Operator
Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Progressive Planet's fiscal Q3 2026 earnings call for the quarter ended January 31st, 2026. The financial statements and MD&A have been filed and can be accessed through the SEDAR website.
Today is Tuesday, March the 17th. CEO Steve Harpur and CFO Chris Halsey-Brandt are here and will present the company's financial results and provide a business update, followed by a Q&A session from the audience.
Investors are encouraged to submit their questions via the Q&A box, and they will be addressed at the end of the session. Please make your questions clear and succinct.
I would remind everyone that certain statements made today may contain forward-looking statements and are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors. For a complete description of the risks and uncertainties facing the company, please refer to the MD&A and other continuous disclosure filings, which are also available on the SEDAR website.
Now I turn it over to Steve Harpur.
Steve Harpur
Thank you. Thank you, Marten.
Happy St. Paddy's Day to you from someone who was actually born in Ireland, and I've got my green shirt on, my only green shirt, to celebrate this St.
Patrick's Day. Welcome, everybody.
We appreciate that you're taking time out of the middle of your day to hear this call. I'm not going to read the forward-looking statement.
Progressive Planet at a glance: profitable, vertically integrated clean-tech manufacturer, and we're focused on silicate-based products. Cash flow funds our innovation pipeline.
We've got three patented or patent-pending solutions poised to disrupt the cement industry. A key competitive advantage is that we own our mineral assets.
We got a disciplined management team. This good-looking fella, our CFO, always keeps me in line.
Worked with him since 2007. We first worked together in a CPA firm where he was in valuations and I was in corporate restructuring, and we're now actively seeking accretive opportunities.
Highlights for Q3: we had really meaningful growth in our revenue, 22% increase over Q3 from the prior year, second highest quarterly revenue in company history. It was the highest Q3 revenue since the acquisition of Absorbent Products, and we've demonstrated continued demand across all of our product lines.
Getting into the details, we had a slight decrease in income from operations of 32%, but the big thing that I really want to spend time on was this negative EBITDA. Now, there were two one-time charges, and if those were not incurred, we would have had an absolutely spectacular quarter.
The first one was the Z-1 Zeolite, I want to provide some history on that. Progressive Planet was formerly known as Ashburton Ventures.
I became the president of Ashburton on January 2nd, 2018. They had one permitted zeolite quarry, the Z-1 Zeolite, and when we bought Absorbent Products in February of 2022, they had superior zeolite and superior other absorbent products, and so we never, ever monetized this property.
When you have properties that are not generating revenue, your auditors will challenge you each year during your audit, "Does this property have value?" We were faced with renewing a mining lease, which means another five-year plan, which would have meant engaging mining engineers to develop a new plan, consultation with First Nations in the area, and we estimated this would have been a six-digit charge, yet we still, with all the testing we have done and comparing the quality of this material to the other materials that we got from the acquisition of Absorbent and also from the Ferguson Creek for pozzolans, it just wasn't as good.
We took the charge. The money was spent between 2015 and 2017, but it was still on our balance sheet, and we took the charge.
The second one-time charge was a strategic investment to double our SKUs with one of our largest US customers. We've seen phenomenal increase in purchase orders from this company.
I have zero regrets that we made this investment. This is the only time since I have been the CEO of this organization that we have done this, and if I had my time back, I would do it again in a heartbeat.
It was the right decision for our company. We are also seeing our underlying operations continue to strengthen.
While we had those two charges, we also had a really good quarter with good gross margin and a 22% increase in revenue. Let's talk about one of the growth drivers, the three new SKUs.
We had really great sales of White Lake Earth. I've talked about this in prior calls.
This is our own brand of material that we sell. It's bagged for us in Eastern Oregon by the Bennett family, and we ship trucks direct from their bagging facility in Westfall, Oregon, and we saw our biggest ever quarter in the last 3 years on White Lake Earth sales.
In addition, these three new SKUs with one of our large US customers, the purchase orders are very strong for those. In both the White Lake Earth and the new Pure DE, we made that major investment to secure long-term shelf space, and we saw the short-term impact, but from May to July, there is a major promotion with this retailer with over 2,434 stores.
I think they've added several since I had that total. There's a major promotion of Pure DE happening in our next fiscal year, May, which starts May 1st, May, June, and July, we've got a major promotion of the Pure DE.
It'll be an endcap in that over 200 200 2,434 stores. R&D: we did see an increase in our R&D.
We really accelerated the PozGlass construction of the pilot plant, and we also did significant testing and development of our plant LCD cement. All of our R&D investments are intended to support future commercialization and innovation, and our R&D spend is highly focused.
Financial position: more than 3,000 available in unused credit facilities, $2.14 million cash at January 31st. When we did release our earnings, we also had a subsequent event.
We got just shy of $1.4 million, the second payments from both the Province of BC and the federal government through the funding agencies, NRC IRAP federally and the BC Innovative Clean Energy Fund provincially. The other thing is that we're strongly positioned now to grow our operations.
