delta, a tariff delta with other countries in Southeast Asia. Two years ago, we undertook to build out a multi-stage factory plan in the province of Johor in Malaysia, which is really abutting Singapore, right across the border from Singapore if you're familiar with that geography. Malaysian operations will really come down to two things in terms of why it matters. One, it will increase our gross margin on products between 15% and 20%. Right now, we still make a lot of products with third-party factories. They take their margin. We take receipt of them. We sell it to the ultimate customer. The Malaysian manufacturing is in-house manufacturing. We own the supply chain. We own the production. They're our products, and then we'll be able to sell them globally. When you look at our margins today, and you can add 15% to 20% on those margins, I think that's a very healthy business that will emerge here as we scale up the manufacturing operations to service not just our own customers' needs, but also on a third-party basis. We've had a lot of inquiries from Chinese manufacturers looking to diversify their own operations into other countries in the region, whether it's Indonesia or Malaysia. They're not going into Vietnam as much right now or Cambodia. It's really been those two countries. We do have the only license in Malaysia to make nicotine products at the moment. That is what we feel is a competitive edge, sort of regionally and globally. We are still in the cannabis vaping product sector. If you look at our financials, I think you'll see some of the instability of the cannabis industry reflected in the way we pursued growth there. We pursued growth really hard. We offered very aggressive credit terms to some of our cannabis customers to grow market share. Some of it worked out really well. We got some great customers. Others, as you guys may know, the companies just disappeared in many cases. We've sort of rescaled and recalculated what we want to do in cannabis, and it's really been focused on innovation, creating unique atomizers, creating unique batteries, unique setups that allow for improved user experience, improved filling technology. We have a technology called Ispire One, which essentially is a self-sealing vape. Why does that matter? Traditionally, when you take a vape, you've got to fill it and then cap it, whether that capping is a punchdown or a screw. That takes time. It takes energy. It takes steps on the production line. That's employees. That's FTEs. The Ispire One essentially is a silicone membrane. If you take a needle, you can fill the vape, pull the needle out, self-seals. The vape is self-contained. It removes steps from the filling process, and it makes it easier for our customers. We've got a needle now that will work with any filling machine on the market out there. Really just finding solutions for our customers that make their lives easier and allow them to increase their margins as well. We continue to innovate in the nicotine space. We have a new atomizer technology called GMASH that stands for glass mesh. Essentially, it's a one millimeter thick glass wafer that is porous that allows for particle sizes into the micron sizes, very, very small. Why does particle size matter? Particle size is absorption into your lungs. Smaller the particle size, the more you'll be able to absorb through the blood barrier in your lungs, and the more effect the active ingredient here, nicotine, will take in your body, or the less you need to use to experience the similar effect. You can get more life out of your vape. You can inhale less e-liquid, et cetera. We're in some discussions with some big tobacco companies about licensing this technology. There is not often a new atomizer technology. Certainly, the bells and whistles on a device can change. A pod system here, a cartridge there, but the atomizer itself has generally been a ceramic atomizer with a cotton wick for many, many years. You're seeing some other things now, like glass atomizers that we've got, but also silicon atomizers. We really like this technology. We think it's good. Our customers that are evaluating it are really bullish on it. All of these things we feel will fuel growth as we go forward. Nicotine vaping is, I think, a major driver of what this business's principle should be. The nicotine vaping sector has been growing exponentially. It will continue to grow. As countries look to outlaw combustibles, you'll see an increase in reduced-risk products, whether that's nicotine vapor or nicotine pouch. We're positioned to take advantage of both of those trends on a long-term basis. You've got countries like the UK that are going essentially smoke-free. At a certain age, you won't be allowed to, you know, if you're born a certain year, you can't buy cigarettes in the UK. We see that trend expanding into Western Europe and likely expanding into other countries, perhaps in the Middle East, perhaps in Southeast Asia. Our ability to produce high-quality, customizable products, we feel, positions us quite well for the growth of this sector. Right now, the market is quite fragmented. There are many brands out there. There's no