Okay. Let's get things kicked off. What do you think, Faran?
I'm excited.
Yeah. Me too. Good afternoon, everyone. A lot of this, we spent some time kind of preparing remarks, we're going to also let the conversation flow naturally as well. We really, really, really insist that you guys engage, ask questions, and we'll try our best to answer everything. Faran, we're not gating any questions. We're just going to answer all of them to the best of our abilities. Of course, we can't see into the future. We also can't provide non-public or material information. We do have some bounding blocks. With that, I'll kick things off. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining Worksport's first town hall to end June. A little late. Better late than never, and I appreciate you all being here. I'm Steve Rossi, as you all know, CEO and founder of Worksport.
Joining with me today is Faran Ali, my right-hand man, investor relations and corporate strategist lead here at Worksport. Today's format is intentionally simple. We're not going to go slide by slide through a deck. I want this to be direct, camera on, and useful. We want to spend roughly 20 or 30 minutes, probably going to go over a little bit, walking through what has changed in the business, how recent announcements connect, and what we as management are focused on in the second half of this year. We're going to spend the balance of the session engaging with you, answering shareholder questions submitted previously and some live questions to the best of our ability. Get your thinking caps on with us, and let's get right into it. Before we begin, I want to make the disclosure boundary clear today.
As I already said, we may reiterate previous forward-looking statements about our business outlook, operating objectives, expected trends, margins, opportunities, distribution expansion, product adoption, certification, financing possibilities, and our path toward cash flow positivity and profits. Some of these statements are based on current expectations and assumptions, and some are subject to risks and uncertainties that we've described in our SEC filings. Actual results, of course, may differ materially, and we're not undertaking to update forward-looking statements except for as required by law.
One more note. As we read the questions at the end, I do have to say that we'll have to keep the conversation within the realm of public information. I know there's often shareholders that call me and ask me if they want real-time answers. "Hey, how's sales going? How's the strategic opportunity? Can we do XYZ?" When we answer your questions, we have to answer within the realm of public information. When something requires formal disclosure, we will be upfront about it, and we'll do a press release informing all investors at the same time. With your questions, I do have to stay in the realm of what's already publicly available, but we do look forward to giving clarity and speaking to those comments.
Yeah. . The reason we scheduled this town hall, is that Worksport's story has moved quickly since our Q1 earnings call. In our Q1, we gave investors a baseline. Revenue was growing. Gross profit was growing faster than revenue. SOLIS and COR were moving into commercialization. NEXUS had launched. We landed our first national distributor, Tri-State. We continue to target operational cash flow positivity within this year. Since then, the company has released several key updates that we believe need to be understood altogether. We achieved a preliminary 35% gross margin in May. We added another multinational distributor, Meyer Distributing, as a major partner. We outlined a $36 million plus annualized revenue opportunity supported by direct-to-consumer sales and B2B expansion. We're complemented by our existing run rate of $21 million and growing.
To be clear on that press release, if it wasn't already clear, we have a run rate of in the 20s of millions. With the addition of these new businesses, we think that we have a run rate of the $35 million, $36 million. Run rate means a year from that day, not within this year. We're going to try our absolute best to hit as many millions of sales within this year. At least we hit that run rate, which is a really, really good update for us. We completed direct investments, including one at a premium to the then-trading price. I have twice taken equity in lieu of cash compensation this year. Our shares closed back above $1 on June 24th, which was a huge milestone for us. We were never delinquent or in violation of any Nasdaq rules, which was great.
We believe this keeps the company in full compliance with Nasdaq's minimum bid price requirement. Of course, super exciting, Terravis Energy continues to be progressing with its revolutionary AetherLux ZeroFrost platform, following the recent U.S. patent that we got granted, which is fantastic.
It's a lot, eh, Steve? I mean, individually, those are important updates. Collectively, they tell a much stronger story, a story that I loved speaking with investors about. It's about us moving from a point where we invested tens of millions of dollars and years to build a foundation to now we're building out operating conversion growth, scale, margins, revenue, business partnerships. Everything is finally aligning to the point where manufacturing efficiency is turning into more revenue, higher margin, and ultimately, bringing us closer to that operational cash flow positivity goal that we've been repeatedly saying we anticipate to target in the near term.
Yeah. Let me start with what changed since our first quarter earnings call. Q1 was a launch readiness and inventory readiness quarter. We reported net sales of $3.3 million, $3.31 million, which was up year-over-year almost 50%, 47.9%, and gross profits of almost $1 million, $855,000, up 115% year-over-year. The quarter-over-quarter wasn't strong, Black Friday quarter, Q4, is always our strongest quarter. This is important because gross profit grew faster than revenue, which is exactly what investors should want to see as a manufacturing platform scales. We notably did have a net operating loss and revenue was up sharply from Q4. Revenue wasn't up sharply, and this had to do with seasonality, inventory investments, and some final foundational investments. We reinvested in Q1. Not a bad quarter, definitely a quarter we're going to continue to build off of.
