INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPTS:
WSA: Good day from Wall Street, this is Juan Costello, Senior analyst with the Wall Street Analyzer. Joining us today is Michael Jennings CEO for Next Green Wave Holdings, the company trades on the Canadian Securities Exchange ticker symbol NGW.N and on the OTCQX and XGWF. Thanks for joining us today there, Michael.
Michael Jennings: Juan thank you for having me.
WSA: Sure. Yeah, anytime so for some of our listeners that are new to the story can you provide us with an intro?
Michael Jennings: Yeah, absolutely. Next Green Wave is a vertically integrated California Cannabis Company with our corporate base in Canada. We’ve been publicly listed for a year now, and within that time, we have launched our first premium cannabis production facility—a 35,000 square foot facility located in Coalinga, California. Located between Los Angeles and San Francisco on the I5. At this point we’re fully scaled, the facility is fully operational. We’re going to do our third harvest as we speak and we’re in our perpetual harvest cycle. So that’s occupying 35,000 square feet.
WSA: So bring us up to speed there on some of your most recent news and activity there as you just achieved an operational milestone for Botticelli?
Michael Jennings: Absolutely, yes, over the last few weeks, we’ve completed the installation and launched our advanced tissue culture lab with Intrexon focused on initially testing the efficacy of the Botticelli, tissue culture platform on cannabis performance. So we’re really excited about that and obviously, in our perspective, it’s the perfect blend of grassroots cannabis experience, understanding the plant, how to cultivate, breed it and understanding the different dynamics coupled with the high level AG biotech abilities of the effects. So we really feel the pressure, especially with regard to our nursery license which puts us on a path to become one of the dominant players in the nursery space in the near future.
WSA: Yeah, sure you’ve had some collaborations with the new Jumper brand as well as Hartluck. Could you walk us through some of your main brands and products and where we can find them.
Michael Jennings: Absolutely. Through our wholly owned subsidiary SDC we hold some really quality brands in the space, both in the CBD and THC side, and we feel they really represent a unique spread among the cannabis demographic. Each one kind of occupies their unique space, which was part of our strategy from the beginning and how we built these was to build the unique space for each one of our brands that didn’t cannibalize the other one. And specifically, you mentioned Carey Hart. He’s a great brand partner with our Hartluck CBD line. Right now we have CBD pills, some topical oils and tinctures and it’s a wellness line focused on the action sports demographic and Carey’s is a great fit for us. We feel like his commitment is to the brand and his use of the product and it’s just one of those things on the wellness side we feel is going to give us an opportunity to really help some people and also expose our ability to put quality branded products out in the market.
You also mentioned No Jumper, he has a really well known podcast, a huge following both on the No Jumper podcast and his personal social media feeds. He’s a really great guy, he’s passionate about cannabis and a partnership like that on the THC side as you can see it touches a whole different demographic as something like Carey Hart but just as big and just as popular in the state of California and being more on the recreational THC side that really fits kind of where we want to be especially in the Southern California market. So you know, where Carey and the CBD line is that can pretty much go national or international here in the near future. Wheras No Jumper will be more focused in California —which is kind of where his following is and where we can really maximize the effect of that partnership.
WSA: Right, so you are trying to establish these brand ambassadors, if you will. Like, you know, King Louie helping you grow that brand and awareness to a different audience. And so what would you say makes your approach and your products unique from some of the other players? Is it that you’re striving for that, you know, quality product or is it the branding?
Michael Jennings: Well it’s like I just touched upon briefly, it’s really the fact that Next Green Wave, the principles, the foundational kind of mantras and ethos of the company is really from a grassroots cannabis perspective. I’m a third generation cannabis grower. This has been something that’s been part of my life, part of my father’s life in a commercial way and has ingrained in my values, that perspective on cannabis is ingrained into the DNA of the company. And you see that when you see our team, our operational facility, the work ethic, the ethos, and the knowledge of the plant. That’s really what identifies us. And then what differentiates us —because there are other companies that have those values, but the fact that we’ve blended that with a high level executive capacity and have people who are experienced on the business front who have access capital markets. So there are a lot of companies that are grassroots in their core like we are, but we’ve been able to take some of those other elements that are necessary to expand and grow a business in a big way, that other companies have had a hard time doing. I feel like that really differentiates us, and you can see that in the product.
We’re producing premium A-grade products from our facility from the get go, from our first harvest till now, everything has passed very strict category three compliance testing. It’s all scored very high on THC in total cannabinoid levels and aesthetically, it’s all artisanal premium great product.
So you know, taking that type of ability to produce that kind of a product and then putting that out into the marketplace, through our very high-level, quality brands. Having them actually participating and feel like stakeholders in the projects from the plant all the way to retail, you combine all those things and I think that really puts us in a different space than a lot of the other companies out there.
WSA: Yeah, sure. So your focus there primarily is on California, but you’re based out of British Columbia, Vancouver. Would you consider any sort of play in Canada as that market is expanding.
