 Want to learn about stocks, cryptocurrencies, NFTs, and the metaverse? Join RichTV.io. How you doing today? I'm your host Rich, here on behalf of RichTV Live with our very special guest, the CEO of HPQ Silicon, Bernard Tourlillon. How you doing today, Bernard? Very good, very good. Very excited to have you on the show and we got some big things we're gonna talk about and it's always nice to have you back on the show and have updates. And I love the festive sweater. You're in the Christmas spirit. So first of all, I want to ask you with it's been a very productive year for HPQ. You transitioned to a tech company that was huge and started the QRR and onboarding the French R&D team. Can you go through these accomplishments for us and what it means for the company? Yes, well, the first one may not sound that big transforming for a resource company into a tech company but for HPQ it is. A lot of the investors that are interested in what we are doing, which is basically green tech, basically modernizing industrial processes making them up to what's required in the 22nd century and moving on in the future. Didn't like the connotation mining, okay? And in a certain way for what we were doing having mining operation attached to what we're doing I think was a negative in the sense that it would require a lot of capital, a lot of management time over dealing with a resource, dealing in resources as opposed to focusing on the technology. In our case, which is specifically we transform quartz into a silicone, it's the second most abundant element on the earth crust. So finding resources to use in our machine is not a problem right now. It's not a real issue. Now it's not gonna be an issue in the future. So for us converting or basically transitioning from a resource company to tech company made the story easier to sell, okay? And we also became a tier one, which is one level higher up into the quality on the TSX venture. And it opened doors. It was part of a strategy. It might sound completely stupid but when you're a tech company listed as a resource company, if you wanna do serious financing with institution and they wanna do a prospectus financing or they wanna discuss those issues with you, you can't do it because you don't have a resource to back it as a mining company. As a technology company, it's our technology, it's our patent, it is our know-how, it is what we're doing, where we are in the market that plays into it. So it opens the door to more potential investors coming in, all green funds, all those issues can come in. Okay, fortunately it happened in 2022 which was maybe not the year when everybody was really looking into it but the good thing it's behind us, it's done. Yes. And people don't realize it's actually as long and painful a process as going through an original listening because it is that, it's just that we, we just didn't stop trading. We continue to trade, we continue. For our shareholder, it looks seamless but behind the ceiling was not seamless. And you can see the transition now like Q3 was our first quarter as we were in mining companies and not a mining but as a technology company. So all the MDAs that the change, how we present our situation has to change. Our risk factors suddenly gain 10 times longer. So that was issue number one. Issue number two is after many, not issue but milestone number two that's really keen after many, many years of saying we would eventually, it's like being sort of like saying we're coming, we're coming, we've actually arrived. We've made the QRRs now working. We're now making silicone. We've now entered into the R&D development phase which is basically starting to make silicone improve it doing it. But there's a lot of milestone we reached this year. We proven that we, the technology scales up. Okay. That's a massive thing. The first machine was the size of a washer and dryer and this one is the size of a house. So there's a lot of impact when you start to do these things. Pyrogenesis has put a lot of team, a lot of personnel to work for us. They've actually hired a very top guide that knows a lot about silicone operations that's now running that part of the operation and we're seeing the advantage and what's that given to us. So I'm very happy that's finally done because it's a showpiece investment. Okay. I can now bring in, when I talk to investors from New York, when I talk from investors from Europe when I talk about them says, okay, you guys can come to Montreal, go take a look, sign in NDA, go take a look at the machine and they're gonna be impressed. And which brings me to my third subject because we've onboarded Novasium this year. And Novasium are people with basically three guys with a lot of expertise into silicone manufacturing, silicone purification, value added projects into it. And I brought them to do an audit for me of the QRR. And it came out very, very positive in the sense that they do realize it's a great machine, it's a great potential. And they're gonna help us, HPQ, Pyro, make it better and finding ways of generating even more potential value out of the system. So the onboarding of Novasium, it's only been six months. I, internally, I'm starting to see a lot of benefit to this, okay? And I truly believe that that will start to transpire more in the public