 Hey guys, how you doing? This is your boy Rich from RichTVLive and you too can join the club at richpicksdaily.com where you can learn how to win and trade. Hi, how's everybody doing today? I'm your host Rich here and we have a RichTVLive with our guest, the CEO of Tantalus Systems Holdings, Peter Landa. How you doing today, Peter? Rich, I'm great. Thanks for having us. Always a pleasure and good to have you back in the show. Can you go through how momentum was built at Tantalus from 2021 referenced in your earnings report? Sure Rich, so we were fortunate to see increased activity and just an increased level of urgency within the utility industry across predominantly the United States but also in other regions like Canada and the Caribbean basin and that led for Tantalus to a near record year in order conversion out of our pipeline. Our orders for 2021 amounted to approximately 37 million US dollars which was about 27 and a half percent growth year over year. Some of that is tied to just the pent up demand and delayed activity by utilities because of COVID-19. Some of it's also unfolding because of the utility's response to the proliferation of electric vehicles and rooftop solar panels which they're really not prepared for. So it's a culmination of a number of macro drivers that are really helping us scale growth and it's that momentum that has put us in a good position to provide guidance for 2022 for our revenue and we've been guiding that our revenue will grow approximately 20 to 25 percent year over year here in 2022. That's very impressive growth. We know urgency ties to transforming the grid to prepare for EVs, increased adoption of solar and the commercialization of micro grids by commercial and industrial companies. Can you go through the steps you took to help utilities? Yeah, sure. So this is it's probably an area that creates the greatest opportunity for investors that are interested in Tantalus. If you think, Rich, what's unfolding in in today's world, let me let me take a step back. I had the chance to go to the New York International Auto Show this past weekend with my son who's a nut and other than trying to spend all of my money to purchase the cars that he still can't even drive yet at age 12. The number of electric vehicles that were on the show floor either available for sale today or the anticipated launches of vehicles, it was really eye-opening to me and I've gone to that show quite often over the years. It's the first time it was almost, I took a deep breath in just looking at not only the emerging car companies that I've never even heard of but the key is that the Toyotas, the Fords, the Subaru's, every single one of the major automobile manufacturers were promoting their conversion to electric vehicles. So fast forward. You could argue timing and some may say it's going to take longer but regardless it's coming for the utility and for the customers that we support. That's really problematic and the reason for that is most people that are already purchasing electric vehicles, they're not notifying their electric utility. They're just installing a charging station at their home with the full expectation that once the electrician helps set it up that they can plug in their car and they'll be reliable power and it's not going to impact anything for them individually. Well for the utility it's a real problem. The reason for that is because as soon as someone plugs in the electric vehicle it changes the amount of electricity that has to be delivered at that specific location and it's going to change the time of what otherwise becomes a peak demand load profile, how much power is actually consumed at that location at different times of the day. That has a chain reaction effect at the meter for the utility. The power line that connects the home or the building to the grid infrastructure it ultimately will put pressure on something called a pole top power transformer which are prolific in our neighborhoods and the cities that we live in that are that are not designed for real stress or increases in power at different places at different times of the day and so there's a tremendous system planning effort that has to unfold first and foremost for utilities then they have to be able to pinpoint where these electric vehicles are showing up then they have to pinpoint what impact is that going to have on the devices and the assets that the utility is deploying to ensure that there is safe and reliable power at the home or at the location. If one person buys an EV on your block probably not a big deal. If you and your neighbors all of a sudden start to have EVs which will happen between today and call it five years from now that's going to take down pole top transformers that means isolated outages equipment that has to get replaced it could lead to a pole top transformer exploding that leads to fires really bad things and and when we look at today's world with supply chain constraints you know that the lead times for utilities to order and replace or upgrade pole top transformers is only getting longer so that's leading utilities to starting to plan that leads to their urgency to start investing and that's where panelists comes in and so what our solutions do is help the utilities pinpoint where an electric vehicle is showing up what impact that has on the amount of power that has to be delivered at various times of the day and ultimately and eventually how do utilities actually use our technology to go behind the electric meter and coordinate directly with that electric vehicle charging infrastructure to either reduce the amperage meaning it doesn't charge as fast change the rate that we pay to charge or access power or provide economic incentives to individuals that say don't charge your car between four o'clock in the afternoon and seven o'clock in the evening eventually as we really start to plan and in conjunction with an acquisition we've just made of a company called Congruative that we announced in January right we'll not only be able to provide the utility with the visibility on what that EV means and where it is but then the command and control we do some of that today eventually can the utility discharge that battery in the vehicle and coordinate it with any vehicle on a feeder on a circuit at a substation to offset peaks in demand and potential constraints on the supply of electricity so it's a really complex issue it creates an enormous opportunity and that's why we are seeing utilities really move swiftly on trying to upgrade and we refer to digitizing their distribution grid sorry I was long winded there but it's a lot to a lot to unpack in that question yeah that's fine can you also give us a description excuse me of their technology and can you go through the recent press release on the partnership with energy tool base and how that brings you into a new vertical yeah rich so we acquire at a company it's the first transaction that we've made as a public company it was part of the reason why we went public and strengthened our balance sheet and so we used cash on our balance sheet and some stock to acquire a business called Congruative small business about three million dollars of revenue usd based out of california what Congruative has developed is a software tool that ties to an IEEE standard and for those that may not be familiar with IEEE IEEE it's an institute for electrical engineering and it is a think tank and an organization that really tries to create standards for the broader utility and electric industry and so what this organization has done they are at the forefront of leveraging and emerging IEEE standard to help transport data from solar inverters micro grid inverters and