All posts by Patrick Graham

CSE Issuer Stories, Magazine

American Pacific Mining: High-grade projects in premier US jurisdictions position this explorer to make the most of gold’s newfound momentum

For American Pacific Mining (CSE:USGD) Chief Executive Officer Warwick Smith, forming a close partnership with the world’s second-largest mining company speaks volumes about the junior explorer’s growth and investment potential.

Smith’s team completed a transaction in 2020 that can in every way be described as a company-maker, when it acquired the past-producing Madison Copper Gold project in Montana. Madison is being explored under a joint venture with Kennecott Exploration, which is part of the Rio Tinto Group. 

“It’s huge validation for the project,” Smith says. “The majors these days are using the juniors as their exploration arms. They’re not funding their own exploration. They’re looking to the American Pacifics of the world, going, ‘Hey, these guys are onto something. Let’s fund them.’”

Through an earn-in agreement already in place at the time of acquisition, Rio Tinto can spend up to US$30 million for 70% of Madison. That’s something that Smith and President Eric Saderholm, a boots-on-the-ground geologist and veteran mining executive, never imagined would happen on their first attempt to purchase the project.

“We went to look at Madison in 2016. We really liked it and wanted to buy it,” Smith says, noting that between 2008 and 2012 the project produced 2.7 million pounds of copper and 7,570 ounces of gold at high grades.

“But before we got a chance to negotiate on it, another group bought the asset. They did a great job. They came in and drilled into the porphyry, which was a big deal and that got Rio Tinto excited,” he explains.

In 2021, Kennecott completed US$2.7 million in exploration, which included 10 diamond drill holes totaling 3,598 metres, targeting extensions to the project’s skarns and jasperoids. The drilling identified new zones of skarn-hosted massive sulphides, underscoring the potential for bonanza-style gold mineralization.

Highlights from the drill program include one hole which returned 14.44 grams per ton gold and 0.11% copper over 6.53 metres, including 39.57 grams per ton gold and 0.28% copper over 2.35 metres. The next step for Kennecott is to create a comprehensive 3D model of Madison’s skarn environment to direct the next drilling phase.

But what makes the deal, which cost American Pacific C$2.4 million, even sweeter is that it has been highlighted by S&P Global Platts, the leading independent provider of information and benchmark prices for the commodities and energy markets.

American Pacific was selected for 2021 as one of four finalists in the S&P Global Platts Global Metals Awards program in the Deal of the Year category. Even though his company lost out to winner Cleveland-Cliffs, Smith said American Pacific could not have asked for better recognition than being put in the spotlight with some of the biggest and most successful companies in the world.

“It was a significant nod of approval on what we think can be a world-class asset with world-class service in a smaller company,” he says.

Smith notes that the value of the company has grown significantly, making it one of the top percentage gainers among gold mining stocks on the Canadian Securities Exchange in 2021.

“The CSE has helped us get to that point and it is the right exchange for us to list on and it’s been the right exchange to grow on,” Smith explains. “It’s been great for the company and has been great for shareholders as well.”

American Pacific’s profile is further bolstered by the presence of former hedge fund manager Michael Gentile. He is the company’s largest shareholder, with a 19.9% stake.

Also in the company’s project portfolio are two highly prospective high-grade assets: the Tuscarora gold project and the Gooseberry gold and silver project, both located in Nevada, a famously mining-friendly state.

American Pacific has two other assets in Nevada as well: South Florida and Red Hill. Smith says the company plans to partner up via joint ventures to further the projects.

At Tuscarora, near the town of Elko, Smith says the company is spending C$5 million on a 70-hole drill program. The 4,272 acre project consists of numerous high-grade gold vein targets, including the Grand Prize Target, from which the company reported high-grade samples of 21,032 grams per ton gold and 38,820 grams per ton silver in 2021.

“We’re the first company to ever own it all, which is a big deal. We’re focused there,” Smith says. “We think it’s got the opportunity to be big.”

As for Gooseberry, the company is planning sampling programs and eventual drilling of parallel vein targets within a low sulphidation, epithermal vein system. The mine sits close to the historic Comstock Mining District outside Reno, where discovered lodes and veins led to the production of 8.6 million ounces of gold and 192 million ounces of silver.

“The mine hasn’t been touched since 1991 when it was last in production. We staked it. It was available and cost us C$20,000 to pick it up,” Smith says. “We spent about a million and a half dollars there. We’re up there working again doing the sampling.”

However, Smith explains that it may be time for American Pacific to move beyond acquiring exploration targets as he, Saderholm and the rest of the management team mull growing the company by taking advantage of merger and acquisition opportunities.

“It gives us a chance to think big. I’m not interested in purchasing another exploration project,” he says. “If I were to do something on the M&A side, I’d want to double the size of the company overnight. That’s the type of M&A that we’re looking to do.”

Looking ahead to the rest of 2022, Smith says the company is focusing its energy, and decidedly healthy treasury, on developing Madison, Tuscarora and Gooseberry.

“All three of those have the opportunity to be large multi-million-ounce deposits that we feel that we can grow to meet the desire of majors,” says Smith.

This story was featured in the Canadian Securities Exchange magazine.

Learn more about American Pacific Mining at https://americanpacific.ca/.

CSE Issuer Stories, Magazine

Blender Bites takes its delicious blend of nutrition and convenience across North America

As with many a budding food-focused entrepreneur before her, it all began in the kitchen for Chelsie Hodge.

Incorporating three smoothies into her daily diet had Hodge feeling sharp and energized. But on the flip side, preparing the healthy drinks with fresh ingredients took no small amount of time each day, and what did not get used ended up taking significant space in her refrigerator or being discarded.

Leveraging her experience as a business development officer at plant-based protein and sport nutrition powerhouse Vega, Hodge made it her mission to reformulate what it means to make a smoothie.

Her invention was a frozen “puck” containing everything required for a tasty, nutritious smoothie, save for a splash of water, soy milk or other dairy alternative. No fuss, no food waste, just a few seconds in the blender and the drink is ready to enjoy. 

Some four years later, Hodge’s clever creation is available in more than 850 grocery stores across Canada. And in September of last year, Blender Bites (CSE:BITE) became a publicly traded company, with founder Hodge at the helm as Chief Executive Officer. 