worldwide lead. Nobody's one vape. Certainly, you could talk about what JUUL has done in the United States, but again, I think there's some that might say their advertising has done more bad than good. There are very few authorized products on the market in the U.S. today. There is no winner. There is no dominant brand. Primarily, on a global basis, what you see is imports from China being dumped on those markets. I think there's a real demand for compliant products that are proven and tested to be safe, that have features like age-gating, that allow governments some assurance that when people switch from combustibles to vapor or non-combustibles, they're not just going into the hands of youth or children or people that shouldn't be using these devices. We like the way we sit in relation to that. The U.S. vaping market is very large. It's our primary objective here. There is a huge illicit vaping problem. Essentially, one out of five vapes sold in the U.S. is lawful, and the other four out of five is not. They are brought in through the various ports. They are sold under various brand names, whether it's Lost Mary or 50 Bar or Elf Bar, what have you. None of those vapes are authorized for sale in the United States right now. There is a push to, one, enforce the existing rules and get those products off the market, but there's also the pull to say, "Hey, how do we get people switching from these illicit products to authorized products?" That starts with flavors. How do we get flavors? We think we get flavors by providing an assurance to the FDA that no youth are able to access these flavored devices. That goes back to our proprietary age-gating technology. We've met with FDA. We've submitted our application. We feel really good about that application getting approved eventually. That approval will allow us to license that technology to all vapor companies, and we believe that will potentially usher in an era of characterizing flavored vapes. You can get your mango, your watermelon, your cherry ice all on the market, and that will hopefully combat the illicit market dumping that we're seeing today. This slide is really just an outline of the process that it takes to get a PMTA, or let's call it FDA approval of a nicotine device. It's extensive. We filed a PMTA for our age-gating component. We are also in the process of filing a PMTA for some newly designed devices. These devices took a long time to engineer. Why is that? JUUL, as I've mentioned several times, has about 1,000 patents. That's not an exaggeration. They have an incredible patent strategy, and they dominate the space when it comes to pod systems. They also dominate the IP space. We have engineered a pod system that avoids all of the JUUL IP. Why is this important? You have a company like Altria who cannot sell their product they paid $2 billion for because they infringe on JUUL's patents. They lost an International Court of Trade case. Can't import their product into the U.S. JUUL beat them. You have a company like BAT Reynolds who has a license from JUUL that's running out. When that license runs out, their VUES product will also infringe on JUUL's patents, and they won't be able to commercialize that product. That product essentially is 40% of the legal vape sales in the United States of the approved products. We feel really good about this device we've designed. We're going to take it through the FDA approval process. It's going to include the age-gating technology. While it will take some time to get through this process and some capital, we feel that the end result will be a product that is defensible and protected from an IP perspective, as well as defensible and protected from a regulatory and advocacy perspective with the age-gating component. We really like where we're going to end up here in a couple of years. It is a long process. It is an opaque process. Thankfully, it is beginning to move much more quickly now. There were about 2 million PMTAs submitted in 2021. They have worked through 99% of those PMTAs, and so there's a much faster review, acceptance, filing process that's in place today. Talked about age-gating a little bit. It is a really, really cool technology. How do we monetize that age-gating? I think the easiest one is licensing it. There's a lot of companies that are going to want this technology in their products. We've looked at solutions from other big tobacco companies, and that's one company, one solution. Every time you buy a vape from a different company, you're going to have to download a different app or go to a different web app. You're going to have to enter your information differently. You buy a Reynolds vape or an Altria vape or a JTI vape or a PMI vape, and they're all different web-based apps you have to enter your information into. That seems clumsy, and it seems like a lot of friction for a vape user, whereas our strategy is to make a component that's interchangeable throughout all vapor products. What does that mean? That's one app. You've got your Bluetooth chip in the device. That Bluetooth chip can go in an Altria vape, a PMI vape, a JTI vape, whatever vape it is, and you go to your app, you scan