Since then, we've had several key commercial and operating developments. Very, very important things have happened in Q2. Most significantly, the NEXUS is now at market, so go on worksport.com and check it out. It's the only one of its kind, and we invented it, and we're so proud of it. This is an important product because it's not just another cover. It addresses practical consumer pain points, especially with ease of operation, single-sided operation, speed, and safety. For a competitive tonneau cover market, the product differentiator matters for sure.
Steve, I wonder if investors are truly aware of how important NEXUS is to our business line, considering that our last financials reported in March and this product came out in April. Could you describe the NEXUS in your own words and speak to why it's very relevant?
Yeah. There's a couple key things to pay attention to. Number one, our competitors have a flip-up tonneau cover like ours. They came out with it first, actually. Ours has done a little bit better. There's no drilling involved, so our AL4 flips up against the back window. As an operator, if you have a truck, you have to go around the truck a few different times. You have to fold it up, you have to buckle it, you flip it up against the back window. You engage one prop rod, you have to do a trip around the truck, engage another prop rod, lock that in, do another trip around the truck. It's kind of unsafe if you're on a roadside, parking lots. It's inconvenient if it's raining and you want to get out of the elements, or snowing.
It's inconvenient if you're up against a curb, snowbank, depending on weather. You just don't want to do laps around the truck. It's just not necessarily conducive to ease of operation. You have this fully loaded truck with all of these amazing endowments, you've got this kind of dumb technology on the back of it. That is directly referring to our AL4. It's a more basic flip-up tonneau cover. Now we have this NEXUS, and the NEXUS is the only cover of its kind. We own this market, we own the IP around it, that offers you taillight-to-door operation. You get out, you open up your tailgate, you fold it open, it automatically locks up nice and easy, you get back in your truck, you carry on with your day.
It really is the NEXUS of tonneau covers, we think that the 17,000 stores in America are going to start really catching on to it. They already have. It's outpacing the growth that we had from the AL4 by double. We think it's the next generation of covers that complement the well-endowed pickup trucks. The best features come first in a pickup truck. The GMC Sierra Denali, the F-150 Platinums, they all have the latest and greatest features. We wanted to make a cover that met that truck, the NEXUS really is that. It also recently directly contributed to recent distributor movements, it's really aided in our growth. We're able to land Tri-State. It was an important first step as a distributor that services the Midwest, South, and very key truck states. That distributor's actively growing.
Meyer Distributing is multinational, services Canada and the U.S., a much larger validation point. Meyer is a respected automotive aftermarket distributor with a broad reach of distributors, government installers, upfitters, fleets, these types of things. The initial purchase order was important, the larger potential for these distributors is the B2B channel flow, as Worksport works its way through all the different aftermarket networks and reseller channels.
That is really important to highlight for investors. One of the key stats that I like quoting, we did $4 million in B2B revenue in 2025, approximately. In 2026, we are already at a run of approximately $8 million, within 12 months, we are expecting that B2B run rate to be about $25 million annually. Sometime around June 2027, we expect a $25 million B2B run rate as opposed to $4 million in 2025 and $8 million currently today. That is a tremendous jump, that speaks to what the NEXUS, as well as the Worksport brand, is doing in terms of growth.
We have got a fully stacked deck of cards at this point, metaphorically speaking. We could not be much more excited. Speaking of the excitement on Terravis Energy, super excited about that. I feel like the market overlooked the issuance of the patent of the ZeroFrost, otherwise applied to the AetherLux heat pump in general. It has strengthened our IP foundation on the platform. I want to be clear, Terravis Energy is not the core 2026 revenue driver, it is important for long-term strategic upside assets. Certification work continues to progress. Investors should know that we are just finalizing the certification. We are knee-deep in certification work right now to get all the certifications it needs to meet all the standards to be bought by government agencies, entities, businesses, sold in the U.S. and abroad. It is something that is getting a strong amount of interest.
It has a 50 times larger total addressable market than Worksport's tonneau cover core business. This product is expected to be certified within 2026, so within the rest of this year. When? The answer is not soon enough. Obviously, we want it certified right away. We are pushing, it will happen when it happens. With such a large market and the fact that it is so innovative, all of these things aggregate to a significant opportunity for investors to participate in, Worksport owns most of that business. It is very exciting. Continuing forward on the topic of capital and alignment, I have taken Worksport equity twice this year in lieu of cash compensation at $75,000 worth at $0.85, in April at $50,000 worth of stock at $0.63 in early June. My only source of income is Worksport. I wish I had other businesses.