In Blender Bites’ first year, Hodge’s kitchen was the centre of production, her mother and aunts by her side to help make enough product to meet demand. 

While many makers of healthy foods look to specialty stores for distribution, Hodge saw the potential to go mainstream right out of the gate. 

Whole Foods Market and Fresh St. Market/IGA, two of Western Canada’s largest grocery store chains, were the first major retailers to embrace the pre-portioned smoothie. Safeway, Sobeys, Save-On-Foods and other leading grocery brands weren’t far behind.

“The freezer category was just dying for innovation,” Hodge explains. “There’s this mindset amongst consumers that frozen is unhealthy and fresh is so much better. Education is needed to change people’s minds, as frozen actually has more nutrition most of the time because it is flash frozen.”

Blender Bites is innovative when it comes to packaging as well, by being minimal rather than fancy. This commitment to respecting the environment complements the nutritional profile of the product, which is certified organic, vegan and non-GMO. With gluten, dairy, soy and added sugars absent from the ingredient list, Blender Bites are perfect for consumers with food intolerances, too.

Today, Hodge says Blender Bites is growing “very rapidly” after launching into Costco in Eastern Canada with reformulated and rebranded products in three lines: green dtox, power berry and vita smoothie. The products are currently available at Costco locations in Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes. 

Just how rapidly the business is expanding became clear recently when the company announced a 990% year-on-year increase in purchase order volume for December 2021, to $495,000. Demand was strong all around, with orders also coming in from existing and new club stores carrying the brand, plus many of the Canadian retailers with Blender Bites already on their shelves. 

With a well-established, and growing, presence in Canada, Blender Bites has its sights set on the US market. It announced its first order from “the world’s leading club store chain” in December and expects more US club stores to begin carrying Blender Bites soon. Costco Wholesale warehouses in Texas, Louisiana and Oklahoma are the first of the chain’s US locations to carry the products. 

A direct-to-consumer platform for the US market is also in the works.

Hodge notes that another big opportunity for Blender Bites is in the food service industry, which includes restaurants, cafes and hotels where smoothie drinks are popular but time-consuming to prepare.

“They just don’t have the people to sit there and chop up the fruits and vegetables or take ingredients and make a recipe for a smoothie,” says Hodge. “Blender Bites is a solution that could be extremely lucrative.”

Financially, the company is getting stronger as well. It raised just under $3.9 million as part of its go-public transaction last September. The shares are also listed on the Frankfurt exchange and the company is eyeing a listing on the OTC market in the US.

For 2022, Blender Bites is targeting between $6 million and $7.5 million in annual revenue as big name retailers embrace its products. 

“We’ve got accounts like Kroger and Albertsons and Wegmans and Walmart and Target on our list for retail for the US and we are focusing on the bigger accounts,” Hodge says. 

“Public companies like to acquire other brands and as soon as I’ve built up the team a little more, I think we’d have the capacity to look at that down the road. It is in the plans for the company, for sure.”

For the current year, though, the Blender Bites CEO plans to remain focused on further market penetration and expansion into food service, retail and club stores. 

“We’ve come a long way in a short time and when I think about our products being enjoyed by people right across North America, I’m really proud of our team,” says Hodge. “But there is so much opportunity to expand market share and penetrate huge new sales channels that I feel we’re really only just getting started.”

This story was featured in the Canadian Securities Exchange magazine.

Learn more about Blender Bites at https://blenderbites.com/.

CSE Issuer Stories, Magazine

Wesana Health: Leveraging personal and professional experience to help patients achieve better mental health outcomes

Former Chicago Blackhawks enforcer Daniel Carcillo spent much of his NHL career getting inside the heads of opposing teams, making sure they knew that if they crossed a certain line, things could go sideways.

Today, Carcillo is an entrepreneur whose mission is, for all intents and purposes, the opposite of what he did on the ice. Instead of contributing to head injuries, he now seeks to heal them.

The transition from hard charging two-time Stanley Cup winner to source of hope for people with mental health challenges began in 2015 when a seventh diagnosed concussion forced Carcillo into early retirement. At age 30, he entered the most emotional and anguished time of his life.

Years of fierce competition, and having his body repeatedly slammed into the ice, the boards, and competing players, resulted in Carcillo suffering traumatic brain injury (TBI). The undercurrent of anxiety and depression during early retirement got so bad that Carcillo, a husband and father, contemplated suicide.

He spent five years trying different concussion treatments, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in the process. But it was all for naught. Carcillo found he was no closer to improving his brain health and quality of life. He hit rock bottom.

Then in 2019, hallucinogenic mushrooms helped him begin to turn things around. The experience compelled him to start a new journey assisting others suffering TBI-related symptoms. Athletes, soldiers, domestic violence victims and people recovering from serious accidents are among the many types of patients in need.

Healthy once again and with a new team to lead, Carcillo is Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Wesana Health Holdings (CSE:WESA). His mission with Wesana is to revolutionize the way neurological health and performance is treated through personalized medicine and bringing the promise of psychedelic drug-assisted therapy to the masses using psilocybin to treat TBI and migraines. His company is also working with ketamine through their Wesana Clinics and is in partnership discussions with the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) to explore the use of MDMA to treat TBI.

“Two and a half years ago, when I was suicidal and in my darkest moments, I used psilocybin in a really responsible setting,” Carcillo explains. “I was able to experience just an amazing recovery. And since then, we have found ways to establish Wesana with an outstanding team. We have this innovation that we think will help millions of people.”

Research suggests that psilocybin can create new neurons and new neural pathways in the brain, stimulating concussion-affected areas and reversing destructive, habitual thought processes. In Carcillo’s case, he started a regimen that includes occasional large doses of the hallucinogen and regular non-hallucinogenic doses, which are helping to produce normal brain scans and bloodwork. 

“You can rewire the brain, break up destructive thought patterns and then create new, positive ones,” explains Carcillo.

But he is realistic about the challenges Wesana faces in a new, undefined and increasingly crowded industry that must engage in a long dance with US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) and Health Canada regulators to eventually bring life-saving products to market.

“As it stands right now, there’s no approved pharmaceutical for TBI-related symptoms. And the number one cause of death is suicide. I know it all too well,” says Carcillo.

