Tekcapital (LSE:TEK) — Investor Q&A

0:02 Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the TEKCAPITAL PLC Investor Presentation. The q and a tab that's just situated on the right hand corner of your screen. Please just simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting itself. However, the company will review all questions submitted today and publish responses where it is appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I would like to submit

0:34 the following poll. And if you could give that your kind attention, I'm sure the company would be most grateful. And I'd now like to hand you over to CEO, doctor Clifford Gross. Good afternoon, sir. Well, thank you for the kind introduction. Very, very pleased to be here today and to share with you a brief update on TEKCAPITAL. For those who might be tuning in for the first time, I'll let you know that our entire business is about creating value from investing in new university discoveries that if successful can make a positive impact on people's lives. And we have done this by constructing a portfolio around a number of technologies, and we invest in these technologies.

1:20 We build the companies around them from scratch. We hire either the CEO or senior directors, and then we provide assistance to them as they seek to gain their footing in their markets. We also offer services to about 250 universities around the world to help them analyze the market potential of their discoveries. And perhaps most, saliently, we have a multiyear track record of significant growth of our net assets, which is our most important KPI and return on invested capital. In the last reported period, which was the first half of last year, we we reckoned a 13% increase of our net assets to a record of about $76,900,000.

2:07 Revenue was $8,000,000 for the period for the half year period, and profit after tax was 6,700,000. Diluted earnings per share was was 5¢.

2:21 Again, as as previously stated, the most important KPI for our business is the growth of net assets, and we've been shepherding this along quite well, since 2018 from $16,000,000 to just under $77,000,000. And, of course, there will be fluctuations from period to period because of our net assets are primarily the summary of the net assets of our portfolio companies, which obviously will vary based on portfolio company performance as well as other macroeconomic factors. Just stepping back for a second to see where we extract some of our technologies is from a network of universities and research centers that we have built electronically around the world. We have about 4,500 institutions that we collect data from continuously, and we're able to see, I won't say all, but most of the new discoveries coming from these institutions in every area of science, medicine, and engineering.

3:28 And that's the starting point. And from there, we filter those technologies down. We do due diligence on technologies that we think are interesting or potentially interesting, and then we seek to assess the market potential of those technologies before we pull the trigger and make a buy decision. So using this network and the process that we've developed in house at TEKCAPITAL, we've built four portfolio companies, again, all from a clean piece of paper. The first one was Bellisquera, the second, Lucid, the third, Guidance, and fourth, MicroSalt. Belliscura, was built around four and a half years ago, and, it was it was designed to make medical devices more affordable for individuals.

4:17 And they've been very successful at improving their design of a portable oxygen concentrator with modularity. And that device was cleared by the FDA, and they were successful at their flotation about a year and a half ago. And we currently own 12% of that business. We've lightened up slightly on it, which was valued at around $8,000,000 as of the beginning of February. Our second portfolio company, Lucid, which has an operating division in The United States called Innovative Eyewear, makes smart eyewear. This is eyewear that's Bluetooth enabled, which allows you to take and make calls, listen to music, talk to digital assistants like Siri, Google Voice, or Alexa, order an Uber, send cash through Vimeo, do all sorts of things you could do with your cell phone or your desktop all through your glasses and through prescription glasses or sunglasses.

5:16 And so it's just quite a remarkable, development that they have made in in making smart looking smart eyewear. And, that company was listed the Innovative Eyewear US operating business was listed a few months back on the, NASDAQ. We own about 71% of that company, which has a value at the beginning of February of around $13,000,000. And, I'd like to also mention that that was quite a remarkable achievement, to float that company. One, because it was an early stage business, and two, because last year was quite a difficult year in the capital markets, not just in The US, but worldwide. Yet, the company was able to achieve that goal because of, in our view, its compelling intellectual property position and the progress it has made in in commercializing, those properties.

6:07 Unquoted parts of our portfolio consist of Guidant, which is a business designed to make software that makes vehicles safer, especially autonomous vehicles, and MicroSalt, which is a business in the food tech area, which makes the world's, smallest edible salt crystals out of sodium chloride, that could be used to, salt foods with full flavor, but roughly half the sodium, which is quite an amazing achievement. And MicroSalt both MicroSalt and Guidant are are growing from strength to strength. We own about 91% of Guidant with a value of about $18,000,000 based on a independent valuation and a third party investment, arm's length investment over the last six months.