I don't wish I had other businesses, but Worksport's the only thing that I focus on, my only income's there, and I exchanged compensation for stock, doubling down. I believe that this is going to be worth a lot more than the cash would've been to me. I did this because I believe in the company's long-term value, the value creation, the opportunity, and because I believe we, as management, should be aligned with the shareholders. I want to put more of my skin in the game. We also completed a recent direct investment. While no emerging growth company likes issuing equity, I understand that. The key point is how capital is used and whether it supports value creation. Can we multiply those investor dollars?
Our goal is to reduce reliance on external capital by growing revenue, gross margin, and converting inventory and improving operational efficiencies. We're almost out of that at this point, and once we're cash flow positive, we won't have to rely on any outside source of capital, and we'll be generating profits on our side, and we're right there. The most important recent operating key metric is the preliminary May gross margins that were 35%. That's a major change from where the company was a year ago. We've disclosed that gross margins were roughly only 11% in December of last year, or, sorry, 2024, approximately 30% of December in 2025. They dipped a little bit in Q1 of 2026 to just under 29%, 28.4%, and approximately 35% in May based on preliminary internal results.
This really does matter with our base materials being a little inflated at this point, aluminum being so expensive.
It's really interesting, right? Because at a higher gross margin, every dollar that the company makes has more potential to cover our fixed costs, and that's what operating leverage really means. The factory, the people, the systems, equipment, product infrastructure have been built now, and now our job is to push them through more contributions so that they have stronger impact. We estimate that at 35% gross margin, which would need $9 million of quarterly revenue to achieve operational cash flow positivity. Earlier, our cash run rate, annual rate revenue is about $20 million-ish. That's already at a $5 million quarter as of the date that we quoted that, which I believe was in May. The trajectory's already moving nicely towards that $9 million. That number is not a magic line. It can move depending on product mix, channel mix, marketing efficiency, working capital, operating expenses.
I think it's a useful framework for investors to know that we're aiming for 35% at $9 million a quarter. We believe in the near term, near term as defined within 12 months, can achieve that goal. Given that in May 2026, we achieve that 35% gross margin and revenues are looking stronger and new deals are coming in, cash flow positivity is looking more viable day after day, and we expect to continue targeting it strong.
Very important to mention is we're actively working to make that $9 million a quarter revenue target smaller. We're looking at cleaning out the operation of the business and finding efficiencies where possible. The practical way to do that is not complicated. Improve gross margins, improve channel mix, reduce unnecessary costs, increase throughput, optimize marketing returns, reduce fulfillment friction, and keep SG&A discipline. If we can generate more contribution from every dollar of revenue and keep operating costs controlled, the revenue level required to get to operational cash flow positivity can come down, and that's really a gold medal for us.
I think that's what we mean when we say hidden operating leverage. Worksport looks very different at a 35% margin than it did at 11%. The same dollar has a different impact, and our objective is to increase sales velocity while preserving the margin improvements that we have earned.
Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about our commercial engine. We have two major channels, B2B and B2C, business to consumer, business to business, resellers, retail. Business to consumer is valuable because it gives us customer data, it gives us higher margin, direct brand engagement, faster feedback. The reseller or B2B is valuable because it can create a broader reach, dealer penetration, repeat ordering, and distribution at scale.
In our June 25 update, we described the current revenue as $21 million and growing. That's not the same as a full year revenue guidance, and it's not a guarantee, but it's an important momentum marker because it shows that the company is no longer only talking about these future orders and future commercialization. We're actively converting the commercial demand. B2C is currently at about $1 million per month or $12 million annualized, and that continues to grow every single day. It's an important channel because it helps validate consumer demand. It can be margin creative if managed with disciplined marketing spend. Importantly, on the B2B side, as we were talking about earlier, it's already at $8 million-plus annual run rate.
With now Meyer, Tri-State, Patriot, AllPro, our existing wholesale relationships, as well as the broader dealer network that we're actively targeting, management believes B2B annualized revenue has the potential to exceed over $24 million the next 12 months. Put simply, B2B has the potential to become a much larger contributor, and it's already showing that it's working and it's headed that way.
Yeah. When you combine current B2C with the B2B opportunity, we've described a $36 million annualized revenue opportunity. That number should be understood as a revenue opportunity supported by channel rent, not a guarantee. It's also where we are today, and we're obviously fighting and pushing towards more. It gives shareholders a framework for why these distribution announcements matter. Meyer is not just a headline, it's a potential access to more dealers, deeper install networks, and repeatable wholesale order flow. It basically covers more ground for us than we could just on our own. Our core focus for 2026 revenue driver really remains tonneau covers, SOLIS COR, and NEXUS and distribution growth. The COR and the NEXUS are going to get a lot of focus for the rest of this year. The NEXUS, we just wrapped up all the marketing assets on.
