Good morning, everyone. Welcome to day two of the Sidoti Small Cap Conference. My name is Aashi Shah, and I'm an analyst here at Sidoti. With me today, I have Birchtech Corp. It trades under the ticker BCHT. I'm happy to welcome Richard MacPherson, CEO and President of the company. We have about 30 minutes today, including the Q&A. If you have any questions, please submit them at the Q&A section at the bottom of your screen. With that, I will let you take over, Richard. Thank you very much, Aashi. Folks, thank you very much for joining me today. I'm going to give a brief presentation about our company and who we are and what we're doing, and then look forward to some questions if you have them at the end of the presentation. As Aashi mentioned, it'll take about 30 minutes in total, and I'll get started. Birchtech, we're basically known as America's clean coal and clean water company. We've been in business these past 14 years and have been very successful in the purification of air from coal-fired power plants, focusing on mercury emissions, and also most recently moving into the purification of water, both wastewater and drinking water. I'll get started with the presentation. Forward-looking statements, of course, for you to read at your leisure, and we'll move on into the main part of the presentation. As an overview, we are an established core business in reducing mercury emissions across dozens of plants in the U.S. Our patented SEA Technologies are used at over 80% of the U.S. coal-fired power plants that use a sorbent technology-based removal system. To date, we have, or are expected on the books, approximately $260 million worth of business. We are very much ingrained in the industry. As we move into water purification, we have experts in our team that are focused on granular activated carbons, creating the best available control technologies for water treatment. The near-term EPA regulations for PFAS and PFOA compliance have the potential to generate about $1.5 billion in annual compliance costs for usable potable water over the next five years on an annual basis. We plan on reducing that cost, that planned cost, with our new technologies. Birchtech, we have been and develop and are continuing to develop specialty activated carbon technologies to remove not only mercury from the air we breathe, but also harmful toxins from the water we drink. We offer customized solutions for clean air and water, not just basic products on a shelf that you buy on a commodity basis. From a problem point of view, utilities across the U.S. remove harmful contaminants from the air and water both effectively and affordably. Mercury emission from coal-fired plants and water purification for drinking need these best technologies to stay ahead of their operations. The solution with us is leveraging our decades of expertise, and we offer the customers a tailored solution to carbons in the air and water treatment. The result at the end of the day is our customized solutions are more economical and effective at capturing mercury from the air and treating municipal industrial water waste while reducing environmental footprints and meeting these EPA regulations. That is why we have been successful for these past 14 years. We have an established legacy air purification business. The solutions for clean coal-fired power plants to reduce mercury emissions were introduced and have been operating for over a decade now. As people know, overexposure to mercury can lead to significant health concerns, including neurological, cardiovascular, pregnancy risks, and all sorts of other situations. Our technologies that we developed and patented back in the early 2000s provide a more effective, lower-cost approach using much less product at the coal-fired power plant to take these toxins out of the air. Our go-to strategy is growing the air business and defending our IP portfolio while we do that. As I mentioned earlier, the emissions control market in the coal-fired plant business is about $150 million across the U.S. market. Our system, our patented system, is believed to be used at about 80% of the U.S. coal-fired power plants that use a sorbent-based technology, which is about half of that market. Our revenue run rate is expected to ramp up, given our IP wins of late, to about $40 million by the end of next year. This is an SEA patent enforcement action that we initiated and have been successful with over these past six years. We have license and supply agreements with new utilities, which is increasing our market share, and through what we call ROFR settlements, are looked to increase our growth significantly over the next 18 months. Our trailing 12-month average revenues is about $16.2 million, excluding all of the funds that we've received from our IP legal wins, which have been significant, and we'll get to those later in the presentation. We secured a $35 million income from legal claims and license agreements, plus additional consideration in settlements. We've also, in full defense of our shareholders' position with these patents, won a $57 million jury verdict for willful infringement for folks using our technologies without a license from us just in the recent past. As we move forward, this trend should continue to enhance and grow the value, the enterprise value of the company as we continue to add new customers as well. We have strong margins and a recurring revenue model with multiple opportunities to scale. This page shows us some of our long-term supply contracts and license agreement partners. Our average revenue per utility