7:00 And then Microsoft, we own about 75 and a half percent of that business, which was valued at the end of h one of last year at 7,000,000. But subsequent to that, we converted our our convertible debt, which we held we held 1,350,000 worth of convertible debt in the company. We converted it all into shares of Microsoft at 20,000,000 pre money valuation due to the substantial progress that the business has made. And so that gives us a evaluation at least for the portion that we've converted of around $16,000,000 for our equity stake. We also had an independent valuation done to confirm that the 20,000,000 pre money valuation was not only accurate but sensible.

7:52 So that's our entire portfolio. Again, and these are the fruits of of commercializing new research discoveries that we feel could address white space in billion dollar markets, and if successful, can make a positive impact on the customers that the, devices or products serve. So going back to the first one, Belliscura, which is Latin for beautiful cure. They've introduced last year their first portable oxygen concentrator that's modular. Modularity is a very smart idea to have in portable oxygen concentrators because if you have COPD, which is the third leading cause of death in the world, which is, you know, primarily emphysema and chronic bronchitis, There's no cure for those lung diseases. They get worse over time, and so you need more supplemental oxygen to allow an individual suffering from those diseases to perform activities of daily living.

8:50 Normally, what you'd have to do pre Belliskyra is buy a larger portable oxygen concentrator as your disease progresses, and the devices are quite costly. They could range upwards to £3,000. And what Belliskyra did, which we thought was quite sagacious, is they said, do we have to get a larger device? Why don't we just make a larger filter cartridge that the user can easily replace? Kind of like upgrading memory on a laptop. And they were successful at developing this new feature and getting it cleared by the FDA. First, FDA cleared modularity to our reckoning. And now they're making and selling units that are upgradable by the user as their disease progresses. Net net, that makes portable oxygen concentrators more affordable for the many millions of people that need them worldwide.

9:41 And as I previously mentioned, TEKC owns about 12% of the company, about 15,000,000 shares, And we think the business has has good legs and should go from strength to strength over the the next few years.

9:59 Lucid, again, is the smart eyewear company that we formulated. We believe sort of our investment hypothesis is that smart eyewear will follow the trajectory of smart watches. Now the watch business is a very old business, a very successful and large business. The eyewear business is also old and successful, but much larger. It's upwards of a $140,000,000,000 a year. The watch business, which was dominated by traditional watches until recently, has really flipped on its end, and now the big part of the watch business is the smartwatch business. Apple, for example, is doing about $10,000,000,000 a year in smartwatches from zero a few years ago, and it's growing at a CAGR of around 24%.

10:49 So, really, it it's interesting if you look at the participants in the smartwatch business. It's not the Rolexes or the Swatches or the Timexes of the world. In other words, you know, the, this the storied names that, you know, built their footprint and brands in the traditional watch business. It's the tech companies that have introduced, the new smartwatches, and smartwatches retail between 200 to $400 a piece. More than a 100,000,000 of them were sold last year worldwide. It truly is the big part of the market. And so we think, the analogy is that it's very good for the eyewear business. Most eyewear sold today is traditional eyewear, and only a small infinitesimally small segment is smart eyewear. We think over the next couple, three years, that'll flip over, and most eyewear sold will be smart eyewear, especially if it's good looking, comfortable, and cost the same. So, basically, you get all the features you get in your traditional eyewear, plus you can re remain connected to your digital life.

11:59 So, we think it's a it's a a secular change in a very large traditional industry that's ripe for disruption. And we think Lucid and its U US operating business, Innovative potentially can be a disruptor for that industry and earn a piece of that very large $140,000,000,000 market. On the February 23, Innovative Eyewear launched Lucid Lite two point o, its most advanced line of smart eyewear on Amazon. And this eyewear is really quite amazing. It looks like regular designer glasses, good looking designer glasses. Comes in any prescription or sunglass format.