Michael Jennings: Well, I mean, here’s the thing with the Canadian market and this has been something that I’ve preached from day one is, you look at the size, just from a population perspective California is equal, if not, I think has a little bit more, perhaps more in total overall population than the entire country of Canada and then you spread that over geographically, that’s the population of California essentially spread out over the geographic area larger than the United States. So for us from the value perspective, California has always been the focus. If we can dominate, I don’t want to say dominate if we can be successful in the California space, then that will allow us both from an ability level expertise and capital, access to capital at that point then we’ll be able to stand in any other markets that we want to go into.
But, realistically, at this point, if you combine all of the other legal cannabis markets that’d be in the US, Canada and abroad, California is still larger. So, when you look at it in that way, being a dominant player in this space, will really by default put us in a rarefied air among the global competition. So we feel like we’re at that point here in the next few years where we’ll be able to pick and choose what markets we want to go into outside of the space and be successful there.
WSA: So what are some of the key drivers there that investors should be aware of and what are some of the milestones here over the next few months that they should keep an eye out for?
Michael Jennings: Absolutely, I mean, if you look at the overall cannabis market in general, there were some, you know, inflated prices and there was more evaluations and we IPO’d last October while we were still building our first facility and we were going to go where the market went from a price point perspective in the public markets and so we’ve been both positively leading up until April of last year and negatively affected thereafter, speaking about price per share. We’ve peaked at almost 150 million US market cap in December and now the overall [Canada’s] index is down 80 sometimes up to 90% from that same time period. So for us it is a value proposition where we are as a company, all the things we have in the pipeline, the fact that we’re in full production, we’re in revenue, we’re expanding our market share in key areas. I mean all of those things point to, I think a huge amount of pent up value.
I believe over the next several quarters, people will start to see that, that’s what is going to differentiate us as we get on all our cylinders. We’re going to see what I’m thinking is going to be substantial revenue growth quarter on quarter and profitability, which is something that has been very elusive (to be nice) for a lot of big players. We have a very efficient, low cost design model I put a lot of time and energy developing, this business and revenue model is based on decades of experience and it’s learned I think conversely. Whereas other companies are unfocused and a little bit scattershot about what they think their core principles are. Here at NGW we are laser focused, we know exactly what our core strengths are. We stand by our principles; we stand by our vision and we’re all about execution. That’s a value proposition that investors can look to and see —if they really look under the hood, and evaluate the potential that we have relative to the rest of market.
WSA: Yeah and perhaps you could talk a little bit more about the management team there, as you’ve had some recent additions and what’s the focus on and the goals over there over the next few months?
Michael Jennings: Absolutely. So I founded NGW and was the original CEO, the founding CEO. I stepped aside at the beginning of this year to really focus on the final development stages and the launch of our facility. Once we got into full rotation, I stepped back into the CEO role which we felt as a board was important from an operational standpoint. Maintaining that full operational efficiency having your finger on the pulse was vital at this stage and we also had a changeover on the marketing side. As I mentioned, our subsidiary SD cannabis, it’s headed by a gentleman Ryan Lang and when I moved back into the CEO role, we also moved him into the CMO role, which we felt was a solid transition. Our first CMO was Canadian based focused more on the corporate development side, but once we started transitioning into full ops and launching all of our brands in California, it was more important to have our marketing headquarters based here in Southern California and headed up by obviously, the head of our SDC team.
So we made a couple of key changes there at the top and I think that as we move forward, we’ll continue to fill out the board and make some other moves. But at this point we’re really in a good space from an operational capacity side. Our mid-level management is just top notch. We’ve been scaling our sales team here in Southern California and we’re really reaching that kind of operational equilibrium from top to bottom, which will enable us to operate smoothly and to really try and focus 100% on hitting our targets and milestones over the next several quarters.
WSA: Well good and once again, joining us today is Michael Jennings CEO for Next Green Wave Holdings. The company trades as mentioned at the top on the Canadian Securities Exchange NGW.N and on the OTCQX, NXGWF. Currently trading at 12 cents a share US, market cap is 18 million US. So, before we conclude here Michael, to recap some of your key points, why do you believe investors should consider the company as a good investment opportunity today?
Michael Jennings: Well, yeah, as I mentioned, there’s where we are at an inflection point in our company launching into full revenue mode, we are at production and we are capacity at our production facility, we’re really running on all cylinders. So as a value perspective, we’re looking at substantial growth revenue wise quarter on quarter, over the next year or so and beyond. And, where we are going to be over the next 18 to 24 months relative to where we are now. I think that investors will be able to really see the benefit of this growth period as we continue to perform, launch brands and move further into the market.
WSA: Well we certainly look forward to continuing to track the company’s growth and report on your upcoming progress. And we’d like to thank you for taking the time to join us today and update our investor audience. It was great having you on.
Michael Jennings: Yeah I really, really appreciate it. Always good to talk with you, and it’s always good to talk about NGW. Thank you very much.