customer is about $2 million a year. Typical contract lengths are renewable three- to five-year terms. Our gross margins have averaged about 30%, and that does not consider the value margins of the legal wins that we have been having. All in all, a very solid base of business going forward. As we transition into water purification from air, keeping in mind the air will be our legacy backstop to the company's growth, we've taken all of our skill set and added to that tremendously with many different new employees with very specific skill sets in the water purification market. Together with the pedigree of what we bring to the market, we are very well situated in terms of being able to earn a considerable share of the water purification market. If you look at the slide, you can see that we're leveraging deep experience with activated carbon, and there is a problem in the industry that we're addressing head-on, which is the forever chemical pollution in the drinking water supply for the entire country. We are applying engineering expertise to create new virgin granular activated carbons, rework the effectiveness of reactivated carbons, and provide testing and consulting services to be able to take the everyday utility and bring it up to speed without them having to spend millions of extra dollars and months and months of effort to try to figure out how to meet these new regulations that are planned to come into effect. Not only will we help them get over the new regulations that are planned, but we will take what they're doing today and enhance that performance significantly with or without these new regulations. We do that because of our inherent knowledge of carbonaceous materials and our ability to be able to make more use of them, more efficacy from them than what's traditionally seen. We did this for the air market, and we'll do it for the water market. We're targeting multiple markets, both municipal and industrial wastewaters, as well as the potable water. We're offering proprietary solutions for contamination challenges, meeting regulatory compliance, and safe drinking water, in particular as it deals with forever chemicals. Now, many folks have said the PFOA and PFAS regulations will impose significant financial burdens on the U.S. water utilities, with compliance costs estimated to be $1 billion annually over the next five years or more, plus millions of dollars in infrastructure. We don't think that's going to be required because we've put the time and effort and knowledge into creating technologies that should keep that from happening by providing reasonably cost, high-efficacy solutions that we will start to introduce to the market later in 2025. Our go-to market strategy is moving rapidly into the water treatment business. While our core business continues its momentum and growth, we expect to be able to bring that business up to approximately $40 million annually over the next year and a half so that by the end of 2026, we expect that core business to be at that level, very profitable, and have a long runway of effort in the 5 year-10 year range. Moving into the potable water side of things will enhance our revenue potentials tenfold. Potable water treatment solutions, we've got two new world-class labs designed, constructed, and now operable, one in North Dakota and another in Pennsylvania, which will enable the creation of our advanced water treatment solutions nationwide for utility testing. Our new activated carbon technologies are now launching with commercialization to begin this year to help utilities stay ahead of the evolving regulations. We have a robust gross margin profile. We're targeting 50% gross margins on these GACs and still provide them to the market on average to the same pricing levels of what they're buying today, which will make a significant enhancement in their ability to tackle any and all new regulations that come to market. Our launch is underway on this. Our feedstock agreements have been secured, and we're in a position now to start in the second half of 2025 bringing at least $7 million worth of new product, this high-grade product to market to establish all of our initial relationships. Availability is expected in the second half of 2025. We'll use up that first batch of feedstock, which will be renewable on an annual basis. We have other announcements to make coming up, which will add to that significantly as we move into the industry. We have a robust infrastructure, as I mentioned, a synergistic lab and plant network for developing our technologies, commercializing them, and delivering them to the water markets that we are aimed at. We are planned renewable GAC manufacturing facilities as well as new virgin GAC facilities. We expect to begin construction of our GAC facility for production of virgin GACs and the reactivation of carbon in 2025 in southeastern USA. The development of these disruptive technologies is underway. Leveraging our decades of experience, we're currently developing these disruptive GACs that will offer superior benefits. Our main concern at this point, having seen the results at our world-class labs, will be our production capacity going forward to meet the demand. We are now working on that, have been for some time now in terms of locations, permitting, and all of these other things that have to go ahead of the actual bricks and mortar. We will bring more news to the market as we actually start in on construction of plants. This is the financial summary. I will not go into it in detail other than I will make one very interesting or