We have no further large one-time slotting fees budgeted for the balance of this fiscal year or for the next fiscal year. I want to ensure our investors that this is a very infrequent event.
Once again, I would do it again in a heartbeat, but this is not a regular occurrence. Very exciting: we have our Calgary cement lab opening on March 26th.
If any investors in Calgary and you want to come, please contact us, and we will send you an invite. It is by invite only, but it is for our investors and our stakeholders.
If you want to attend and you're an investor and I don't know you're an investor, email me at [email protected], and I will make sure you get an invite. The research focus of the new cement lab is the Planet LCD cement as well as our Gladiator SCM.
I want to stress that anything that is just glass remains in Kamloops, remains in BC, and we intend for both of these labs to be exceptionally busy. The Kamloops lab will remain focused on quality control testing of the PozGlass as we start to produce it with our new lab.
We're expecting first production in November of 2026. We're also starting to focus on specialty products made from nanoparticles of glass or nanosilica.
In discussions with the cement industry, there is a very strong interest in seeing if we can generate meaningful amounts of nanoparticles. We already generate them now.
It is a question of harvesting them versus them passing through our wastewater as a suspended solid. Very excited about that work.
Planet LCD is, in my opinion, the one of our three cements that can have the biggest global impact based on the availability of the base ingredients. We are just over the moon at how strong we've been able to get substituting 50% Planet LCD Portland, substituting 50% Portland.
I'm good there now, Marten. Another near-term growth driver, a lightweight cat litter.
I did see that someone sent in a question on that, and I think we're going to answer it. We are running our second test on our lightweight cat litter tomorrow, and we expect to be shipping next week or the week after.
We expect to start filling purchase orders. We're very excited about this because the revenue per truck goes way up.
When we ship traditional clumping cat litter, we only get 20 pallets in a 53-foot van, yet the van has space for 26. The reason we only put 20 pallets is we go up to our gross vehicle weight ratio, and we can't add the extra weight.
Because the lightweight is lighter, each pallet can be stacked higher, and we can get the extra six pallets in, and each bag is worth more money. There's a substantial increase in the value per truck.
It also means we can sell this product far further away than we can with a traditional clumping cat litter. Very big market here.
As you can see, good strong growth, and our first customer is a new private-label SKUs with a major Western Canadian retailer. Between gas stations and grocery stores, they have about 1,500 locations in Western Canada.
Sales to commence before the end of March this month. We also intend to create our own brand.
Wonder Cat is our brand right now, available in many different locations, available in every Costco in BC, available through specialty pet stores throughout Western Canada. We do intend to launch Wonder Cat Light and offer that to our same customers that carry the Wonder Cat scooping clumping and the Wonder Cat non-clumping.
The North American cement remark Sorry, the North American cement market: concrete is the most widely used building product in the world. You've seen these numbers before.
I'm I'm good here, Marten. Want to talk a little bit more about Planet LCD cement.
A lot of thought was put into the name. My co-founder, Mr.
Richardson, who has over 40 patents, provided a lot of input on the name before we trademarked it. LCD stands for limestone calcined diatomite.
There is a well-known cement called LC3, called limestone calcined clay cement. The secret of this cement is that the high alumina makes it highly reactive, and diatomite, and in particular the diatomite that we are using, has only about 5% alumina, whereas metakaolin, which is the main ingredient in LC3 cements, is usually about 38% to 43%.
We have eight times or 800% less alumina, yet we were able to achieve similar or even better strength activity index with LCD. Now, why is that a big deal?
We've been using diatomite waste powders. This is material that various companies produce, and they return to mine site; they don't have a home for it.
We've tested it in several different diatomites, and we've gotten exceptional results in both times. The key to this is metakaolin sells for upwards of $400, $450 US per ton, and the DE sells for a fraction of that or is a waste powder, dramatically reducing raw materials costs.
It's also more prevalent than the metakaolin. Typically, most metakaolin in North America is in the state of Georgia or in southern Saskatchewan.
There's only two places that's very readily available. Bringing up again our partnership with Amrize: it's a partnership for scalable cement innovation, multiyear.
They're to take up to 3,500 tons a year. We are moving along nicely.
If you're a subscriber to our monthly email newsletter, you'll see all sorts of pictures. All of the major components for Phase 1 of the PozGlass plant are now in place, and we're getting very close to finishing the electrical.
This plant will be a demonstration plant where we will, along with Amrize, look to confirm our carbon footprint and develop what's called an LCA, or lifecycle assessment number, and also clearly estimate the cost to ramp this up to produce this on a commercial scale. The beauty is after the pilot plant, we see ourselves colocating plants in large cities where there are large amounts of glass sitting at cement kilns, and cement kilns are basically always near to large cities.