NEXUS, as we discussed, is important because it gives us the tonneau cover portfolio. It gives our tonneau cover portfolio fresh product with clear differentiation. The tonneau cover market is competitive, and we need products that are easy to use, durable, secure and positioned better for consumer and pro-install channels. The SOLIS and the COR remain strategically important because they extend Worksport beyond the truck bed protection into mobile power, so a much bigger market for anybody and everyone. The strategic idea is simple: cover, solar generation, portable energy storage, and utility for truck owners, overlanders, workers, emergency users and potentially commercial customers like fleets or maybe the government. COR certification was an important execution milestone, because certification is often a gatekeeper for large retailers, distributors, fleets, and commercial opportunities. We're really excited that we have that certification.
Now we're switching our focus to the energy side of the business for the back half of this year, for the second half. I think that things are going to be a lot better when we start mixing in more COR sales and more SOLIS sales into the mix that we don't already have. On that, I wanted to talk a little bit more about Terravis and the AetherLux. It remains a separate upside platform. The ZeroFrost patent strengthens our IP position. Certification remains a key milestone. We're working hard towards it, and we're not building the 2026 revenue plan around the AetherLux, and I don't want shareholders to misunderstand that. The current operating focus is Worksport commercial product lineup and distribution scale, while Terravis remains a strategic upside.
We'll update investors when the certification commercialization. We'll update you guys on partnerships or licensing milestones as they become appropriate to disclose. I also wanted to address the shareholders directly on capital and share price. We know dilution matters. We know shareholders are sensitive to financing, so am I. Management is sensitive to it too. My view is that capital must be tied to operational return, inventory conservation, distribution scale, product launches, manufacturing efficiencies, and really ultimately a path to cash flow positivity. The recent financing we did was an investment price of $1.20 per unit with warrants exercised at $1.50, and the additional interest expressed up to $10 million of potential future financing subject to market conditions and their appetite, and also available registration capacity and regulatory requirements to fit into documents, approvals, all of these things.
There's a lot to get to $10 million, we're going to take it in stride and we're going to raise capital as needed, and we're going to avoid dilution as much as possible as well. What matters is we're attracting capital interest while we're trying to execute through key operating, through a transformative year for us. We don't want to take any more capital than strategically necessary at this stage. We'd rather take enough in to increase the enterprise value and then take more capital at a strategic level, or maybe it's debt financing that's not dilutive in these types of things.
Thanks, Steve. I think that context is really important, and we're always going to be happy to chat with investors and have that commentary and conversation as it needs to. A lot of the key questions that I received over the last few weeks had to do with the common stock and closing above $1. Thankfully, and fortunately, I think that the market has started to see a better reception of Worksport's press releases. On June 24th, we did close above $1, and we believe that keeps Worksport fully in compliance with the minimum bid requirement. Compliance matters, our deep focus is on the business behind the ticker and the stock price. We do not control the daily market pricing.
We do control execution, and we believe that as a company moves closer to operational cash flow positivity reduces uncertainty, the intrinsic value of the business should be better reflected on the stock price over time. Currently, we are still trading below book value, and we are painting this picture of a operational cash flow positive future coming, high revenue growth rate. We expect that to have better opportunity inside the market as it continues and as it executes.
No doubt. To close the prepared portion, where Faran and I wanted to have some of this open conversation. I want shareholders to understand our priorities for the second half of this year. First, grow revenue. Second, maintain and expand margin progress. We're going to try to squeeze every percent of margin, and we're going to try to get as many sales as possible. We, as shareholders, I say this all the time on X or Twitter, we all want the exact same things. Third is we're going to try to convert inventory into sales. Fourth, we're going to scale distributor and dealer relationships. Fifth, we're going to continue with the NEXUS. We're going to start really diving deep into the SOLIS and COR commercialization. Sixth, we're really going to advance Terravis Energy certifications and really position that business unit strategically.
Seven, we're going to maintain capital discipline and keep working towards operational cash flow positivity. This is the phase that we've really been working so hard towards, and the company has more products, stronger margins, broader distribution, more public visibility, and a cleaner operating framework. Also, a much more visible path towards cash flow improvement than it had a year ago. There's still execution risk. We're still working hard. I say also all the time, it's not a straight line. It's not always pretty. We're going to try not to overpromise, and we believe in the foundation. We believe that it's stronger, what we built today, and we're focused on turning the foundation into execution results.