two interesting points. First of all, we repaid all of our debt. We are a debt-free company other than a profit share to a previous bank commitment of significant IP wins such as the $57 million that we have outstanding now for final judgment decision. If you look at the revenue growth overall in 2023 and to date in 2024, you can see that when we combine our IP defense strategy and our new licensing strategy and the ongoing supply side, we have very significant revenue growths, and we expect those to continue on or larger than that pace as we move into 2025 and on into 2026, given that the $57 million base win that we had in Delaware is not included in these numbers. As we go forward, especially considering the actions that are outstanding, we expect a very robust growth in the company from a revenue point of view as well as from a business development point of view. Key takeaways, we have the right team. We have these new disruptive technologies similar to what we did in the air business. We have recognized IP and regulatory tailwinds behind us as we enter the water market. As I said earlier, with or without any new EPA water regulations, we have an opportunity to carve a piece out of this water business due to the new technologies that we're bringing to bear on it. I'll just quickly run through to the left. We've got a world-class team of experts in activated carbon, which allowed us to create customized and effective technologies for both air and water. Regulatory tailwinds, $1 billion in federal funding has been allocated for water monitoring systems and EPA regulations for the capture of forever chemicals begins in 2027. One of the most significant parts is President Trump's recent rollback through the EPA of regulations that were going to stymie the coal-fired power market. We see the changes that EPA is introducing as very positive for both power industry as a whole in the U.S. and our business in particular. We're very pleased to be working with the administration's new guidelines to keep coal clean and to make water purified to the best possible standards. Our technologies are aimed at doing just that. We have large addressable markets. We have a stable air business, and we have a massive underserved water business using our know-how that we're moving into in the second half of 2025. Our IP portfolio is very strong and has been successfully enforced, and we'll continue that enforcement as we go through 2025 and beyond. We expect that it will show great shareholder value for those that are involved in our firm and ultimately provide excellent new technologies for the country, both in the coal-fired clean coal business and in the water purification business. Our move into the water business is underway, and we're looking very much forward after the testing phase with utilities, comparable testing is underway this quarter that we will start to move into the commercialization in Q3 of 2025. That is it for the presentation, folks. Thank you very much for listening. We look forward to taking any and all questions that you might have. I'll turn it back to Aashi to see if we have any questions. Thank you so much, Richard, for the presentation. I request everybody in the audience, if you have any questions, please submit them at the Q&A function at the bottom of your screen. With that, Richard, I have a question. Can we talk about the topic of the month right now with the new administration and them being very against the environment and having less regulations? What kind of obstacles do you think it is going to bring to your business? Will that have a large impact on the business, or what do you think of the new administration changes? Yeah, first of all, I got to correct you. They're not against environmental solutions for the country. They are pro-country, pro-country, pro-environment. I think the regulations that they're bringing in are perfect for the country's growth and maintaining clean air through clean coal operations and clean water through the best available control technologies. For years, the United States has been a leader in clean coal production of power and clean air. For some reason, they decided that they were going to, previous administrations, that they were going to reduce the outputs of clean coal operations, close down plants, and try to keep it almost impossible for plants that were operating to continue to do so. I see the new regulations as very positive both for the environment and the country, and our technologies are a big key part of that. As we move into water, we will bring the same economically viable solutions to the water treatment business to allow the water purification to be improved from where it is today at a reasonable price. The same thing that we did for air. Back in the day when we introduced our technologies to take mercury from coal-fired power plants, we were able to reduce the use of activated carbons in a lot of cases by 50% or more. In some cases, we actually were told by the plant operators that we kept them in business. They would have had to shut down, not being able to meet compliance if it was not for our patented two-part system. We also provide a great deal of technology for opacity and the things that keep the air clear and clean for its peak performance. In a lot of cases, we have allowed plants to run at their full output rather than having to be deregulated in order to meet regulations that were overbearing. Aashi, I got to tell you, I think the new EPA regulations are great. I think they are very much on side with a clean environment with