12:45 56 different lens types. It has quadraphonic sound, surround sound in the glasses, two noise canceling canceling microphones, Bluetooth, 5.3. So you could you could use the glasses up to a 100 feet away from your phone and still have crystal clear sound. So if you're a duffer and you you have your phone in your golf cart, no problem. You could be on the phone while you're while you're going to the green. If you're playing a pickup game of basketball, you can have your phone in your gym bag on the side of the court. Perfectly clear. And so, you know, we're very excited about what Innovative Eyewear has achieved. And, it's not just us that are excited about it. They've they've built a remarkable team and quite a following. They have their product in over 200 stores, and they have it online at bestbuy.com, dickssportinggood.com, and, of course, Amazon as well as their own site lucid.co.

13:46 And I encourage you to take a look at their glasses because they're really lovely looking frames, very cost cost competitive with traditional eyewear, yet they offer so much more.

14:01 Guidant is our autonomous vehicle software company. They make software that makes autonomous vehicles safer. And it's interesting in the state of Florida, Guidant was actually quite present about this. They they decided that the autonomous vehicles, no matter how smart the software was, would need another layer of safety on top of them in case they got into Dutch and you needed to have remote monitoring and control of those vehicles to take them off the the motorway, call first responder, etcetera. And as it turns out, about a year and a half after guidance was established, governor Ron DeSantis and the governor of Florida passed a law legalizing the operation of autonomous vehicles everywhere in the state of Florida, but requiring, that you either have a safety driver in the vehicle or you hook it up telemetrically to a remote monitoring and control center.

15:01 Well, putting a safety driver in a vehicle, is obviously a nonstarter because why have an autonomous vehicle if you have to have a driver there watching the autonomous system operate? And in the case of autonomous delivery devices, a pizza delivery device, there's no room for a driver of any type, safety or otherwise. The fact is those steering wheel or or control pedals in the vehicle is truly a robotic delivery device. So the remote monitoring and control became obviously a requirement in the state of Florida since that law was passed. The only fly in the ointment was there was no remote monitoring and control center to hook up a vehicle to, and that's where guidance has come in. They have acquired and developed quite an impressive, in our view, patent portfolio and have developed the technology above and beyond the patents to actually remotely monitor and control autonomous vehicles. And they've built the first remote monitoring and control center in Boca Raton. It's a city in Florida.

16:08 And so now there is a place to go where you can actually hook a telemetrically a vehicle up to to have it remotely monitored and allow it to comply with Florida law, which makes it legal to operate. Guidant has moved from an r and d company to a revenue generating company by achieving its first contract win with the with a a competitive bid under RFP. And, they won they won a contract with the Jacksonville Transportation Authority, which as many of you may know, Jacksonville is the largest city in terms of landmass in The United States, so they have quite a large municipal transportation authority. And that transportation authority wants to operate autonomous vehicles and has awarded a contract to Guidant to monitor those operations as required under Florida law.

17:00 And Guidant also recently announced that they are they have been selected by the Boca Raton Innovation Campus to provide remote monitoring and control services as well. Let's just go forward a second. The Boca Raton Innovation Campus is the largest real estate campus in the state of Florida. It's upwards of 2,000,000 square feet of rentable space covering a 110 acres. It has its own shuttle service with 11 stops and its own train station. And, guidance was selected, to operate the shuttle autonomously and remotely remotely monitor it as per Florida law. And now they're they're working on the negotiations for the contract items, and that should be in place this year.

17:50 So this will be the second customer. Additionally, Guidant announced just last week that they are under contract with Novosat, which is an Israeli satellite software company, to provide satellite monitoring of, vehicles that Guidant will be monitoring under its remote monitoring and control center. And this is an entirely additional level of safety. So right now, the vehicles that that Guidant monitors will have GPS. For those of you who know, you probably know that, you know, the GPS satellites, which are operated by the US government, they they're roughly at an altitude of around 20,000 kilometers or more above the earth and around 12,000 miles, and, they work very well. If you have four of them that could could, see your vehicle, you can dead reckon it and determine its precise location.

18:53 But with a 20,000 mile altitude, the latency period for when the signal gets to the vehicle is almost half a second. And in half a second, you can go quite a distance. You can go about at 30 miles an hour, you can go about 24 feet. So even though you think you're seeing the vehicle at a particular location, you're actually seeing it 24 feet away from where you think you're seeing it. And so in addition to that, the guidance offers the monitoring with a mobile network, so like a five g network, which can be a private LTE network or a public LTE, public network, and that increases the accuracy and reduces the latency. But using low Earth orbit satellites, which are at an altitude of around 2,000 kilometers, you can get a latency down to twenty seven milliseconds, And that same vehicle that you were monitoring with, say, GPS can now you could determine its exact location within 11 feet of when you're actually seeing it. So, again, it's not exactly real time, but it's closer.