Thanks, Steve. I think that's a perfect segue into Q&A. We did get a decent amount of questions in advance via email, and I encourage investors that as we continue to do town halls, do email us at investors@worksport.com and ask your questions. Today, we are joined by our analyst covering the stock from Maxim Group, and we'll let him go first with a live question before we proceed with the other investor questions in this call.
Well, thanks, Ali. Hi, it's Tate Sullivan. Thanks, Steve, for all the comments. Can you update on potential relationships with truck manufacturers, or is that a sales channel you still want to pursue, or more on the business on the distributor end? Can you comment on the OEM effort, please?
Yeah. Good question. Tic-tac-toe, we needed to get our house in order. We got production really well established, under control. We needed to be able to memorialize that, and we did that with the ISO certification, which is a very important milestone for us to reach to be able to achieve or access OEM distribution, OEM-type business. Now that we've checked, we've gotten everything in order on our side, and now we've memorialized that with ISO. We are able to start proceeding with the OEM conversations. Obviously, we're not going to be able to talk much about it specifically, but look out for that in the near term. Well, at some point, hopefully, this year, we're going to start looking at OEM relationships and getting those covers sold through truck manufacturers or installed directly on brands.
That would include, obviously, the big three domestic, Ford, General Motors, Stellantis, Ram. Obviously we have Nissan, Hyundai, Honda, Toyota, and then we have EV automakers like Rivian and Slate.
What does the ideal partnership look like with the truck manufacturer/OEMs pay you directly and then just deliver the trucks with your tonneau covers on there, or would it be a customer choice? How might it work?
When we talk about Ram as an example, Ram has Ram Direct, where we ship them product, and they install it at the factory floor. There's three options. Option one is they install it directly on the factory as a base accessory. Then Number two is they sell it through their parts. Instead of going through Ram, it goes through Mopar, if that metaphor makes sense. Then Number three is they become a dealer or a marketplace for our product. Usually, one transitions to the next. It's fluid. It'll go from maybe they'll sell your product, to they'll offer it in their accessory catalog, to they'll install it on the vehicle itself. Usually going direct to install at the factory could be dangerous. There's a risk there. While you're establishing that relationship, and the warranty and quality required by OEMs is significant.
It's better to ease into these types of relationships as opposed to going straight for the biggest side of it, like going direct to install our cover on the Tesla Cybertruck at the factory. We may not want that strategically until we've dipped our foot in the water of the business relationship, because otherwise the warranty risk and the cash required is crazy. Just you know, in the industry, for every dollar you sell an OEM on a tonneau cover, a warranty costs you eight. If we sell them a $1,000 tonneau cover and something goes awry, it's going to cost us $8,000 on the back end between assessments. You have to tear down the cover. You have to have outside companies report on what failed and why, all of these things. We want to make sure that we ease into these types of relationships.
Just one more, if I may. I'll turn it over to the audience for more questions. Is NEXUS going to be most of your revenue, or do you still sell prior versions of hard covers, or how might that mix change?
We have a strategy. NEXUS is going to be, obviously, I think, probably the clear revenue driver. AL4 is going to probably transition to a jobber, installer, direct-type product. The AL3 product is probably going to be a door crasher on the Worksport ecosystem. We're going to try to get the AL3 platform, our first more basic cover, to be as cost-competitive as possible to really compete with the imported products. I've said this before many times. There's nothing worse than a foreign product sold by a foreign company that vacuums cash out of the economy. We want to stay competitive with those, for lack of a better phrase of saying it, Chinese Amazon products. Because every time someone buys a Chinese-made, Chinese-owned company tonneau cover on Amazon, their $500 gets vacuumed out of the economy into China.
We want to be able to make the AL3 a door crasher kind of product so we can keep the cash in the economy here. Because it's still 93% American-sourced and made by American hands. We're gold medal of Made in America.
Absolutely. Well, thank you very much for having the town hall.
Thanks, Tate. Thanks for joining.
Thanks, Steve. Thanks, Tate, for your questions. Steve, we have a question here in the chat from a Jack B. From a macro perspective, what's your perspective on foreign and Chinese imports in the U.S. truck bed cover industry and market? What are the trends you have seen in the past, and what do you expect going forward, specifically around the tariff market?
Yeah. Jack, if I met you, I'd shake your hand right now. It's a great question. I want to say that I personally dislike Amazon as a marketplace. I'll tell you why. Amazon's quickly turned into a low-cost alternative. It's where more foreign products go to be very cost-competitive. You have Dyson vacuums that are $400 or $500, and then you have this almost a replica for $50 or $60. It's helping us, but it hurts us first. The average American consumer has been bitten by that lower-cost product too many times now. They've bought something that they think is going to save them a few dollars, and then it just doesn't last or doesn't work as well. My perspective on foreign or Chinese imported products is that the quality just isn't there. You really do get what you pay for.