“I also know how fragmented everything is in this space, from treatment to research. And there are so many gaps and what makes it hard on the patients is getting a diagnosis. And then number two is finding the treatments. We’re here to make as big an impact as we can to positively influence this process for survivors and make it easier on them and their families and caregivers to understand what’s going on and then get them healing.”

Operationally, Wesana heads into the latter half of 2021 with a $21 million runway and plenty of media attention, stemming partly from Carcillo’s fame and passionate advocacy for psychedelic drug-assisted therapy.

In the product development pipeline, the company is advancing its SANA 0013 through the preclinical stage studying psilocybin to treat TBI-related major depressive disorder. Wesana is making headway with the FDA, as it has scheduled a pre-Investigational New Drug (IND) meeting with regulators around year’s end, to be followed by the opening of the IND in the third quarter of 2022.

While psilocybin remains the company’s focus, it recently staked its claim in the markets for ketamine and MDMA, two drugs far ahead in the regulatory approval process. Carcillo readily acknowledges that bringing psilocybin-based therapies to market will take years, as the drug remains illegal in the US, as does MDMA. The FDA approved ketamine as an anesthetic for humans in 1970.

To further its expansion, Wesana acquired Psychedelitech (known as PsyTech) in September 2021, gaining a chain of mental health clinics that can administer ketamine therapies.

Wesana also picked up a software platform that helps clinicians track patient outcomes in real time and supports a community forum of over 8,000 professionals, many of them respected resources for psychedelic therapy protocols and clinical best practices.

For MDMA, also known as the popular recreational drug “ecstasy” or “molly,” the company has developed a partnership with MAPS, which is mulling an MDMA-assisted therapy program to treat TBI. Wesana has committed to provide an initial US$1.5 million to assess the program’s viability and might establish a joint venture with MAPS.

MAPS’ research has primarily focused on MDMA-assisted therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), an affliction common among soldiers that causes similar mental health symptoms and outcomes as TBI. MAPS says current FDA-approved Phase 3 trials have demonstrated an 88% reduction in PTSD symptoms among participants.

“Using this medicine, MDMA can help alleviate that emotional spike during conversations, so it’s easier to deal with trauma,” says Carcillo, who envisions teaming with MAPS to create a “gold standard” of clinics. “Think of it in the context of why it worked so well for PTSD. And so for TBI, that journey is no different.” 

Laying the groundwork for an even deeper understanding of TBI, Carcillo says Wesana has formed partnerships with the World Boxing Council (WBC) and the University of South Carolina as it seeks methods to prevent, or at least minimize, TBI-related damage during boxing matches and other athletic competitions. Wesana will also be using the RESOLV lab to phenotype the TBI patient population that will be participating in the Phase 2 and 3 clinical trials. 

“What can we be doing as far as exercises and supplementation to better protect the brain?” Carcillo asks. “For example, when a WBC fighter knows they’re training for a fight, what can we do to better protect them? What can we implement, as far as supplements, to be neuroprotective before the fight to lessen the damage, and then train for processing speed, hand-eye coordination, reaction time, and neck strength that minimize TBI damage on the front end?”

At the university, the company plans to spend $1.5 million to establish the BrainStorm Lab, which will serve as a hub for neurological and cognitive improvement research, with an eye on developing compounds to enhance neural performance and act as neuroprotectants of the brain. The lab will also work with the US military – which has a large presence in South Carolina – on pre-battle protection and acute post-injury scenarios.

Looking ahead, Carcillo says Wesana plans to rapidly expand the acquisition of clinics and develop more partnerships while pushing along its drug development programs. Plans also include publishing two major white papers on TBI with a group of leading scientists, neuroscientists and pathologists. 

Carcillo, in the meantime, continues working to maintain his mental health while remaining busy growing Wesana with Co-Founder Chad Bronstein. But there is more at stake for him on his new personal journey – he is inspiring others through advocacy, action and education.

“It’s definitely a young space, but an exciting space to really impact people, and treat their traumas rather than putting on band aids and trying to manage symptomatology,” Carcillo concludes. “You have to kind of pinch yourself some days. It’s the most exciting thing to be a part of, trying to positively impact that.”

This story was featured in the Canadian Securities Exchange magazine.

Learn more about Wesana Health at https://www.wesanahealth.com/

CSE Issuer Stories, Magazine

Getchell Gold: High grades at Nevada projects have this team’s confidence running strong

When Getchell Gold (CSE:GTCH) optioned the Fondaway Canyon gold project in January of last year, President Mike Sieb had never felt more confident that he was making the right move.
To Sieb, a 30-year industry veteran known for a combination of technical ability and senior management experience, the Fondaway site checked all the boxes, particularly given the stellar data left behind by the previous owners.

Fondaway is a past gold producer with a legacy resource estimated at 1 million ounces. Located a mere two-hour drive from Reno, Nevada, it is easily accessible, which helps to keep costs reasonable. Nevada is also a mining-friendly state, so taking the project from exploration to a fully functioning mine would not generate a red-tape nightmare.

“The mineralization is very apparent on the surface,” Sieb explains to Public Entrepreneur. “That’s really the package that finally brings us to the table. You’re starting off with a healthy foundation to work from, and when we started to do even just a cursory review of the asset it was readily apparent that the historic resource was actually quite constrained.”

In fact, as Getchell’s team continues work on Fondaway, the opportunities to in-fill and expand the mineralization zones are becoming quite evident.

Early assay results from the company’s inaugural 1,995-metre diamond drill program in 2020 to test the geological model of the Colorado zone exceeded expectations and set in motion plans to ramp up drilling and develop a mine model.

“It’s not very often that every hole of an exploration drill program returns gold intersections as good as or better than anticipated,” Sieb says. “Our 2020 drill program substantially expanded the known mineralization and demonstrated that our broadest gold zones remain open with excellent potential for further extension.”
Sieb, who called the findings “an absolute rarity from my experience,” says all six drillholes show promise. One high-grade standout hole pierced the main Half Moon Shear Vein 54 metres below surface and registered 8.6 grams per ton gold over 9.8 metres. Another returned 21.9 metres grading 6.2 grams per ton.
“The success here is that what we represented in the model actually showed up in the real world. We know that we have what we modelled. We know what the historic work accomplished and what it represents. The model indicated that there is a substantial 100-metre-thick band of mineralization that you can envision,” Sieb says.
“The 2020 drill program was designed to prove that the very thick band of mineralization actually exists and that it has real potential continuity.”