20:00 And so it's an extra level of safety above the GPS monitoring and the mobile network monitoring to have the low earth orbit satellite monitoring for autonomous vehicles. And guidance is the only company in the world that could do all three levels of monitoring simultaneously.

20:19 And so it's quite a technological tour de force that they've been able to achieve, which is pretty amazing for a company of its size. But, once you get to know Harold Braun, its CEO, it seems less amazing because he's a remarkable, capable executive in our view.

20:39 Additionally, a guidance has another technology that allows you to convert the vibrations from shock absorbers into electricity to help recharge the battery of an electric vehicle or an autonomous vehicle. And, we originally acquired this technology from the, State University of New York and invested into guidance. Guidant has built these shock absorbers, has refined them further, has built a testing lab, and is now working with a number of companies like VW and others to see how successful these shock absorbers can be in extending the range of electric vehicles. Now there's a range war going on for electric vehicles where vehicle manufacturers, obviously, the two most important features for an electric vehicle are the safety of the vehicle and the range.

21:38 And the the range is is determined obviously by the the battery power you the amount of battery power you have on board, but also the operating characteristics of the vehicle, the efficiency of the motors, the weight of the vehicle, the coefficient of drag of the vehicle, etcetera. And so there is a war going on for electric vehicle manufacturers to extend the range. The longer the range, obviously, the more desirable for the customers. And so they're they're trying to reduce the weight of the vehicle any way they can. Some vehicles are they're trying to reduce the coefficient of drag. All electric vehicles currently have regenerative braking. No electric vehicles currently have regenerative shock absorbers.

22:25 Our investment thesis is that in the next couple three, four years, all electric vehicles will have both regenerative braking and regenerative shock absorbers, and we hope they'll be guidance shock absorbers. Whether they're guidance or not, we think it'll be a standard fare for electric vehicles because it increases the efficiency of the vehicles. It captures the vibrating energy that is normally dissipated in the form of heat and converts it into electricity, harvests it, puts it back into the battery. And, based on on guidance calculations, depending on the the type of road that you're driving on and the speed of the vehicle and the weight of the vehicle, For a class a road at 60 miles an hour, these shock absorbers can generate roughly a 100 watts a piece, which extends, the range by five to 12 miles depending upon other vehicle characteristics, which may not seem like a lot, but if it's your last five miles before you get home, it's everything you want. Now car manufacturers are also looking at photovoltaic sunroofs to generate and capture electricity in that manner, But regenerative shock absorbers are inherently more efficient than photovoltaic sunroofs.

23:41 They're somewhat less efficient than regenerative braking, but they're still, you know, significant. So we think it's an interesting additional technology and investment opportunity and guidance. Moving on, we have developed another company called MicroSalt, which has the patented process for producing micron sized salt crystals that are all natural, non GMO sodium chloride crystals. And the reason why that's a good thing to do is these very small crystals dissolve very rapidly on your tongue, and so they produce a larger sensation of saltiness in your brain than they otherwise would if they were larger crystals.

24:27 So you need to use less salt, which is the whole point of the exercise. How much less? It really depends on what you're applying it to. In the case of crisps, you you could apply roughly half the salt if it's microsalt, get full flavor that you would get on a normal crisp, but save about half the sodium. And the reason why that's a good thing is excess sodium consumption is the leading contributor to hypertension, which is the leading causative factor for cardiovascular disease, which is the number one cause of premature death in the world. Seventeen point nine million people die each year prematurely from cardiovascular disease. Approximately thirty one percent of the world's adult population has hypertension. In The UK, it's thirty one percent spot on. In The US, it's worse. Forty seven percent of The US population has hypertension.

25:18 And excess sodium consumption is the leading causative factor for hypertension. And you could reduce the excess sodium consumption by utilizing microsalt because 70% of the sodium you consume as an individual consumer comes from prepared foods and snacks that are made, with normal salt. There is there there are, I should say, other alternatives to microsalt for reducing the sodium, and they all basically are clustered around the use of potassium chloride instead of sodium chloride. Potassium chloride is a business. Potassium chloride, low sodium salt, sells about $1,600,000,000 worth a year because the need is so great. The problem with potassium chloride, which is hard to, talk around, is that because of where it's located on the periodic table, it has a strong metallic flavor.

