Earnings Labs

Flexible Solutions International, Inc. (FSI)

Q1 2015 Earnings Call· Mon, May 18, 2015

$6.53

+0.31%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Please standby we are about to begin. Good day and welcome to the Flexible Solutions International First Quarter 2015 Financial Results Conference Call. Today’s conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Dan O’Brien, Chief Executive Officer of Flexible Solutions. Please go ahead, sir.

Daniel B. O'Brien

Management

Thank you, Levi. Good morning. This is Dan O’Brien, CEO. Safe Harbor provision, the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 provides a Safe Harbor for forward-looking statements. Certain of the statements contained herein which are not historical facts are forward-looking statements with respect to events, the occurrence of which involve risks and uncertainties. These forward-looking statements may be impacted either positively or negatively by various factors. Information concerning potential factors that could affect the company is detailed from time-to-time in the company’s reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. First let me review the progress that has been made in the past year and then I will move on to the financials. The NanoChem division, or NCS. NCS makes polyaspartic acid, TPA, a biodegradable protein with many valuable uses. It now represents approximately 95% of revenue and is the sales and profit driver of our company. TPA is used in agriculture to increase crop yield. The chemical mechanism is the ability of TPA to maintain crystal embryos of fertilizer cells in their embryonic form in the soil for several months, which has the effect of keeping fertilizer easier for plants to absorb. Because the plan expends less energy getting its nutrients, it has more energy available to produce valuable crops. In North America, the wholesale market is over $2 billion a year and most crops are able to use TPA profitably. Crop prices currently available to growers are well above the breakeven point for using TPA. TPA is a biodegradable way of treating oil field water to prevent pipes from plugging with mineral scale. Our sales into this market are strong and oil companies in the Nordic countries use TPA as part of environmental regulation. We are experiencing interest from forward thinking oil producing countries other than Scandinavia…

Operator

Operator

Certainly, thank you. [Operator Instructions]. And we will take our first question from Gregg Hillman with First Wilshire Securities Management.

Gregg Hillman

Analyst

Good morning Dan. Can you talk about the addressable market, the domestic and international market for the nitrogen products that you alluded to, do you have any data on that?

Daniel B. O'Brien

Management

I don’t have data, specific data near to hand but I can mention to you that when I say millions of acres I mean that in the United States at least 50 million acres a year are treated with either DCD or the SUN 27 type products which are based on NBPT. Another very large market is Brazil but as you know about us, we try to work on our nearby markets which are enormous before we expand sales energy on international markets.

Gregg Hillman

Analyst

And what would be the value of that nitrogen enhancer per acre sold, the dollar amount per acre that’s sold for that acres at your disposition?

Daniel B. O'Brien

Management

Well, at retail it would probably cost the grower in the range of $5 to $7 an acre and we wouldn’t realize any taker that we sold to perhaps $2 to $3. So, it is certainly valuable to the grower. Growers will put down 120 pounds of nitrogen if they were to lose half of that by not using a nitrogen conservation product that would certainly been much more expensive than the cost of the nitrogen products. It is not useful within hydrous ammonia which is one of the products that people have been using largely around North America, but from safety and health conditions and hydrous ammonia is going out of favor and other products like UAN, urea ammonium nitrate are coming in because they are safer to handle. So we expect that not only is there a very large market already available for us to work in but the market will get larger.

Gregg Hillman

Analyst

And do you have distributors lined up to sell it for you. I think you are not going to go direct to the farmer?

Daniel B. O'Brien

Management

We are not going direct, that’s too complicated. We have distributors and agents in place and as we become better known as successful manufacturers in this field we expect this to grow quite rapidly. And do you have a sales force talking to the distributors or are you talking yourself?

Daniel B. O'Brien

Management

Partly it’s me, I am part of the sales force but we also have three other people working the people hard.

Gregg Hillman

Analyst

Okay and then you expect to get some traction this year if for the first time in these products?

Daniel B. O'Brien

Management

We’ve already had traction for both products this year but we expect it to grow and in 2016 we strongly suspect that it is going to be a significant growth tool for our company.

Gregg Hillman

Analyst

Okay, great. Thanks for your comments.

Daniel B. O'Brien

Management

Thank you, Gregg.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions]. At this time we have no further questions.

Daniel B. O'Brien

Management

Levi, I think you can ask me to close the conference call then.

Operator

Operator

Okay as we have no further questions at this time I would turn the conference back to Mr. Dan O’Brien for any additional or closing remarks.

Daniel B. O'Brien

Management

Gentlemen and ladies, thank you very much for joining the conference call. I will talk to you again in three months to tell you about the second quarter and I hope to tell you very good things. Thank you and good bye.

Operator

Operator

That concludes today's conference. We appreciate your participation.