When you could buy an American-made product with the best domestic customer service for $600 and the equivalent imported product is only 10% or 15% less, it just doesn't make sense. We've got to try to get our costs down while still being profitable. The trends I see are very cyclical, but now they're really cycling in favor of Made in America. I think that the average consumer, as I said earlier, has been bitten by the low-cost product. You buy a copycat Dyson vacuum, and you think that you've saved $400 because it's only $50 instead of $450, and then it just doesn't work. There's only a few times that the consumer's going to want to deal with that before they just say, "You know what? I'm going to bite the bullet." The problem is, the economy right now in North America is a little stressed.
The consumer is a little stressed out with inflation. We think we're going to weather a little bit of a storm while consumers are being more cautious on where they spend their dollars. I think in the years coming, when inflation hopefully gets reversed, finally, things will come full circle, and people will be spending more, and they'll, at that point, be very focused on trying to get the best value for their dollar, which is going to be a Made in America product.
Thanks, Steve. I think that was a pretty sufficient answer. We have a question here from a Robert T. surrounding the COR. The question is, where do you stand with negotiations in getting the COR into big box outlets? Do you have the capital and capacity to support this type of large-scale initiative? I think that we can't talk too much about where we stand with active negotiations, but we can definitely talk about the second part on capital and capacity and how we would target it.
Yeah. We have seven figures gone, right, in inventory of the COR. We have enough to jumpstart that cycle. Obviously, big box stores are a good marketplace, but the same kind of metaphor with the OEMs, going direct to Ram trucks and installing your cover on the factory is the biggest contract, but it has the biggest risk. Going direct to big box stores is I think going straight there is difficult. What a more prudent path might look like is partnering with Home Depot, for example, and becoming a marketplace vendor and seeing how it sells through there, where they just take a commission. Maybe trying some key stores. They have, like, 1,000 stores, I think. Trying, like, 50 of their best stores and then legging into these types of relationships.
While you leg into it, you mitigate risks of downside, like a warranty, maybe sell-through challenges or returns. You also are able to ramp up the revenue to self-finance that, as opposed to that the risk with Home Depot being like, "Fine, we're going to buy $10 million right now." Now you have $10 million of revenue, but you have probably more than $10 million in risk. Starting a little slow and modestly allows you to leg into things with much more reduced risk, and being able to fix problems as they come up before they become too big. If that makes sense. If we've shown anything, it's that maybe we're not the fastest to grow, and it's not because of lack of demand, but because we really like to mitigate risk and otherwise things go sideways quickly.
I don't want to talk much longer about it. I will say a friend of mine came to me a decade ago, he said, "Hey, I got this Costco contract for winter wheels." He says, "They're going to buy all the winter steel rims from me." I said, "I don't know if you want to do that. Costco is pretty nefarious." He's went ahead and mortgaged his house to sell, I think, a million and a half dollars of Costco aluminum rims. Did Costco return $1 million of them at the end of the year, and he went bankrupt. These big box stores are difficult, we know what they do, we've just got to leg into these types of relationships methodically.
Thanks, Steve. We have a question-
By the way. Hey, Bob. I know you very well, and thanks for communicating with me all the time. Hi, Bob.
We have here a question from Krasimir, and it actually aligns with question 11 that we received over email. The question is, where are you with SOLIS and COR? Are you in line with the expectations that you initially had with the products? Where is the revenue target for this year or maybe next? Far publicly, we have talked about the COR and SOLIS in Q1. We didn't give revenue targets for this year and next. Maybe going outside of revenue targets specifically, I think maybe we can rehash the conversation of where we are with this product and sort of what we're seeing and how we're targeting it in the market.
It's difficult. The COR and the SOLIS are a product that never existed before. When you make an AL3, and it's similar to a Solid Fold by Extang or a Rugged Liner cover, it's easy to target existing customers. There's already a market. That's why people copy other products, because there's already an existing market, and you just got to be cheaper, and voila, you're into the market. SOLIS never existed before, ever. COR versions of it existed. I did a video that we're going to launch pretty soon showing a drill that has a built-in battery. The built-in battery generator system exists. Nothing like our COR exists, where it's an unlimited amount of energy kind of system.
It takes a lot of time to be able to develop the marketing assets and then find the right marketing channels, influencers, affiliates, all of these things. At the beginning of the year, we did launch the COR and the SOLIS, but we were also launching the NEXUS, which was the more clear opportunity. We put all of our marketing efforts into NEXUS, and now the NEXUS is done. It's basically done. All of our marketing department, which is, you see everything that they do online, all of the brilliant minds there are going to be focused for the second half of the year exclusively on COR and SOLIS. CORs, we're not selling a heck of a lot of them, and that's on purpose.