Toronto-based Getchell obtained the Fondaway property from Canagold Resources as part of a four-year option agreement under which Getchell can acquire a 100% interest in the site at any time.
In return, Getchell pays Canagold $2 million in cash as well as $2 million in shares. And it must spend $1.45 million on exploration. Canagold also will retain a 2% net smelter return royalty should Getchell acquire its 100% stake in Fondaway.

The property was first staked in 1956, and after changing hands over the decades Canagold obtained it in 2017 and released a resource estimate showing 2.01 million indicated tons grading 6.18 grams per ton gold and inferred resources of 3.2 million tons grading 6.4 grams per ton. Past drilling was extensive, comprising 735 holes for a total of 56,682 metres.

In addition to Fondaway, Getchell is developing a second property in Nevada – a high-grade copper, gold and silver project called Star. The company also controls the Dixie Comstock gold project and the Hot Springs Peak gold project in the state, but the Star project stands out. The site is 60 kilometres north of Fondaway. Sieb calls it “excellent bonus potential” for investors.

“We have developed fairly compelling targets that will be drilled and tested this year at Star,” Sieb explains. “This project has some really good high-grade showings on surface and some compelling geophysical targets at depth and has never been drilled before.”
Meanwhile, the company has the finances to push forward with Fondaway in 2021. Getchell has $1.6 million in the bank and about $3 million of warrants that are in the money. Sieb also notes Getchell is fortunate that it can spread its earn-in payments on Fondaway over four years rather than having to make a hefty outlay upfront.
Looking ahead to the rest of 2021, Sieb says Getchell plans to undertake a drill program to extend known mineralization and follow up on the newly discovered zone. It also plans to drill an additional 4,000 metres this year and is advancing toward a revised resource estimate.

“The next step is readily apparent. It’s going to be a major drill campaign that is going to start to fill in the open spots with a focus on developing a mine model,” Sieb explains.

Sieb says he’s already visualizing the next drill program at Fondaway and that it is now in the planning process.

“I can easily see where those holes are going to be located to start to further expand as well as in-fill the mineralization,” he explains. “And we’re also going to do another model of the mineralization to get a better sense of what we really have.”

This story was featured in the Public Entrepreneur magazine.

Learn more about Getchell Gold at https://www.getchellgold.com/

CSE Issuer Stories, Magazine

Planet 13 Holdings: Doing things “Vegas style” fuels the growth at this one-of-a-kind cannabis company

Media coverage of the cannabis sector these days would lead you to think that nobody in the industry makes any money, yet nothing could be further from the truth. There are many profitable companies out there, and others a stone’s throw away.

One of those companies is Las Vegas–based Planet 13 Holdings (CSE:PLTH), whose retail footprint is truly beyond compare. But more on that in just a moment.

What makes Planet 13 successful in its Nevada home market is simple: vertical integration and high visibility. This means the company can grow its own cannabis and make its own products for the wholesale, medical and retail markets. It sells its popular brands at its wholly owned store in Las Vegas, as well as at dispensaries owned by others.

The company currently has three cultivation sites, plus three production facilities to make edibles and other products. But its biggest claim to fame is the SuperStore dispensary, the Planet 13 Cannabis Entertainment Complex located not far from the famous Las Vegas Strip.

At 112,000 square feet, the SuperStore is the biggest cannabis store in the world, attracting 1 million visitors and generating US$63 million in revenue in 2019. That represents about one in 10 cannabis sales in the state. Plans call for opening a second Las Vegas dispensary, as well as for launching Planet 13’s first retail location in California, in the first half of 2021.

Although the COVID-19 pandemic cut into SuperStore sales during springtime, the top line has since enjoyed a steady rebound. For the third quarter, which ended September 30, revenue is expected to be $22.8 million, representing a 110% increase over the previous quarter.

Public Entrepreneur discussed the state of operations, effects from COVID-19 and growth plans with Planet 13 Co-Chief Executive Officer Bob Groesbeck.

Operating the largest cannabis retail store in the world, Planet 13 is a barometer on how the cannabis market is doing. Talk to us about retail sales and cultivation.

Business has been fantastic despite COVID-19 reducing tourist traffic to Las Vegas. We pre-released our third-quarter revenue number, and it is the highest in our company’s history.

Growth this quarter reflects improvements at the SuperStore, which drove a higher ticket; improvement in our delivery services, which increased our share of local cannabis revenue; and growth on the wholesale side of the business.

How did the COVID-19 lockdown affect sales, and what have you seen since?

It had a dramatic effect on our business in Q2. Nevada shut all dispensaries and required delivery-only sales. This forced us to adapt and improve our business, which, again, has really driven growth for us and enabled the market share gain in Q3.

Las Vegas is still feeling the effects of COVID, and you can see it in the tourist traffic, which is less than 40% of what it usually is this time of year. It makes what we’ve done in Q3 all the more impressive. We sell primarily to tourists and were somehow able to grow revenue despite visitor numbers being way down

Why and how did you get into the cannabis business?

Larry (Larry Scheffler, Planet 13 Co-CEO) and I met when we were both members of the Henderson City Council in the mid-1990s. We continued that relationship in business after we left the City Council. We were intrigued when we heard in late 2013 that Nevada was going to allow medical marijuana facilities to open. We immediately recognized how much of a transformational event this was and decided quickly that we wanted to be involved. And, as longtime residents of southern Nevada, we wanted to do it “Vegas style” – an over-the-top cannabis experience.

What has been Planet 13’s biggest success and its biggest regret?

Our biggest success to date is the Las Vegas SuperStore. We set out to build something unique – a truly special customer experience. And we’ve created a piece of Las Vegas. What Steve Wynn did for the club experience, we’ve done for the cannabis experience. As for regrets, it is really just delays on some regulatory things. We would love to already have our cannabis consumption lounges open. 