26:17 You could try to hide the flavor, and some companies do try to hide it, mask it with flavor and etcetera, which is anathema to clean label and doesn't quite work because the tongue is exquisitely sensitive to metals. But there is no low sodium salt that can reduce the sodium by 50% and still tastes like regular salt, sodium chloride, until the introduction of microsalt. And so microsalt has done something that hasn't happened in the salt industry. Salt industry is famous if for stodginess. If you want if you wanted to look up stodginess of Webster's, you'll see a picture of a salt shaker.

27:02 I mean, the salt industry, which is described thoroughly in the bible, it's been available for thousands of years, and yet there's almost been no innovation. Microsoft aims to change that and is a potential disruptor for this industry by by providing these micron sized salt crystals, which allow you to do pretty much what you wanna do with salt, but but significantly reduce the sodium consumption. And Microsalt is making crisps as proof of concept of this, And those crisps were picked up by Kroger's, the largest supermarket chain in The United States, and they're now in 2,000 Kroger supermarkets coast to coast. It's the first national rollout of a full flavor.

27:48 Read that as sodium chloride, low sodium salt, and it's going quite well. And then Microsoft decided to sell the salt directly to consumers and salt shakers, and they launched that about two months ago. And, two large chains have supermarket chains have taken up the product. So the salt shakers are now available in around 300 stores in North America just in the last six weeks. And then, today, in fact, there was an announcement that the salt shakers are now, going to be offered in Pete's markets in Illinois and Bush's markets in Michigan, which own large profile, you know, supermarkets in those territories. And so they're going from Microsoft is going from strength to strength. They have upwards of 330 supermarkets selling their Microsoft in containers in two sizes.

28:43 And that and that product's only been on the market for two months, so we think there's enormous pent up demand for a good tasting low sodium salt. And the other thing I'd just like to mention, the salt shaker is visible here in the upper left hand side. It's significantly less sodium than traditional Morton salt or Cargill salt or any other salt that's available, but it tastes the same because it is sodium chloride. The Kroger supermarket chain that handles the salt meat crisp with made with microsalt has not put them on some low sort of low, unsavory location in their supermarket. They put them front and center in the snack food aisle in 2,000 stores throughout The United States, and they did a favor for the company that it could not have done for itself.

29:29 They showed the entire consumer and food industry that the water was safe, the chips taste good, or the crisps taste good with the microsalt. And by all by no means is it limited to its application to crisps. It can go on any snack food and in and in prepared meals. Presti, a prepared meal company that based out of France is now using microsalt in their prepare prepared microwavable pasta dishes, etcetera. It seems that every week, there's a new application for Microsoft that's brought to our attention. So we think Microsoft is a potential disruptor, as I've mentioned, in the salt industry. And if the company is successful, we think it will do two things that are noteworthy. One, and most importantly, it could help make a dent in cardiovascular disease by reducing excess sodium consumption.

30:21 The US FDA has reckoned that if the average American, if there is such a thing, could reduce their sodium consumption from 3,400 to 2,300, it would save between twenty five and fifty thousand lives a year every year in The United States alone. And Microsoft is a tool that can enable food manufacturers to actually achieve that or help them achieve that. And the second thing that would be noteworthy is we think the return on invested capital would be quite extensive as the margins for the microsalt and the salt shakers are upwards of 60% to gross margin. So we think it's it's not only a business that has ileumocinary legs and can make a significant contribution to human health. It can also, you know, help ring the register by producing a good return on invested capital.

31:15 So in summary, TEKCAPITAL commercializes university discoveries for its own portfolio, and we've built a portfolio of four companies that in spite of the, the economic headwinds of recessionary climate and all sorts of other issues dealing with post in the post COVID era, have made very significant progress in our view.

31:38 And, these high value portfolio companies are each, in their own right, potential disruptors to the billion dollar industries they play in. We have a proven track record at TEKCAPITAL of transforming these discoveries into valuable needed products. So we think we're we're we're we're batting four for four. Of course, the it's still early innings. It remains to be seen just how well those companies perform over time, but so far, it's looking quite good. And, when those companies do hit the ball over the fence, to continue with the metaphor, TEKCAPITAL will provide a special dividend to its shareholders at that time, And then we'll use a portion of that special dividend, you know, to to reward the shareholders for their patience, and a portion of that monetization will be used to be deployed into additional new portfolio companies.