I can't give you a number, not because I'm veiling anything, but because we've sold maybe between 50 to 100 CORs, for example. That's on purpose. We just haven't focused on it. We're going to sell millions of dollars, or our intention is to sell millions of dollars of COR, throughout the years, as much as possible. We have to focus the marketing departments to get that built out. The SOLIS is actually selling quite well. We're selling on a frequent basis. They sell daily, and there's no marketing dollars there. That's a very positive sign. We're excited for the second half of the year now that our focus is going to be switching to that.
I'd like to complement that question with two more insights. Number one, Worksport did 1 million tonneau covers the first year we started selling U.S.-made tonneau covers. The next year, it was $8.5 million. This is our first year of selling the SOLIS and COR, and we do anticipate it to scale up. With the COR, one of the key aspects that we have had faced from an environmental and a broader economic perspective is the tariffs. With the lithium-ion batteries specifically, we did end up paying a high percentage on the COR pricing on the tariffs. We noticed that competitors placed large orders well in advance of the tariffs, and we anticipate that either when the tariffs phase out or their inventory phases out, the pricing scheme between competitors and us does balance. On the SOLIS side, we're the only ones doing it.
The margins are healthy, the pricing is also healthy, and we do anticipate that to grow quickly as well. I will move to the next question, Steve. It's from Steven L, and it's related to patent protection for our products. He's asking what type of coverage we have across the globe.
Yeah. Good question. We have Nilay Choksi, he's our on-staff general counsel, started as our patent counsel, coming from Philips, and I value Nilay immensely as a colleague of mine in the upper management of the company. It's very expensive and very strategic on the patent side of things. We try to do PCTs, which allow us to pull down patents over a year or two on a global scale. Otherwise, we tend to focus on patenting products, our recipes. We patent our products in China so that we could obviously stop the export of copycats. Then we try to patent within North, South, and Central America. Sometimes we pick Eurasia or Australia, New Zealand, and then sometimes we pick Europe. Getting into some of these European countries, in E.U. can be expensive and very challenging, with translations and weird patent laws.
You can assume that most of our products are patented in North America and in China, at minimum. We may touch Europe, we may touch Eurasia or Australia, New Zealand, and we may look selectively at some of Central and South America. What I will say is the ZeroFrost patent is going to be the most expensive one for us. We're going to go everywhere with that, because the heat pump market is not just a North America thing. It's a global thing. It's a massive market. That's our strategy there.
Thanks, Steve. We have an anonymous Zoom question here that I'll take myself. The question is if we can give insight on the book-to-bill ratio monthly or quarterly as part of our public information, and it's congratulating us on great growth so far. I believe the answer to that best stated is we've been doing build to order as well as using our existing inventory. Thankfully, we have not had a situation where we've had a large backlog, especially as our B2B orders start building up and the volume's starting to come in in much more aggressive manners. We have been having discussions about backlog and who gets what and which priority goes where. We would be happy to disclose that better in public financials as it happens. Currently, we have no backlog that's a significant amount.
As we start building a backlog, you can imagine that the largest distribution orders would have a little bit of longer backlog than perhaps the dealer network would or the B2C individuals would. I'll top it off with we never want backlog to be into the weeks. We would try our best to keep it into the days.
Yeah. Faran, I want to get through all of these questions, the live ones. Let's get through all of them if possible, please.
Yes, sir. Mike T, his question is: what is your biggest challenge overall right now, and what do you need to fix it?
I know Mike. Hey, Mike. How you doing, handsome? The biggest challenges. Boy. Biggest challenges is finding the right amount of sales growth. B2B, as you know, is very difficult, and growing within those markets is challenging, covering so much ground. Also making sure that we don't overspend, making sure that we're fighting inflation is very difficult. With the prices of aluminum having gone from $1.30 a pound to $2.60 a pound for American aluminum doesn't help anybody. Thank God all of our competitors, they're dealing with the same problem, so they're raising their pricing as well. Actually, we're not really raising our pricing. We're just reducing our discount. The challenges are growing as fast as possible, striking while the iron's hot and being strategic, and then also not jumping on landmines.
As you can see, Mike, here, investors want that brand partnership and they want that Cabela's partnership, and they want that Home Depot PO and Walmart PO. Investors sometimes. I'm not knocking investors, I want it too, but they don't understand the inherent risks. I think you know, coming from aftermarket, that if you go straight to an OEM and you become a factory-installed item, if something goes wrong, which can and usually does, you're losing way more money than you ever thought about making. It's being highly strategic in our growth and making sure that we're stable. Meanwhile, yeah, we've in a handful of years grown a tonneau cover business that's $30 million in run rate. I don't think that's ever been heard of. I think BAK Industries was around for 30 years, and they were at $50 million.