What are the biggest obstacles to opening and running a dispensary, especially one on the scale of the SuperStore? 

For us, it was primarily obtaining a licence and finding a location where a dispensary like the Planet 13 SuperStore could thrive. We operate a different dispensary that is completely experience-based. As a result, we require a larger dispensary that has parking and easy access from tourist hot spots. To give you an example, we looked at over 100 locations before finding our new location in Santa Ana, California.

How important has vertical integration been to your success?

Planet 13 is a vertically integrated business, but it’s really important to understand that we create a one-of-a-kind customer experience. At the SuperStore we combine entertainment, customer service and best-in-class choice and product quality. While we are a retailer first, having in-house production and our own products contributes a great deal to our success. We routinely have different products in Nevada’s 10 top-selling SKUs.

How does the company plan to grow? Will it be M&A, organic growth or a mix of the two?

It will be both. We will continue expanding in Nevada organically, opening another store and expanding delivery and wholesale. We will also be opening the store in Santa Ana. Outside of that, we are actively looking at M&A to expand into other tier-one cities where SuperStores could do well. 

Those are some big plans. Briefly review the balance sheet for us – is the cash already there to support the expansion?

We are in a strong financial position. We’ve done three financings in the last couple of months and have approximately $60 million in cash on the balance sheet and essentially no debt. We’ve historically been cash-flow positive so are set for accretive growth. 

What are the objectives for the next 12 months and the strategy for achieving them?

We’ve laid out a clear roadmap for investors. We are opening our next SuperStore in Santa Ana and over the next couple of years would like to have SuperStores in major cities and tourist locations across the US. We’re talking places such as Chicago, Boston, Phoenix and also Orlando, if Florida shifts to recreational legalization. 

As a final question, what would be your best advice for companies seeking to enter the cannabis industry?

It is the same as any other business. Focus on figuring out what the customer wants and then give it to them.

This story was featured in the Public Entrepreneur magazine.

Learn more about Planet 13 Holdings Inc.
at https://www.planet13holdings.com/ 

CSE Issuer Stories, Magazine

HealthSpace Data Systems: Governments in need of contact tracing to cope with COVID-19 turn to a trusted name

Public health departments have for decades been running contact tracing programs to reduce the spread of communicable diseases and other threats, stepping in to mitigate the impact of everything from unsafe restaurant food to unprotected sex to tainted tattoo needles.

But amid the widespread and deadly COVID-19 pandemic, contact tracing has taken on a new sense of urgency. In the US, the novel coronavirus has spread to all 50 states, and deaths climbed above 125,000 in late June 2020. Meanwhile, the introduction of an effective vaccine is still some way down the road.

As a result, overwhelmed state and local health officials across the US are turning to private companies such as HealthSpace Data Systems (CSE:HS) to help devise solutions.

HealthSpace, an established Software as a Service (SaaS) company currently serving more than 500 public health departments across North America, responded to the challenge by extending its HSCloud Suite and My Health Department products to create a fully automated digital contact tracing platform for COVID-19.

Several US public health departments have deployed the British Columbia–based company’s platform, including the State of Hawaii and several counties in Washington State, Illinois, Michigan and North Carolina. The automated platform can be up and running within 48 hours, although most departments usually complete their initial setup over the course of two weeks.

“Our platform not only has the ability to be deployed rapidly, it fits perfectly with the normal course of work public health departments are already doing,” explains Chief Executive Officer Silas Garrison. “We believe that as numerous people begin to be employed to bolster contact tracing efforts, our platform will be a proven benefit to accentuate the human effort with an automated solution.”

Over the years, health departments have typically had in-house staffers or contractors retrace the steps of people who tested positive for diseases and record anyone who had contact with them. The trackers then embarked on the painstaking process of cold-calling each contact to ask a series of questions and determine if they had experienced symptoms, while also encouraging them to avoid infecting others.

However, ramping up operations to handle the scope and breadth of COVID-19 tracing is a daunting task for most cash-strapped state and local governments. It means hiring hundreds, if not thousands, of tracers to work in large call centres. It also means training the contact tracers through online programs or sometimes weeks of in-person instruction.

Even with the best training, there’s a huge hurdle to overcome, as contact tracing is only effective if the contactee is willing to pick up the telephone and converse with the caller. The pick-up rate for unfamiliar or unidentified numbers in today’s society is very low. And the people who do answer are often guarded and uncooperative, if not downright abusive.

The logistics of launching a contact tracing program, hiring and training tracers, renting office space, and maintaining it for months can be costly, and far beyond the reach for some jurisdictions facing plummeting tax revenues as a result of the pandemic.

For HealthSpace, given the company’s years of work providing hundreds of state and local governments with its powerful self-serve enterprise cloud and mobile platform to manage their operations, stepping up to help both clients and non-clients in need during an unprecedented public health crisis seemed like a natural fit.

Garrison says it was during an initial general outreach to its customers about COVID-19 that HealthSpace first learned of the growing need at public health departments to find ways for a rapid scaling up of existing contact tracing operations, assuming the departments even had such operations to begin with.

He says HealthSpace’s automated contact tracing platform is simply a “modified version” of its foodborne-illness-tracking service, which has been in use for years. That is why the company was able to deploy the platform quickly, with minimal need for additional capital or other resources.

“It took very little technical effort to get this up. And immediately we turned it on and we started to spread the word out to our customers,” says Garrison. “We had several early adopters, literally within 24 hours, and it didn’t take too long for the word to spread.”

The platform, which was rolled out in April, connects with individuals daily by sending a unique and secure link via text message or e-mail. The link leads to a questionnaire that the recipient fills out by entering symptoms, temperature, places visited and people they have been in direct contact with.

These latter people are sent questionnaires each day, too. If anyone exhibits symptoms, health officials know immediately, issue quarantine directives and arrange for testing or treatment.

Information is securely stored inside the company’s cloud-based platform. Public health departments can access the encrypted data – which they own – for detailed real-time reporting and analysis. In addition, the data can be securely sent to healthcare providers, a service the company has always provided to its customers as part of its My Health Department product.

Garrison notes that HealthSpace’s automated platform isn’t meant to supplant human tracers. “They still need teams of people to manage this information, because you might have all the information oriented digitally. It still takes more specialized knowledge and skill to look over that information and determine who they need to make a more proactive outreach to.”