realm during 2023. And I think that will be also a very surprising advantage to HPQ shareholders. Now, congratulations on all your milestones hit and all your success thus far. 2022 overall has been a really tough year for growth companies, large caps, small caps, penny stocks across the board when it comes to share price. What would you say to investors who are looking at HPQ today? If you look at what's gonna be the driving sector, okay, for the economy, it's greening of technology, it's reducing carbon footprint, it's rethinking. There's a lot of thematics, which HPQ checks all the marks. I'll give you an example. For many, many years, basically, everybody talked the concept of offshoring your production of your dirty industrial processes. The offshored into an area where the environmental controls didn't play that much. Basically, they were making it cheaper, but, you know, that wasn't good for the environment. Now we've gone into a concept where people are looking ESG principle, they're looking at those development and they now want to, and they're also realizing this was something that happened in 2022 is a strategic important where your raw material come from. Okay? Well, silicone is at the tip, the bottom of everything that's related to silicone electronics, everything that's related to solar, everything that's related to silicone, okay? And that expertise and that capacity to make that material has sort of disappeared, moved over to China. Same thing that's happening in silicone for batteries. All the manufacturing of the material is made of China. Well, there's a new law in the United States says if you're using not North American made material, doesn't count in your batteries, you lose out. So there's now a need for reshoring technology. It's really becoming a real issue everywhere, okay? And to do that, to reach that goal, well, we need a new processes to make the raw material, the new ingredient material, because people are not gonna want to bring back the old polluting plant. Well, HPQ, because we've been doing this in 2015, here we are, we're not talking that we're gonna say this is, this is where we have a pilot plant, we'll have a roadmap to go to commercial size, roadmap to be able to work with. People are interested in going to a polysilicon, the electronics, the solar, to all those materials. So we're perfectly positioned. So if you look at the overall of the market, it is massive. There's gonna be a million ton shortage of silicone in the coming years that will demand new plants. I believe that HPQ with our QRR we're well positioned to be one of the dominant player in that area, because our new plants, the new plants are gonna have to be based on new system and much more ESG compliant, and that's what we've been doing. Second of all, silicone for batteries. It's another big market, but it's at the beginning step. Once again, it's all Chinese made material that's leading the industry, but there's gonna be demand for more localized production. Because another issue that happens is, if you move the type of industrial production we do far away, then there's a carbon footprint of bringing it to the material. So there's a carbon footprint when you make it, carbon footprint when you transport. Well, people think that's not really that important. Well, the EU just said, there's a carbon tax, there's a tax now based on the carbon footprint of the material. So all those big micro economic wins are in our back, are to our advantage, okay? So we're well positioned for this. We're well positioned to develop and we're well positioned to take advantage of this. Now, what we did in 2022, means that starting in January, 2023, we're even better positioned for that, okay? Yeah, go ahead. That actually leads me to my next question. What are your main goals for 2023 for HPQ? Well, main goal is the QRR demonstrating, getting it starting to produce higher purity material. That's, those are one of our Q goals, okay? One second of our Q goal is really refining our silicone for battery initiative, okay? We've been working a lot internally with Novacium, how are we gonna present this in packages and develop it? So that's gonna be another things. We also have a lot of exciting R&D initiative that are gonna come out of what Novacium is doing, which have application for where we're going. We're also gonna have the fume silica, which is another one of those very interesting, you know, value proposition we're gonna be coming to the market. That's gonna be, that's gonna be, you know, in 2020 is gonna be at the pilot plant phase. So we have these multiple areas. If I stopped it down to multiple things, the QRR demonstrating that we can make pure material cheaper, getting us all the numbers for going commercial scale. Battery initiative is working very, very aggressively to be able to become a North American suppliers of micro-sized silicone powders for battery space. And Novacium in addition to all of them is gonna be redeveloping the hydrogen part of the business where one of the ingredients used to make the hydrogen, because we're not going electrolysis, we're going hydrolysis, is gonna be silicone. So those are three big material. At the same time as we demonstrate technology is much more efficient so that people realize that if they wanna