32:36 And that is my presentation. I'd be very happy to take any questions you might have. Clifford, that's great. And thank you very much indeed for your presentation this afternoon. If I may, I will just bring back up your camera there. Yeah. Absolutely. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions just by using the q and a tab that's situated on the right hand corner of your screen. Just while Clifford takes a few moments to review those questions that were submitted already, I would like to remind you that a recording of this presentation along with a copy of the slides and the published Q and A, can be accessed via your investor dashboard. Clifford, obviously, we did receive a number of pre submitted questions ahead of today's event. And as you can see there in the Q and A tab, we've also received a number of questions throughout your presentation this afternoon as well.

33:22 So firstly, thank you to all of those on the call for taking the time to submit their questions. And, Clifford, perhaps if I may just hand back to you now to respond to those where it's appropriate to do so, and then I'll pick up from you at the end. Thank you. Sure. So here's one question that has just been sent over. With such large stakes, how will you manage to reduce if you want to take some money off the table at rising valuations? Well, we'll be able to access the capital markets when appropriate if we feel the value is there for our shareholders. You know, some of the, shares, you know, have quite quite good volume of stock. In the case of Innovative Eyewear, you know, the average trading volume is is upwards of 2,000,000 shares a day. So we don't think, at some point in the future, we decide to monetize a portion of our shares, it would be very difficult to achieve those, monetizations.

34:18 And we've also shown the PLC, which, of course, is not quite as liquid as an Nasdaq stock as you would expect, but we were able to monetize a small piece. And we took a bit off the table a couple months back. So we don't think we'll have an issue with monetizing stakes when we when we decide to do it. See what else we have in terms of questions. Are there any other interesting investment opportunities out there? If yes, do you hope to invest in them? Yes. You know, I feel sometimes a bit like Nancy Reagan just saying no when we get presented with investment opportunities.

35:04 I won't say every day, but definitely weekly. And, so there's no shortage of opportunities. It's a buyer's market for university technologies. But, our approach is, you know, sort of brutally objective. We we wanna make sure the technology, is potentially disruptive if it works, and and, there's a market for it, not just a good science project, but a market for commercializing the technology and that we have the resources and the the senior management necessary to take the journey. You remember, you know, you have to bring your a game to the table when you're playing in billion dollar markets. So you have to play to win, and you have to have all of those arrows in your favor before you pull the trigger in our view.

35:55 And that's why we think we've had such good success rates as we've played to win. We haven't played just to build a big portfolio, which we couldn't properly monetize. So the answer is yes. We will add additional technologies to our portfolio, additional businesses, but they have to check all the boxes that we've laid out. We have a very stringent threshold before we make an additional investment. Next question. K. Microsoft really does look very interesting. Congrats on its progress. Is this investment your most exciting or the four? That's like you know, it's kind of like asking the librarian what's your favorite book.

36:44 You know, we're we're we're actually quite keen on all four investments in earnest. I'm not saying it should be politically correct because all four investments have disruptive IP. They have an interesting patent position that we think creates a good moat around the technology. They have capable leadership. There's white space in their market for the innovation, and they're in billion dollar growing markets. That said, we think Microsoft is truly remarkable because it addresses the leading cause of premature death in the world, excess sodium consumption, and it does it in a in a sensible, elegant way that's that's consistent with, you know, good commercial practice.

37:32 You know, food companies could lower the sodium tomorrow in all of their products if they wish by just reducing the amount of sodium or adding potassium chloride. And neither is a good solution because it makes the the products less savory. So our our thinking is that Microsalt is a good solution because it tastes good, and yet it it delivers the saltiness with significantly less sodium. So it's kind of hard to beat as a technology. So we we're very excited about it, but we do feel kindly towards our other technologies as well. Next question. Why are you not funding working capital with disposals? Well, because some of the disposals would be premature to make at this juncture.