In order to get established clients, as well as new ones, to adopt the contact tracing platform, the company is providing a version for free, for 90 days in most cases. Also, waiving upfront fees acknowledges that many local and state governments don’t have the funds to purchase the platform right now.

“They are getting the benefit of the platform today for a situation that is dire and are able utilize it while they’re waiting on getting their funds in place,” Garrison explains.

“What this has done has actually worked to our benefit. They are now references and have been spokespersons for us in several key areas that will translate to sales. So, it actually works as a very powerful, tip-of-the-spear sales tool, because they are able to get it for free, get it into people’s hands and appreciate its power and value. And now they’re talking to other potential customers about it, which could directly translate into exponential sales growth for us.”

Organizations deciding to use the platform for the long term will pay $200 to $300 per month for each user – a nurse or epidemiologist, for example. A client requiring 10 user accounts could thus generate up to $36,000 in annual revenue.

The approach appears to be working, as HealthSpace announced its first contract incorporating contact tracing for COVID-19 in mid-June. The agreement will see Mecklenburg County Health Department in North Carolina use HSCloud Suite for contact tracing and managing its Onsite Program for five years. The work with Mecklenburg County will generate revenue of US$157,800 for HealthSpace.

The company shared news that same month that counties in Ohio, Arizona and Illinois have started using the platform as well, with HealthSpace providing it on a gratis basis for the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Looking ahead to the rest of 2020 and beyond, Garrison says public health departments can pivot the automated tracing platform to tackle other epidemiological outbreaks once the COVID-19 crisis is under control. For example, the company is in talks about using it to track people living with HIV.

“The platform is so flexible and powerful that it extends well beyond the COVID-19 situation,” Garrison says. “This is a sustainable path forward for a new business model within our existing platform.”

This story was featured in the Public Entrepreneur magazine.

Learn more about HealthSpace Data Systems
at https://web.healthspace.com/.

CSE Issuer Stories, Magazine

Talisker Resources: Shorter timelines to discovery are the goal with prime BC projects

Terry Harbort, Chief Executive Officer of Talisker Resources Ltd. (CSE:TSK), is convinced that he and his team have found the perfect gold project to catapult their junior resource company into the big leagues.

This past December, the Toronto-based explorer purchased 100 percent of the Bralorne Gold Project in south-central British Columbia from Avino Silver & Gold Mines in a multimillion-dollar cash and stock deal.

Consisting of three main mines, Bralorne was one of the longest producing high-grade gold deposits in British Columbia, operating from 1929 to 1971. Though some 4.2 million ounces were pulled from the earth at a recovered grade of 17.7 grams per ton, the mining operation was eventually shut down due to depressed gold prices.

When mining in the area came to a halt, gold was at $200 per ounce, adjusted for modern inflation. With gold now selling for nearly $1,600 USD per ounce, Harbort says Talisker is eager to get at “that $200 rock still left in the ground” at Bralorne.

“We looked all throughout that region of south-central BC and we came across the Bralorne project, which initially was something that was probably bigger than what we were searching for,” explains Harbort, a veteran geologist who’s worked for major miners such as AngloGold Ashanti. “But we were able to do what became a transformational transaction for the company.”

For Talisker, which Harbort formed alongside some close industry colleagues, greenfield exploration was the plan when trading commenced on the Canadian Securities Exchange in spring of 2019. However, the acquisition of Bralorne advances the company into the next stage in one fell swoop.

Bolstered by $25 million in financing and royalty sales, the company kicked off 2020 by firing up the first drill rig at Bralorne in early February.

Harbort says Talisker will drill 3,000 metres along strike extensions of existing veins with plans of further drilling 6,000 to 7,000 metres in April, with results expected around the middle of the year.

The company has 45,000 samples from Bralorne and plenty of other data that, according to Harbort, is enough to give the company confidence that significant gold deposits remain in the ground.

“We can actually see where the samples intersected veins, and we can wireframe these into vein models and calculate what an approximate potential grade would be,” he says.

“We know, historically from the production, that the continuity was very high. So, it means as we go to depth and along strike we’ve got a pretty good chance of the veins continuing at a very high grade. We believe that’s what we’ll be targeting, as opposed to drilling and hoping we hit veins. We’re drilling the way we already know where the veins are. That really reduces our risk.”

Looking ahead to the rest of 2020, Harbort says Talisker is “working toward defining what the footprint is and how many millions of ounces are potentially there” as part of a crucial resource statement expected for release in early 2021.

In addition to Bralorne, Talisker also holds 85 percent of the gold belt at Spences Bridge, another exciting gold project in British Columbia. The claim stands as one of the largest land stakes in the province’s history.

At Spences Bridge, Talisker has formed a strategic alliance with Westhaven Ventures, which owns the Shovelnose high-grade epithermal discovery contiguous to Talisker’s claims.

“Initially, the Spences Bridge gold belt was what was called a frontier gold belt where people see indications of a certain style of mineralization but deposits there have never been discovered,” he explains.

But in September 2018, that all changed when Westhaven discovered a high-grade vein deposit, promoting the project from frontier status to emerging. Subsequently, “the whole belt could host a number of discoveries.”

Harbort says Talisker “aggressively” explored Spences Bridge in the last field season, when it was just starting up as a new company. During that time, Talisker had 23 geologists at the site who collected more than 3,000 stream sediment samples and defined eight drill targets. For 2020, the company has budgeted $3.5 million for 20 geologists working on five projects.

While Bralorne and Spences Bridge are Talisker’s most important projects in British Columbia, the company has several more in its portfolio, ranging from early stage projects to advanced ones. All told, Talisker’s properties comprise 270,605 hectares over 288 claims, three leases and 154 crown grant claims, making the company a dominant exploration player in south-central British Columbia.

Harbort says Talisker was attracted to the region in the first place not only because of the geology and celebrated mining history, but also the abundance of scientific theory.

“We believe that there are a number of belts in that part of British Columbia that haven’t been well explored simply because there’s not a large number of low sulphidation epithermal gold deposits or mines,” he explains. “What we noticed very quickly was that there was a knowledge gap in the exploration techniques for these types of deposits, and the textural and alteration interpretation, to tell where a deposit’s stratigraphy was.”