clean coal and clean water going forward. Right. Now, I understand. Thank you. And with the revenue guidance you have provided for 2025 of at least $23 million, can you elaborate on the key drivers behind these projections and how do you plan to achieve it? Sure. Our core business in the air on the supply side is growing nicely. As we settle these disputes with operators with regards to them using our systems, but not paying for a license to use them, we're settling those out on a business fashion, and we're allowing them to provide us with a ROFR, right of first refusal on all of their supply business, as well as a reasonable license for them to consider given the time that they've been using our patented solution and what they'll need it for going forward. The core business projection of $23 million is very conservative. It also doesn't include any licensing revenue or settlements from all of the IP actions we have underway. If you look at the graph in the presentation today, you can see that there are tens of millions of dollars annually of IP value that we are now realizing. That's not included in the $23 million projection, nor is there any water revenue included in the projection, the guidance of $23 million. As I mentioned in the presentation to date, we've acquired at least $7 million worth of feedstock material. The $23 million is a very conservative basic number that we were comfortable with giving guidance that we would very much love and intend to build on and beat quarter over quarter as we go forward. Right. Would you need to add any potential funding needs in order to support your growth plans? The only funding needs that we have right now could possibly be some debt funding for acquisitions. As we await the final judgment on our main litigation win, I do not want to wait to start building out the production facilities that we need to satisfy the expected demand starting in the latter half of 2025. We may do some debt financing. Those would be acquisitions that would be self-supporting, profitable acquisitions that we would be able to enhance with our know-how, knowledge, new technologies to create higher producing entities that would match with our move into the water market. I cannot say no increase in debt, but it would be accompanied with significant asset values. Right. How do you view the current barriers to entry in the water markets? I'm sorry, could you repeat that for me? How do you view the current barriers in the entry barriers to entry for the water markets right now? What does the competitive landscape look like in the water market? Competitive landscape is fairly straightforward. Calgon Carbon owns the majority of the business, and they've owned it for the last 20 years. There are a few other entrants into the market and one other somewhat significant player in Norit. We see large opportunities for us given our customer-first approach, our customized approach to service, and our new technologies with a higher efficacy, we feel, than what's available today. I think due to a number of different situations in terms of the realities of what the 50,000 or more utilities face every year as they purify the water, there's a massive opportunity for a high-tech, competent crew like ours to create a niche in the market. Even 10% of that market is 4x or 5x what our opportunity in the air side is. We figure we have a handle on how to do that. I, of course, actually am not going to explain to the world how we're going to do it. Given our history, you can be sure we're going to have the smarts and the ability to try. Right. Can we take a minute to talk about your share repurchase program? The company has announced $5 million to commence in the second half of 2025. What factors influence this decision, and how do you anticipate it will impact the shareholder value? Sure. As a company, we feel that we are at this point undervalued in the market. Given the expected legal wins that we have in front of us going forward, we expect to have funds that would allow us to reduce our dilution as a public company going forward. That is our aim. That is our goal. We made that goal as an announce-able item this week. It will depend on the actual follow-through on the wins and the cash on the balance sheet. We will be looking at that as we go forward from the second half of 2025. I expect that we have a very good chance to execute on that. Great. As we come to the end of our time, do you want to leave the investors with any final thoughts on your end? All I can say basically is we were growing rapidly in 2016. The market adopted our technologies. Hadn't it been for the infringement, we would have been two, three, four times our size. We would have moved into the water market sooner, but better late than never. We've got a better team right now. We've got great tailwind of legal support and potential financial wins to back up a very strong legacy business. The know-how and the new technologies we are taking into the water market will be extremely valuable. I think we'll take a big chunk of that business starting in the second half of 2025. I very much look forward to bringing the news to the community as we go forward and ramp up to what we hope will be a move on to the New York Exchange early this fall and a push forward from there as we take market share and continue to grow in the water market. Great. Thank you so much for your time today, Richard. I would like to thank everybody in the audience for your participation here in the Sidoti & Company Conference. Thank you so much. Have a great day. Thank you.