38:20 So we will make disposals at a time in place of our choosing when we think it'll deliver the best return on invested capital for our shareholders. Next question. Given that Microsoft is about to be the subject of an IPO, why was there a need to raise funds to invest more money into them? Well, we have, previously announced publicly, of course, that we've engaged a banker to service a nomad for a potential flotation of Microsoft on the end market this year, and we believe that that is still very much a very good possibility. But between now and then, there's a lot of momentum to be captured or lost depending on the funding situation for Microsoft. Microsoft is growing hand over fist right now, and our job as investors in that business is to strengthen and accelerate their growth, not impede it, which is why we raised some additional capital recently to help them support their growth. They need to make and sell more salt, and there's an already market for it. So we want them to go to town.

39:33 Next question. Alright. Given that when Microsoft IPOs, thank you for the vote of confidence, there will be three of the four portfolio companies listed. Can you give any comment on the need for further fundraisers in the coming year? Obviously, we we cannot possibly telegraph future fundraisers. One, because we don't know them to be the fact to be, in fact, the case at this point in time. And it will depend again on our ability to monetize our portfolio as as to whether or not timing is is, appropriate. So, unfortunately, we can't give you any guidance as to that.

40:21 But remember, when you invest in TEKCAPITAL, what are you investing in? You're investing in an IP investment company. Our goal is to find and make investments into portfolio companies that we think could be disruptive and produce oversized returns on invested capital. We're not a bodega. We're not a shop. You know? We are a company investing in disruptive technologies, and that type of investment is not and I'll say this in in an earnest sort of brotherly way, it's not for every investor. You have to you have to want to invest in companies that invest in technologies. You have to have patience because to to develop a technology company that's playing in a billion dollar industry, you have to realize you have to not only have compelling technology and capable management, you have to access capital to be able to take those first important steps in the journey of, you know, having a a viable commercial enterprise in a high technology space.

41:24 So that's what TEKCAPITAL is about. You know? And we think that we're hopeful that we get investors in the company, obviously, that understand that's our mission and our goal. What is your best estimate as to when shareholders can expect to see a return on their investments with special dividends? Of course, I can't tell you because I don't know exactly when that will occur, but we are opportunistic. And when we see a good opportunity for monetizing a piece of our portfolio investments and perhaps even a substantial piece, we will take steps to do that and and concomitant with that, prepare a special dividend as we have stated that is our financial goal. But the exact timeline for doing that is unknowable at this point in time.

42:34 Is the microsalt technology easily reproducible by third party salt producers? We don't think so, and we have intellectual property protection on on the process to make the salt. And time will tell if that is an accurate response. Yeah. The that accompanied the placing mentioned that some of the monies will be apportioned to Guidant for the purchase of autonomous vehicles. Can you expand on that? Yeah. So Guidant is offering this remote monitoring and control service, and many of the places and and organizations that they're speaking with that are interested in this also need to be able to buy vehicles that they could operate, little buses, for example, to operate a shuttle surface, for example.

43:34 And many of those organizations don't have the expertise to link up the shuttles with the software for the remote monitoring control system. So the idea of guiding providing a turnkey service where they will deliver the vehicles made by a third party, of course, combined with their remote monitoring control service, we think removes the obstacle that some of the prospective customers have identified in allowing guidance to build up a larger base of customers, which is obviously job one right now for guidance. How do you manage to develop and maintain relationships with such a large number of universities?

44:23 How much time do you spend communicating each university per year? There's two parts to that. It's a good question. There's two parts to it. One is we have an electronic network built by Selwyn Lloyd, who was a college shum of mine at Oxford side business school. He built this software system that captures innovations from about 4,500 universities around the world. We acquired that system from him, and Sel has been the CTO since inception of the business and still remains so. So that's an electronic system that does not require much in the way of a a human operator interaction, but it can be utilized by anybody that is looking for a particular type or category of technologies. Technologies.

45:13 And then there's another side to the that question, and that is we provide services, as I had mentioned earlier in my presentation, to about 250 universities and some large corporations like Hewlett Packard Enterprises to help them evaluate new technologies for their market potential. For those services, those are those services are performed by a division of TEKCAPITAL, and that division of TEKCAPITAL uses both a smart software system plus expert analysts to evaluate new technologies. So customers for that service invention called invention evaluator, that is a time and equipment intensive process.