However, gold mining isn’t only about geology, science, or the data. Logistics, Mother Nature, and minding the bottom line for investors also play a crucial role as well. That’s why Harbort loves “the latitude and the weather” in south-central BC, not to mention a developed infrastructure, unlike some colder, more inaccessible regions of the province.

“The field stage is very short and access can be problematic in other parts of BC. You often have to fly in with helicopters and fly them to a base. You’ve got to build camps. It becomes very expensive,” he says.

“The areas that we’re exploring are just a couple of hours drive from Vancouver. We don’t have to build camps; our geologists can stay in hotels in local towns. We don’t have cooks and kitchens. We don’t have any helicopter support.”

As a result, Talisker is much freer to capitalize on positive outcomes and to channel the savings back into the project. This makes it possible for them to work longer during the year, and shorten exploration timeframes.

“That means we can do a lot more with our investors’ money and hopefully give them a short discovery timeline so they can get a return a lot quicker than on projects in more northern areas,” Harbort explains.

When it comes to investors, current or prospective, Harbort points out that most of the company’s financing comes from deep-pocketed institutional investors who embraced Talisker in its early period. So, retail investors might want to take notice.

“They know they’re not backing us because of luck. They are backing us because of the management team, because of the assets that we have and our ability to get access to capital and then to successfully execute the plan.”

This story was featured in the Public Entrepreneur magazine.

Learn more about Talisker Resources Ltd. at https://taliskerresources.com/.

CSE Issuer Stories, Magazine

AMPD Ventures: Meeting the need for digital speed when every millisecond counts

AMPD Ventures (CSE:AMPD) Chief Executive Officer Anthony Brown has declared war on computing latency.

For the digital layman, latency is deterioration in the speed (measured in milliseconds) at which a signal arrives, gets processed and is sent back to the requesting computer. The lower the latency, the faster the processing time.

Latency is a big deal with online gamers. Any lag, jitter or other performance issue with a video game can ruin the player experience. For professional gamers, latency is a livelihood issue because money is at stake – a lag or glitch means rival players are able to move and react faster to score more points.

“Those milliseconds can add up,” Brown says. “The more interactive an application is – like any esport where they’re continually pressing buttons and moving and doing things, and you’re in communication between the client and the server – the more it counts. Even though you’re dealing with milliseconds, the resulting impact on the application can be quite noticeable.”

Brown has been confronting the latency problem since his days two decades ago when he co-founded the Seven Group, providing high-performance computing for banks and engineering firms and then working with the likes of Disney Interactive on video games. Brown’s passion eventually morphed into AMPD Technologies, which he co-founded in 2015.

Besides video games and esports, AMPD helps other companies bring their dreams to life through data visualization, video rendering, artificial intelligence, augmented reality and virtual reality, and high-level academic research.

Brown and his management team listed AMPD Technologies’ AMPD Ventures unit on the Canadian Securities Exchange in October, to both raise capital and increase AMPD’s profile. The move secured the company $3 million in new funding.

To minimize latency in our increasingly connected digital world, AMPD develops and employs a method called edge computing, which entails placing nodes, which is where the data and content resides, as close as possible to the end-user.

Brown says edge computing represents the fourth stage of the digital revolution, which started with cable television and then the Internet, followed by the cloud.

“It’s the next generation of digital infrastructure. It’s the next Internet, if you like,” he explains.

The cloud is the matrix of “virtual” machines spread out across the globe that Amazon, Google, Microsoft and others maintain to store vast sums of data and perform distributed computing. It might be the heart and soul of e-commerce and video streaming, but the cloud is also seriously flawed.

Remember, it’s partly about distance. For one, sending and requesting data from the cloud adds to the latency lag. Because of this, the cloud and its distributed computing architecture servers can’t adequately handle the emerging data-heavy technologies such as augmented reality and virtual reality that need high-performing computing to function properly.

“What we do is hardware-switched, hardware-firewalled, array-based storage. That means that the storage is separate from the servers and all the servers can access it directly at superfast speeds. And then we put that at the edge, in the urban centre where the data is being used. So that last-mile latency is mitigated as well,” explains Brown.

The company recently opened its first data centre in Vancouver, not far from its headquarters. Besides offering clients high-performance computing solutions, the centre is designed to capture the heat generated by the servers and distribute it to the building, and produce clean drinking water via the condensing systems in the air conditioners.

AMPD is currently onboarding clients and expects to max out the data centre’s capacity before too long. Halfway through November, the company announced its first client, Bardel Entertainment, which works on the popular cartoon series Rick and Morty.

In a deal expected to generate more than $1.2 million in revenue over three years, Bardel will utilize the AMPD Remote Render Service that enables studios to access thousands of cores of processing power without having to build their own costly data centres. When rendering for animated content, two-dimensional or three-dimensional images are generated for the screen from a computer, using huge amounts of processing power.

Importantly, the render service is not hooked up to the Internet but rather connected via direct fibre access to AMPD’s servers in the company’s data centre. That means minimal latency issues by avoiding the cloud.

AMPD has also started a partnership with Myesports Ventures, which runs the online gaming stadiums where players compete in esport tournaments with live audiences. Myesports currently has one live stadium and three more planned in 2020, and has tapped AMPD to supply the computing infrastructure for players and onsite gaming hosting.

In addition to supplying the backbone for players at the stadium, AMPD will be able to let players access the platform from home, giving people in the local area an ability to play an esport with the same low latency experience as esports athletes competing in the stadium itself.

AMPD also is involved with the Digital Technology Supercluster Learning Factory project, a consortium financed by the Canadian government to provide digital solutions for the manufacturing industry. The project will leverage AMPD’s high-performance computing platform to create digital twins of production lines for advanced aircraft parts. The project goes live in December for both simulation and virtual reality visualization.

“Eventually we’ll hit critical mass where we just need to proliferate and get ahead of the curve to be able to build out as many data centres and as many high-performance computing nodes as we can,” Brown concludes. “To be able to handle the load of all those super cool applications coming down the pipe that people can’t even use yet is what we are gearing up for.”

This story was featured in the Public Entrepreneur magazine.

