West Mountain Capital Corp
(TSXV:WMT)
CEO and Pres: Paul Antle
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Interview Transcripts:
Interviewer: Good day from Wall Street. This is Juan Costello, senior analyst with the Wall Street Reporter. And joining us today is Paul Antle the President and CEO for West Mountain Capital Corp. The company trades on TSX Venture and their Ticker Symbol is WMT. Thanks for joining us today Paul.
Paul Antle: My pleasure.
Interviewer: Great. Now starting off give us a brief history and overview of the company for some of our listeners that maybe new to your story.
Paul Antle: Well, West Mount is a relatively young company, we are about four years old and our focus is in the environmental space, but specifically we are in environmental remediation and we have done a lot of work in Canada on cleaning up contaminated sites, we have a proprietary technology that we use to clean up those sites very effectively, mostly coroneted sites and we have expanded horizons and are now doing the business in China with two joint ventures we have there.
Interviewer: Certainly and yeah so talk about your wholly owned subsidiary which is Phase Separation Solutions and the recent demonstration in China regarding the Thermal One Phase Separator.
Paul Antle: Well, we have a 100% owned subsidiary called Phase Separation Solutions, it is based out of Canada and that company holds some intellectual property and proprietary rights with Thermal Phase Separation System which really is a thermal processing system for soil coroneted soil. So the system can treat and process soils contaminated with coroneted hydrocarbons like PCB’s, pesticides, all those sorts of things. What we have found is there is a very mature market in Canada and the United States. So we look broad at different market opportunities and found some great excitement in China. So we started pursuing China about two years ago and China has an enormous market that’s just starting mainly in the area of pesticides contaminated soil. So our technology has been deployed to China, we have the government of China, an agency of the government of China as our partner. And we have just demonstrated the first system in Suzhou, China last month.
Interviewer: Well, great. So talk about some of the trends right now in the sector and how well positioned the company is to capitalize on them?
Paul Antle: Well again in North America our sector is mature; there is quite a history of remediation work going on in North America for 20 years. Not so in China, in China it’s very embryonic, we are really the first player on the ground in China, doing anything of any significance. And we are preparing now to go into commercial phase of our evolution in China. China has a very large market, there is a big push within China to deal with environmental issues, they are spending a lot of money on environmental infrastructure, environmental expertise, environmental technology. And the government is trying to push a lot of rural China into urban centers and by doing that they need to clean and remediate properties that had been virtually destroyed after many, many years of manufacturing and just the improper disposal of waste. So it’s a great opportunity for us, the amount of sites in China is astronomical, I mean there is not enough years in my life to deal with the number of sites in China that have to be remediated. So it’s a very large market opportunity for our company and many other companies.
Interviewer: Certainly, what would you say makes West Mountain Capital unique from some of the other players in your sector.
Paul Antle: I mean what’s unique really is our technology, it’s a non-incineration technology, a very environmentally friendly; it’s one of the few technologies in the world that was endorsed by Greenpeace. We did a project for the Olympic Games in 2000 in Australia using this technology. There is no byproducts we cover everything and it’s a closed loop system so we cover everything that’s been generated within the system and the soil that in the test system is clean and that soil that goes back into environment. So our system is very unique and it’s very cost effective, it’s mobile, it’s marginal so we can increase capacity very cheaply with very low capital cost. And from the environmental aspect it just blows incineration out of the water and it is very quick in relation to some other technologies that are out there for –.
Interviewer: Good. And, now you were recently named as one of Atlantic Canada’s Top 50 CEOs the year and perhaps you could walk us through your background and experience Paul and talk a little bit about management team there.
Paul Antle: Well, I have been in the business the environmental sector for 25 years and I guess I was one of the first baby boomers that actually grew up in the industry so I become, my whole career has been in the environmental sector, focused on waste management, hazards waste technologies, remediation, biomedical, radioactive. And so last 25 years I have had a great taste of many different aspects of the industry. My background is a chemistry degree, a master degree in chemical engineering and I have graduated from Harvard Business School. My management team, they are great guys there is about five of us, we are all engineers or in the case our CFO he is CA, but we all had international experience in the environment space and my team is really excited about what we are doing in China and what we can do in other countries once we get China up and going.
Interviewer: And what are some of the other goals and milestones there that you and the team are hoping to accomplish over the course of the next year?
Paul Antle: Well, besides that the build out of two joint ventures that we have underway in China I mean really that’s a 100% of our focus right now is making sure that we start generating revenue in China because we have been investing now there for a couple of years and we are on the ground and we are solid so again very close now to our first commercial project. In the future we have opportunities because of our Chinese relationship now, we have opportunities in other Asian countries and some middle eastern countries, for the same type of business that we are currently pursuing in China. So you know the future is very bright, we have lots of opportunities, we got to be careful about managing the growth, you would hear from many high growth companies anyway. So we are well aware of that, we got our feet on the ground and we are just taking one step at a time but we are aggressively pursuing these opportunities.
Interviewer: Great. And so in terms of investors and the financial community Paul do you believe that the WMT story and your message and then companies upside completely understood and appreciated by them and if not what you wish investors understood either about your sector or the company?
Paul Antle: Well, I think two thing, one is there is always room for more education with our investor base and our shareholder base we are always continuously trying to find ways to help educate our investors and shareholders. And secondly you know there has been I guess over the last number of years because of a couple hiccups in the public market with respect to companies doing business in China, there has been a little bit caution to invest in companies that are working in the country. I can tell you that what we are doing, from where we stand, the opportunities there are phenomenal and we have done the right thing with the right partners, working in our management team, to protect ourselves appropriately and to reduce the risk. So we are very familiar with the concerns about investing in China and we have managed those very, very well over the last two years and we will continue to do so in the future.
Interviewer: Certainly and so once again joining us today is Paul Antle, the President and CEO for West Mountain Capital Corp. The company trades on the TSX Venture, their Ticker Symbol is WMT, currently trading at 19 cents a share their market cap is North of $7 Million. And before we conclude here Paul to recap some of your key points, why do you believe investor should consider the company as a good investment opportunity today?
Paul Antle: Well I think at this point in time a lot of the heavy lifting has been done for our entrance into the Chinese market, a lot of the risk has been eliminated or minimized people looked at us two years ago and said you know I don’t know about this, but if they look today at what we have accomplished in that two years, I mean it’s quite astonishing. And when you look at closely at who our partners are and what we have in front of us, I think investors will be truly excited and will recognize that we are undervalued and will take a stronger look going forward.
Juan Costello: Well, we certainly look forward too, continue to track the company’s growth and report on your upcoming progress and we would like to thank you for taking the time to join us today Paul and update our investor audience on WMT.
Paul Antle: My pleasure, anytime.