46:05 And so, it would take, you know, many hours per week for each report that's delivered. So for those reports and those reports are delivered primarily to universities, but also, as I mentioned, a few very large corporates. So there's constant back and forth, and there's a team of about half a dozen people working on that on a continuous basis. But the the searching for technologies is really, almost completely automated, because of the good work that Cell One has done. And in addition to that, we we are receiving because we're known operators in the space, without trying to fluff our in any way. And so we receive inbound requests to evaluate technologies from universities and and professors at universities from around the world on a regular basis.

46:59 I hope that answers that good question. Alright. What is how does Lucid benefit feature compare to the Ray Ban offering? Okay. Interesting. There was a comparison article which was posted on the chat board of the LSE. I think it was last Friday, which was a comparison that was done the top six or seven smart eyewear brands in the world. It was done by a publication out of Australia.

47:48 And we were rated, I'm happy to say, number one, numero uno, way ahead of the the Stories product and the Bose product, which were actually towards the bottom of the pack. I guess that's one data point, of course. The eye you know, the benefit is in the eye of the beholder, but we think the innovative eyewear product is is quite is quite superior to what else is offered in the market because it's very lightweight. It has quadraphonic sound. It has two noise canceling microphones, which provides better sound quality during conversations than talking on your iPhone directly. It has the longest battery life of any smart eyewear in the world, about twelve hours.

48:34 That's with continuous music play, twelve hours per day between charges for a normal ungrateful biped. That would be, you know, several days of use before you have to charge it. So it's lightweight. It's good looking. It has the longest battery life in the world. It has quadraphonic sound, four speakers for surround sound, really terrific sound quality. I think it's the one to beat, quite frankly, which, you know, is quite a statement to make because some of those companies like the Ray Ban Facebook product and the Bose product come out of billion dollar companies. So our hats off to Innovative Eyewear for what they've been able to technologically achieve.

49:19 In addition, Innovative Eyewear has built a software ecosystem and, consisting of Verb, and they recently announced about two weeks ago that that using the Verb software app, which is available on iOS and Android, Innovative Eyewear customers can do podcasts to a 100 people simultaneously, hands free through the glasses and have those people respond in kind, which is quite an achievement. And none none of the other eyewear companies have anything even close to that, a full stack social media program accessible kind of like Twitter for your glasses. So we think innovative eyewear is is punching considerably above its weight for an early stage business. Very proud of what they've been able to achieve.

50:10 I think that just about does it for now. Unless there are any other questions, I wanna thank you so much for tuning in and for your patience and taking the time to submit questions. Clifford, if I may just jump back in there. Thank you very much indeed for being so generous of your time then addressing all of those questions that came in from investors this afternoon. And, of course, if there are any further questions that do come through, we'll make these available to you immediately after the presentation has ended just for you to review to then add any additional responses, of course, where it's appropriate to do so. Clifford, perhaps before just redirecting those on the call to provide you their feedback, which I know is particularly important to yourself and the company. If I could please just ask you for a few closing comments to wrap up with, that'd be great. Yeah.

50:55 Happy to. Without, you know, trying to polish the apple too much, just being brutally objective about it, we own, you know, commanding positions in four portfolio companies that have a technological advantage in a billion in their respective billion dollar plus marketplaces, which in and of itself is, quite an achievement. TEKCAPITAL, while whilst we have gone back to the market and raised capital from period to period, on an overarching basis, we've raised very little capital in in cumulative sum, to build these four companies that are contenders in these billion dollar marketplaces. And so of that, we're appreciative mostly not only to our investors, of course, which goes without saying, but also to the management of those respective portfolio companies, which in a very difficult macro environment have kept their heads down and kept plowing forward to good effect. And for that, we are exceedingly grateful.

52:02 And we we implore our people who are tuning in now to stay tuned for future developments, which occur almost on a weekly basis now across the portfolio as these companies start to mature. Again, we're thankful for your support. It's made it possible to do what we've done, and, we're looking forward to, you know, very significant developments across the portfolio this year and in in additional future periods. Thank you again for your attention, and it's been our distinct pleasure to share with you the information today. Clifford, that's great. And thank you once again for updating investors this afternoon. Could I please ask investors not to close this session as you'll now be automatically redirected for the opportunity to provide your feedback in order that the management team can better understand your views and expectations.

52:54 This will only take a few moments to complete, but I'm sure it'll be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of TEKCAPITAL PLC, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation. That now concludes today's session. So good afternoon to you all.