Learn more about AMPD Ventures at https://www.ampd.tech/.

CSE Issuer Stories, Magazine

ICEsoft Technologies Canada: Modern elements key to engineering broader acceptance of life-saving community alerts

When a small-cap company launches a new product line, having an established legacy business in the background is a dream scenario. Count ICEsoft Technologies Canada (CSE:ISFT) amongst those lucky few. The company is already a leading global provider of critical enterprise software solutions for desktop and mobile enterprise, its rich Internet application products being used by more than 20,000 enterprises and 150,000 developers, with a subscriber base spanning more than 400 corporations.

Eager to do more with its mobile technology expertise, the company, which went public on the Canadian Securities Exchange in June, developed an affordable smart communication platform called Voyent Alert!.

Designed specifically for local and regional governments to alert and communicate with the public during both emergencies and non-critical events, Voyent Alert! is a great example of technology being used to make a meaningful difference in people’s lives…perhaps even saving them.

Public Entrepreneur spoke with ICEsoft President and Chief Executive Officer Brian McKinney recently about the Voyent Alert! platform and the company’s plans going forward.

Voyent Alert! sounds like something quite different for ICEsoft. What compelled you to develop a multi-purpose, mass-notification system? 

Our legacy business is profitable and it’s a very interesting business, but it’s also hyper-technical and certainly a maturing market. About 18 to 20 months ago we were tapped on the shoulder by some of our west coast clients and asked if we could repurpose some of our mobile technologies into a new kind of community-alerting system. That’s kind of the genesis of the pivot we undertook. It really represented the kind of next-generation platform that we wanted to go after.

What makes Voyent Alert! different from other mass-notification systems like the Emergency Alert System or AMBER alerts?  

Conventionally speaking, information tends to be issued in a very text-centric format. The text looks like a bunch of words kind of jumbled together. And one of the things we felt strongly about was that a lot of people won’t process that information, or they’ll read the first two lines of a bunch of text and then they’ll move on.

We felt that if we could make it more visual and provide a lot more context to the user, the alert would be far more valuable to them. It would allow them to process things faster and make better, more informed decisions more quickly. It’s one thing to know that there’s a fire on 6th and Main. It’s another to get a picture on your phone that shows you on a map here’s the fire, here’s your mother’s house, and it’s 500 metres south of the fire so she’s subject to an evacuation order. That’s very specific to you and very visual. And it’s our contention that that kind of alert would drive a higher level of community engagement.

Day-to-day communications with citizens are also leveraged through the service. It’s not just for emergencies. Our community clients can advise about snow removal plans, targeting specific communities and advising “you have to get your cars off the street, or they will be subject to tow.” Waste recycling pickup schedules have changed. Here are the city council meeting minutes. That sort of thing. If people learn to trust it at a municipal level, they’ll pay attention to it when it’s a real emergency.

Who is the target market for Voyent Alert!?

There are a number of players in the market right now, but the vast majority of them are focusing on large urban deployments. They’re looking to the Bostons, the New Yorks and Torontos to develop solutions for. And they tend to be larger more complex systems, heavy on the back end to accommodate system infrastructure integration.

Fifty percent of North Americans, for example, live in communities of less than 50,000 people. And conventional wisdom alone tells you that a solution that works for New York generally isn’t going to work for a community with a population of 50,000. As a result, a lot of these smaller communities weren’t being serviced very effectively or efficiently by the solutions that were available.

We decided we wanted to move forward with rich, personalized messaging and really focus on targeting smaller communities and more rural regional districts. Strategically, we want to dominate the smaller communities, as our peers basically target large urban deployments. We want to carve out for ourselves that dominant position in the small to medium-sized communities.

Our product is engineered for that service. It’s simpler and easier to use at a lower cost. It’s not like it’s a trivial market. We are focusing exclusively on building up a subscription base. This is a software-as-a-service play with a large recurring revenue stream. One of the advantages of these smaller markets is that they’re very sticky. You know when you get a client, you’re likely to have that client for six or seven years.

That’s a sticky client base indeed. How would you describe the typical entity that subscribes for Voyent Alert!? 

We basically sell to governments – cities, towns, regional districts, and counties. Those organizations purchase it on behalf of their citizens and then the citizens can download the mobile app and register for the service for free. We’re providing coverage to about 55 different communities in Canada that we’ve onboarded in the last 14 months. Since we launched, the number of communities that we’re servicing has been doubling quarter over quarter. We’re anticipating a launch into the US by the end of this year.

There are several competitors in the mass-notification alert sector. Who is your biggest rival and how does ICEsoft stack up against the competition? 

Roughly speaking, about 30-40% of the communities with less than 50,000 population have no solution whatsoever. The rest might have an older kind of solution that might be an e-mail alert system or something that’s a little bit more dated. Our primary competition comes from the market leader, which is a company called Everbridge out of the US east coast. One of the things we find gratifying is that probably the last seven or eight deals where we’ve been up against other competitors, Everbridge primarily, we’ve been winning those deals. It’s been well over a year since we’ve lost a deal to Everbridge. That says that something we’re doing is resonating with the client.

To wrap up, what’s the strategy for Voyent Alert! for the balance of 2019 and into next year?

We are looking very aggressively at other vertical opportunities that face similar challenges to the ones we are solving for our municipal clients. The residential home construction market is one of those opportunities. Residential builders and trades have a big problem keeping track of their people and ensuring their safety status as well as that of the worksite. There is a significant and clear value proposition here that makes the opportunity very attractive.

In addition to expanding into new market verticals we are also looking to broaden the market footprint for Voyent Alert!. This activity sees us focusing on expanding our presence across Canada between now and the end-of-year timeframe. We will then use that presence as a launching pad into the US market.

We’ll be selective about the markets we want to target in the US. We want to make sure they are the ones that would resonate with the value proposition we’re offering. It’s unlikely we’d go out and target eastern seaboard, high-density urban centers. The Midwest and the western states are the more likely candidates that we’re going to launch into. They are more rural and are faced with the kinds of challenges where we can make the biggest difference.

This story was featured in the Public Entrepreneur magazine.

Learn more about ICEsoft Technologies Canada at https://www.icesoft.com/.