QCAAF (QCAAF) Q2 2026 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the second quarter conference call for Quinsam. I'm going to assume that everybody has seen and read the press release. So I'm not going to sort of reiterate what's in the press release. We had an okay second quarter. We made some money. We retired a few more shares, which helps to tighten up the float. Not a great deal of activity on the buy side or the sell side. We have some cash ready to deploy. We have an increasing proportion of assets in the liquid portfolio, which is the goal, and we expect to see some nice moves there in the coming quarter with the expected listing of Peninsula Capital. So the third quarter, I would say, is off to a positive -- modestly positive start. We've seen some improvements in EDM Resources, again in BluMetric, in Reflex. Reflex has actually had a very nice move. It's not a big position, but it's had a very, very nice move with nothing in particular on the negative side. So if I were to guess today, I'd guess we're up another $0.002 or $0.003 as of today. But the key factor for Q3 is going to be the listing of Peninsula Capital. It's something we've been in for quite a long time. We have a very low cost base relative to asset value and recent financings. This is the United States single-family home rental business. They own a very large portfolio of single-family homes, mostly in sort of the U.S. Northwest, Buffalo, Rochester, Cleveland, places like this, the typical kind of former Rust Belt type communities where houses were available very cheaply with very nice rental economics. So that's looking to list. We thought it was going to be in August. It looks like maybe it's going to be pushed to September. We expect them to come out with a dividend and an NAV of around $2. So the key question is going to be where it trades. That is, I think, quite unpredictable. We're carrying it at $1.45. So the thing to watch is going to be where that quote ends up relative to the $1.45. I'm hoping that it can do that or better, but it's definitely potentially going to trade below NAV because it is a situation where it's been private for a long time, and they're probably sellers. The key question is what the buying side of the equation looks like. However, the asset value is strong. It's a great business. It has a yield coming out of the gate, we're led to believe. So we're quite confident in it as a holding. It will move close to $0.02 from the private portfolio to the public portfolio. So it's quite a big factor in that. Otherwise, we've got a few other much less important privates looking to list, a company called Pelican AI, which we've been in for quite a while, is supposed to have listed some time ago. I think it's finally going to trade in Q3. That one wasn't a big investment. It should be a win. We have another one that's announced Longview Gold. Again, it's not a big investment, so it's not going to move the needle very much. That's probably Q4 and a company called Bon Intelligence, which was a little bit bigger investment at around $250,000. That one hoping for Q4. I'd say it's not certain that's Q4, but hopefully Q4. Those 3, we expect all to be on the positive side as far as impact on NAV is concerned. So that's, in a nutshell, the Q3 outlook. I'd say in terms of a significant transaction, I would not say at this point that anything is imminent. One company that we had been having some discussions with is the Bon Intelligence that has decided to go with a kind of a conventional shell with very few assets. And that one didn't work out. We didn't really get terribly far with them, but it was a business that we feel quite good about. And its go public, just as an aside, its go public has been announced at twice the valuation that we paid on that $250,000. So assuming it successfully does that raise, we would expect it to trade there or better. It's been doing quite nicely. So I would say that's the Q3 outlook. Q2, there weren't too many developments. Happy to take questions on Q2 or where we stand at this point. Any questions?

Roger, it's John Lewis. As a long-time holder, it is nice to see what appears to be a turn in the portfolio. So well done there. One of the ones that maybe people have a little bit of familiarity with or not is the California Nanotech. Is there an update there that you could share with us?

Well, California Nano, I'm a director there, so I'm quite familiar with the situation. It is a -- we're quite optimistic that we will be in the near term, securing commercial contracts. We're quite optimistic about the prospects in the small nuclear reactor space. We think we are probably the only viable source of supply for boron control rods, boron carbide control rods and boron carbide heat shielding. So we're in discussion with more than one of the companies that are in the United States behind the small nuclear reactors, which are a pretty exciting area and a big target for growth for Trump and for the U.S. Department of Energy. We've also been -- we've made submissions for U.S. government funding. Basically, the U.S. government is very keen on domestic secure supply chains for critical industries. And obviously, the small nuclear reactor industry is a critical industry. So we have been pursuing government funding opportunities. It's very hard for us to assess our probability of getting it because it's sort of a whole new area. That being said, there's a great deal of U.S. money and focus being put in this area, and we think we have an extremely sound case. So we're optimistic on government funding. We're optimistic on contracts. But as of now, we have not got those. So I'd say we're very hopeful. We think these things are coming, but they're not in our control. So we don't know that they're coming this year.

So just to go -- to flesh that out a little bit. So Canadian listing, but the company solely operates in the U.S. Is that the...

The entity that is pursuing all this business is a California company. It's a subsidiary of the listed company.

You also said something that sort of piqued my curiosity because as I remember, CNO has always been looking for -- they worked with a lot of companies on a research sort of test basis. But you said -- you used the word commercial. So as in like ongoing or...

Yes. The -- as of this moment, there are 0 small nuclear commercial reactors in operation. However, it's a major target, and there's a very large number of companies getting behind these and they're targeting for uses in things like data centers. It's this exploding demand for electricity kind of across the economy, but in certain critical areas like data centers. So we did R&D work basically about, I guess, almost a year ago, about 10 months ago, we were approached by Valar, which is one of the leading small nuclear reactor companies. They found us basically through an Internet search. They were trying to get boron control rods. They needed them urgently because the DOE had given them a window to do a test at one of the national labs where they could actually run their reactor. And they came to the conclusion that the only way to make them was spark plasma sintering. So they gave us a call as the only commercial spark plasma sintering service provider in the United States. And in the space of 3 or 4 weeks, we actually delivered them boron control -- boron carbide control rods. So it was -- from their perspective, it was sort of a life-saving situation. If they didn't get them, they would have missed their DOE experimental window. And also to deliver them, having never even heard of them a month before was pretty extraordinary. Anyway, we delivered them. They worked just fine. The test was a success. It was a great win. So obviously, we've been in discussion with Valar ever since. We've been in discussion with others in the space because everybody needs them basically, and they're consumable. Like if you are running a reactor on an ongoing basis, these things wear out. So that's basically the opportunity. As far as we know, our technology remains the only viable way to make them. So -- and again, we're dealing here with customers who are in the grand scheme of things, not very price sensitive and extremely focused on domestic supply, security of supply, security of intellectual property, all these sorts of things. So we think we're a very good fit. And it's a question of when these companies start to actually place orders for nuclear reactors. It's all imminent, but it's not quite here yet, but it's getting very close.

Excellent. One other thing I noticed the issuer bid got active over the last quarter. Is that an indication, I suppose, you guys...

It's an indication that we see great value, right? Like buying our own stock at $0.50 on the dollar, we're buying our own portfolio. So it's like why wouldn't we buy it at half price. It is these days, I would just say it's very difficult to actually execute on an issuer bid. The rules are getting tougher, and it makes it actually quite hard to get stock when you deal with the current CSE rules when you're dealing with an illiquid stock like us, like if we were liquid and trading all the time in a predefined range, it would be easy, but we're not that kind of stock. So it actually is quite difficult. But we are interested in buying more. Other questions? No. Well, if not, have a good end of the summer, everyone, and we will talk to people later in the fall. Thanks very much.