controllers and electric vehicle charging stations and bringing that data securely through the firewall of the utility across a communications network like ours and into the mission critical systems that the utility relies on every day to truly keep the lights on you can think of it at the highest level as a google translate for solar rooftop installations micro grid controllers and micro grid deployments and electric vehicle charging infrastructure all which kind of talk a little bit different languages and different types of protocols and what this does is it normalizes all those protocols into one standard and it's ultimately converts the different protocols into a language that the utilities operating systems today can absorb and ultimately translate and leverage and so it's a software tool that is really geared to helping us accelerate how we help utilities solve the problem I just described on what does it mean if an EV charging station or rooftop solar panel shows up at a home fast forward the recent press release is the first announcement since the acquisition we were very excited to announce a new partnership that is just crystallized with an organization called energy toolbase another software business that's really focused on helping commercial and industrial entities deploy micro grid systems typically solar coupled with batteries sometimes just battery sometimes just storage but what we've been able to do with energy toolbase ETB is combine the software we've just acquired from congruative on the IEEE standard with their software capabilities that not only helps the commercial and industrial customer that's deployed the micro grid in the specific circumstance a construction company based in California they built the micro grid to ensure that they had backup power in the event they lose power from their electric utility company with our software the construction company can not only use that micro grid for resiliency backup power but they can disconnect from the grid at different times of the day which economically prudent to use their solar and battery storage the micro grid power as opposed to getting power from their electric utility and so it really enables commercial and industrial organizations to island themselves from the grid at various times of the day depending on rates and depending on costs that you're trying to manage so it increases the return on investment where it brings us into a new vertical is historically we've pursued utilities and through the acquisition we now support 250 utilities so 5x increase in about seven years which is amazing for panelists as a small company by partnering with ETB energy tool base we now have the opportunity to actually sell this combined software capability ours plus energy tool bases to commercial and industrial companies to drive incremental revenue opportunities in an area that historically we wouldn't have focused on and so ETB is pretty well entrenched in the micro grid industry it's growing at I think roughly 18% a year it's projected to be almost an $18 billion market opportunity by 2026 and so with the acquisition that we've made and the partnership that we've announced and we think we're at the forefront of really being able to chase after that incremental total addressable market opportunity for panelists. In addition to DER integration utilities are moving quickly to address the broadband divide across the US can you tell us how the massive US stimulus dollars tied to fiber and broadband will affect Tantalus. Yeah so this is one I'm passionate about you know one of the one of the eye opening one of the many eye opening circumstances of COVID-19 at least here in the United States where I live was the emergence of the broadband divide I live in the New York metropolitan area everybody around me has access to broadband some people may not be able to pay for it but everybody has access to it. When you look at the central portion of the United States roughly 20% of the population I'm approximating does not have access to broadband in their homes today phenomenal statistic and so what the United States government is doing is to really avoid this broadband divide which can have economic educational societal impact is they've under the Biden administration come out with hundreds of billions of dollars that are geared towards providing funding mostly to electric cooperative or public power utilities but communities in general to deploy fiber networks or broadband services to communities that don't have access to large cable providers or where cellular coverage is just not prolific or really challenging and it's to fill in those pockets and so what we're doing is we've launched a we announced an R&D initiative to bring forth our next generation fiber to the home gateway it is a physical device that we're building in conjunction with a number of utilities that are deploying fiber all the way to homes not only will the utility be able to generate new revenue broadband services internet voice tv cable things like that but they can also ultimately connect meters and other devices that they rely on for reliable delivery of power with backhauling data across a fiber network and so we're we're building a next generation device that we think is at the forefront of this market and will be well positioned to take advantage of the hundreds of billions of dollars that are already earmarked by the United States government to funnel into these smaller communities that that really need to upgrade their communications infrastructure so we're very excited about that as an incremental parallel path to drive growth for our business. Peter lastly how do you plan on delivering a strong performance in line with your guidance for 2022 and acceleration of a number of R&D initiatives? Yeah so thanks Rich it's we've got you know between the recent acquisition and the urgency that we're seeing utilities upgrade their distribution grid because of EVs and solar panels and really the planning that has to happen for years in advance before those types of assets get broadly adopted by consumers that coupled with the the wave of stimulus funding a good chunk of which is already filtering into the economy here in the United States and into the communities and utilities that we support along with the strong year that we had last year in orders it's really the culmination of those three things very strong backlog going into the calendar year and then two massive macro trends around EV and distributed energy resource integration and broadband proliferation it's those three things that are giving us a lot of confidence in the trajectory of the business and in in in seeing how we can meet that growth expectation that we've provided to the market. We've been interviewing the CEO of Tantalus Systems Holdings Inc. Peter Landa I must remind you guys that Rich TV Live is strictly for information education and entertainment purposes please do your due diligence do your research before you invest in anything we talk about or discuss here on Rich TV Live in saying that we do believe this is a company that everyone should put on their radar the symbol is grid GRID on the TSX and thank you for joining us today Peter. Rich thanks for having us it's great to see you. Always a pleasure guys put Tantalus Systems Holdings on your radar on your watch list we've just done an interview with the CEO Peter Landa thank you guys for watching if you like the video please smash the like button comment down below share the video everywhere and subscribe if you're not winning you're probably not watching we're bringing the winners and we're bringing them to you first thank you for watching everybody have a nice day