After their 30th year, we're going to be in the 30s of millions of run rate in our third year. I think we're doing quite well. Otherwise, just keeping it all together and keeping everyone rolling together and pushing that boulder up.
Thanks, Steve. I did answer a few questions over chat, but I did want to ask this one quickly, because I think it'll be interesting for everyone to hear, is what were the initial purchase orders for Meyer and Tri-State? If you can't speak to that, could you at least talk to the reorder cadence and seasonality? Are you assuming from them within the revenue run rate? I guess within that $25 million, or projection that we have spoken about.
I see it's Steve. Steve Wang. Thanks for asking the question, Steve. I want to answer the first part of it, but I can't. It's non-public. I just can't. I promise you I can't. I could say that we've gotten reorders from one, and the other one just went out like a week ago, so we expect more orders from the other. I don't see a lot of seasonality. The seasonality we have in the business is the doldrum of summer. Like August is not a bad month, it's just a slower month because everyone's on that last-minute vacation. June and July are busy because they're getting ready for that road trip or whatever. As soon as September hits, we get the late summer and fall markets, which are strong. Then we got Black Friday, November, which is wild.
It could be a $2 million month, and it could be a $10 million month. It just depends. As soon as Christmas, you'd think that people would buy tonneau covers for Christmas. They don't. As soon as December, as soon as Black Friday's over, and December hits, you're quiet December, January, February. Those three months are pretty quiet. It's not like dead quiet, it's just sales are slower. We could run promos more strategically at that point, but it depends on our cost. It depends on if there's any additional inflation. The higher our cost goes, the less we could discount is the way you got to look at it. Yeah. What I could say is, with distribution, though, we reach deeper into fleets, governments, and these types of things where we're more sheltered from the seasonality of direct-to-consumer sales, if that makes sense.
Thanks, Steve. I think that's a great answer. I'll go ahead and answer a question from Ramesh B. He was asking a question related to the heavy volume in millions of shares that have traded in the last 10 days compared to the historical averages. I think that, Ramesh, the best answer here is the only answer, which is we have no insight to what has caused that normally high volume over the last few days. Outside of the recent news releases surrounding the recent business financings, revenue growth, margin growth, as well as us as a business landing Meyer distribution. We posted those press releases to the market. It seemed like there was a positive reaction both in price and volume. What specifically caused it to trade hundreds of millions of shares versus maybe 5 million or 500,000, we have no idea.
I remember one time, Faran, as an anecdote, Ramesh. One time, the stock was going crazy, and we were trading a lot of stock, and I remember my phone started buzzing and buzzing and buzzing. I just answered arbitrarily, and it was like an investor or a bank, and he's like, "Oh my God, what are you doing? What are you doing? The stock is going crazy, and your price is up, and your volume's up." I'm like, "I'm presently in my mother's living room, getting yelled at by her, lectured by her." It's an anecdote, and it's a stupid one, but investors think that we're in a roundtable with computers and screens, doing deals and talking to bankers and stuff. Sometimes you know better than we do.
Faran and I are on calls talking strategy and opportunities, then something just happens in the market. It'll go down 20%, and investors like, "What did you do?" It's like, "We were talking about sales. I don't know what we did. We did nothing." The answer is sometimes boring, and it's just that we don't know. I promise you, if we did know, we'd tell you. A lot of our days are just spent doing this, Zoom meetings and team meetings or meeting in person, talking sales and strategy and what happens in the markets up or down. Usually, we have no idea. We find out about it through you guys.
Thanks, Steve. I do want to wrap this up. I know that there's a lot of others left on email, as well as one question that you see here related to ZeroFrost. We want to give the note that we will be doing this again. We will try to continue engaging investors through this sort of medium. If you have some feedback on how we can make this better, more suitable, and more informative for you, please go ahead and email us, we look forward to continuing giving investors positive updates as well as speaking to investors about past updates and building this great company together with you.
Yeah, we're going to try to do these every month, so continue to engage with me. I think it's @SteveRossiWKSP on X. You X me or tweet me. I'm there. Email us, you get Faran. We're always open to conversations. Then from there, we'll have these on a monthly basis and just continue to answer questions and give updates. I guess we'll wrap it up at that. Right, Faran?
Yes, sir. Thank you all. Thank you so much.
All right. Thanks, everyone.
Hope to see you soon.
Thanks for coming. See you soon.