build, because I'm hearing, I'm in beginning discussion of a lot of people that wanna repatriate all the value change toward making electronic purity chips material, because, you know, you can't repatriate chip making if you don't repatriate the entire value chain. And the, basically the missing block to all of this, as surprising as it is is the one to make the first part of the value chain which is making the two-end silicone material for electronic to be used as feedstock. And that we have a very good proposition that we're working with Novacium to present. So I'm very optimistic about 2023, you know, green headwinds are not changing. There's gonna be funds, funds are gonna look to invest into green companies, companies with new technologies are gonna be looking for it. I'm very positive for it in a certain way. It was painful during 2022, but as we come into 2023, we get the QRR working, we'll have fume silica working and we'll have all those other projects. I'm very excited about 2023. If there was one thing that you would want shareholders to know about HPQ, what would that be? It was just one thing. Well, we were talking about earlier how you feel like right now you guys are better positioned than ever. Oh yeah, it's not even a question of better position. It's one thing I want people to understand that we've been saying for a long time that we would be here, okay? So I understand a lot of people have heard me say, you know, we will eventually, what we're there, we're making it now, okay? So we are here, we are at the beginning, we finally got ourselves into the, you know, the race track, everything, we're on the starting blocks, everything is really going in the right direction. And for the first time also, I got a feeling, because COVID actually created issue in regards to controlling your timeline. So that was also very big problem. Finally, get a feeling and get a good feeling that this is behind us. So I can get a better control over what's going on in regard to the development timeline. I also understand what we do. There are some projects that are massively long lead time, okay? And this other project have shorter lead time. So what I needed to do and what I worked very hard at doing is creating a balance between having long lead time projects are finally moving forward. As the same time, I have multiple shorter lead time that can issue more news so I can talk, I can create more excitement what we're doing. We were also doing a lot of marketing in Europe, a presentation in Europe, business development in Europe. Why? Well, contrary to Canada and the United States, silicone is a strategic material. So there's an even bigger listening to that. The market there are very big. Australia is also making a big spiel they wanna become also a big player in all those issues. So none of these people are competitors to HPQ, okay? It's like all the people that are doing silicone work for batteries are not competitors to HPQ. We're not doing animal material. We understand what's in the silicone for animal. We're not, we're there to offer them solution to make their product better as we make money doing that. What is the best way for anyone, any shareholders, future shareholders that have any questions about HPQ silicone to get in touch with the company? The best one is to send me an email through our general email at infoathpqsilicon.com. Either I will reply or a director of marketing communication will reply. To be totally honest, we try to stay far away of social media where we directly communicate just because you lose control over the communication. So we prefer to have these type of videos where we introduce where you ask us the question we answer. And then we answer directly. If we can't answer, we can't answer. We're always at a disadvantage when we're in the public toward a lot of people in the sense that whatever we say is recorded and the regulators look at what we say. So we have to be very cautious what we say. So I can only really talk about what's been done. I can give general indication where we're going and then we got to go through the disclosure through our website. And we'll have, I'm hoping Q1 will have a new website up and running. Fantastic. Here with the CEO of HPQ silicone, Bernard Turleo. Now I must remind everyone that Rich TV Live is strictly for information and education purposes. Please do your due diligence, do your research before you invest in anything we talk about or discuss. In saying that, I believe this is a company that is grossly undervalued, under-appreciated and under-exposed. Take a look at the symbols. HPQ in Canada, HPQFF in America. Put it on your radar, put it on your watch list. Bernard, thank you for joining us. Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. And we wish you a wonderful and successful 2023 and beyond. Thank you. Always a pleasure. And thank you guys for watching. If you're not winning, you're probably not watching. Bring you the winners, bring you the news, CEO interviews, and we bring them to you first. Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from my family and from Rich TV Live to yours. And Bernard, thank you for joining us again. Have a happy holidays, and we look forward to seeing you soon. Thank you. Have a great day, everybody. We'll see you soon.