your face, boom, you're ready to start enjoying vaping very quickly. It also gives regulators the certainty that this technology is secure, and it's standardized, and it's effective in terms of our clinical results. Big tobacco we view as a primary target of out-licensing. We are talking to all big tobacco companies right now. Some want to wait and see what goes on with the U.S. FDA. Some want to see what goes on with other foreign governments in terms of their desire to mandate this technology. It is exciting because I believe it is the future of technology. We're all on our phones all day long. Why shouldn't our phone be able to control who's vaping and who's not vaping? It seems like a very easy, not fabulous stretch to implement a technology like that. With the flavored pods, as I talked about a minute ago, we are applying for our own pod system, which, you know, is defensible from an IP perspective. That's going to take a little bit of time. We've just finished the device a couple of months ago, but there is a massive untapped segment in the market here for authorized flavored products. We believe we would get approval given the age-gating and given the safety profile of the device. Talk a little bit about Malaysia. It's a multi-phase project here. The first phase was really sort of a proof of concept and the facility we needed to apply for our nicotine manufacturing license, which we were awarded back in May. We've started production on various products. Most are samples to go out to other companies to see if they like what's coming off the production lines, et cetera. The head of our factory in Malaysia is an Altria Enjoy veteran. She worked at Enjoy's plant for many years, getting that product ready before its eventual $2 billion sale to Altria. A lot of experience there in the vapor sector. Phase two, our second plant is a two-story plant. It is much, much larger. We're going from seven production lines up to an additional 70, so a 10x increase in output volume. Essentially, we can produce 100 million pods per month at this. We think that is enough production to fulfill the demand for one or more big tobacco companies. We've had some good discussions with a variety of both big and small tobacco companies looking to diversify their supply chain out of China. We've given them our production calculations and production studies, and those conversations continue to move forward. That obviously would accrue to our top line and bottom line, should we secure any of those contracts. On the cannabis side, I don't talk much about it. I was in the cannabis space maybe 10 years ago. I think we've seen a lot of ups and downs in terms of the equity markets here and a lot of inconsistency in the United States. It is tough to say when any sort of cannabis normalization happens, but we still remain active in the cannabis space, servicing really what we'll call high-quality legacy customers. We've changed our payment terms from some very aggressive terms like zero down net 90 to essentially 100% upfront for most of our customers, and that has changed our accounts receivable profile dramatically in the last several months. We continue to double down on good customers. It is good business for us. We're going to continue to maintain this business as long as there are quality customers out there. We have innovated in this space a bit. It's easy to innovate in cannabis because we're doing so much innovation in nicotine, and the innovations do translate quite well in terms of the way devices are set up, whether you're putting screens on devices, different battery level readings, different interactions with the consumer in terms of preheating, et cetera. We're still pushing into this space. Our markets are primarily the U.S., Canada, and Western Europe. Very few other countries outside of those geographies have legalized cannabis to the extent where we could be selling large hardware, though we did make several partnerships in South Africa and do have an ongoing business down there. Go over this slide. This is our management team. I mentioned before our founder, Mr. Tony Liu, really was one of the first creators of an e-cigarette. Many of our 400 patents were personally designed by him, filed by him, relate to the fundamental design of the vertical coil in an e-cigarette. He drives a lot of our innovation and product development day-to-day from both Shenzhen and Singapore. We've got Michael Wang. Michael has been an industry veteran. He's also an engineer. We've got two engineers at the helm of the company. This is really sort of a company that's focused on the quality of the product and developing new technology and innovating. CFO, Jay, very experienced from a public company perspective. Kenny, who I mentioned before, is the CEO of Ispire Malaysia. Extensive experience with the Enjoy company, getting their factory scaled to a point where they were able to sell to Altria for $2 billion. That's all for my presentation, but I'm happy to answer any audience questions if you guys have any. Yeah. Oh, we got time? Oh, good. I guess there's no questions. I'm so sorry. If you want the presentation, please give me your card.