Growth summary driver: our legacy business is booming. We are now entering into lightweight cat litter, and we do not envision a lot of cannibalization of our existing SKUs.
We think people that will buy the lightweight cat litter will be already buying other brands of it. We've entered the geothermal grout market in the last 2 years.
I haven't talked about it in this, but those who have listened to me before know all about that. Expanding product portfolio and renewal of sales of White Lake Earth, phenomenal sales of White Lake Earth in Q3.
Pure DE SKUs: sales started on the first day of Q3, November 1st was our first purchase orders that we started fulfilling, and we are now seeing robust sales of Pure DE. Then the three cements: PozGlass, Gladiator, and Planet LCD.
I do want to talk that I do not foresee us developing any more cements. One is 100% glass.
One is about 10% glass and other common materials, and the third one contains no glass. We are working on developing our own plasticizer or water reducer.
This is very high-margin material. Every readymix plant in the world uses a plasticizer or water reducer, and we are looking at developing a product that is most suitable for use with Gladiator and Planet LCD.
The glass particles are very resistant to water. They're hydrophobic, we don't need to focus on a water reducer or plasticizer for PozGlass, but Gladiator and Planet LCD are hydrophilic, and they do require water reducer.
The other thing that we are looking at, we are actively looking for our next acquisition in 2026. We feel we are ready.
We constantly have a series of potential transactions that we rank, and then we review with our board on a regular basis potential transactions, but that's an ongoing process, and when we have something material to report, we will report it. Investment highlights: profitable, vertically integrated, cleantech manufacturer.
We are growing. You've seen significant growth year-over-year in Q3, 22%.
The robust cash flow funds our innovation pipeline. We don't need to go to the market to raise new money.
We have a very clean cap table: no warrants, no convertible debt. We have three patent-pending solutions poised to disrupt the cement industry.
We own our own mineral assets, and we got a disciplined management team. I want to turn it over now, Marten, if you want to ask questions, and then Chris and I can decide which one of us will answer as you go ahead and read out some questions.
Operator
All right. Thank you very much.
May I remind the audience we are now taking questions, please type any questions you have into the Q&A box, and they will be addressed. When Phase 1 is completed by the expected April 30th target date, what then happens?
Steve Harpur
We will start to then generate some dry product. There are two phases.
Phase 1 is the production. Right now for over 15 years, we have been selling a product called CanBlast, and the other company that processes glass in BC has been making that for us under what we call a toll manufacturing agreement.
As the sole processor of post-consumer glass in BC, this company and their manufacturing facility is in Quesnel, BC, they produce CanBlast. We will start making our own CanBlast in Q1 of the next fiscal year.
In the period of May, June, and July, we will start making our own CanBlast. Now, this has not been a large business for us because the company that produces for us also competes against us, they have been able for the last 15-plus years to provide competitive pricing because they are the actual producer for their own product and for ours.
That will change in Q1, we should see better margin, and it's our intention to grow that business and compete head-to-head with the company that we've always competed with. In the past, it's typically been one or two pallets in a truckload.
It's been a convenience item that we've made for customers as opposed to something that's been a serious form of revenue. We want that to change.
By November of 2026, we will have our wet processing, which has been Phase 2. Always in our funding applications, we had different milestones.
The first milestone, and we were late by several months and we've disclosed that, was the dry or Phase 1 dry processing. When we get to November, we will start producing our PozGlass, which is our wet grinding.
All of the novelty of PozGlass relates to the efficacy of grinding glass under water, and all of our novel claims, all of the exceptional, better performance on concrete cancer, on ASR, relates to wet grinding. We will start producing our own product, our own PozGlass in-house, and we will be preparing and working hard to get to Phase 2 where we actually generate PozGlass product, which we intend to generate by November of 2026.
There is much less incremental investment in CapEx. There was much, much more on the front end.
We had to do a massive electrical upgrade from 400 amps to 1,200 amps, everything new from the poles on in. That's a one-time investment.
There's much more capital equipment for Phase 1 than Phase 2, the bulk of our CapEx has already been spent, and I hope I've answered that question as well, Marten.
Operator
Thank you. There is a question here, I think you've addressed it, but if you want to add anything to it: does PLAN have all the equipment for the wet end, and how much has been put into place?
Steve Harpur
No. On the wet side, we have not finalized the filter press.
We're about 1 to 2 weeks away from finalizing the purchase of a filter press. We do have an existing shareholder who is a consultant to us who's got 25 years of specialty in wastewater working with wet grinding for mines as well as public wastewater utilities, and he's helping us finalize the selection of our filter press.
Then we also have a rotary kiln dryer that is used to dry the cake that's separate from the dryer that we have on the front end. The dryer on the front end is used to remove glue and labels from bottles, and it's a totally different dryer.
The major two pieces of CapEx that are left are a industrial-scale filter press—we already have a filter press used, but it doesn't have a lot of the features that allow us to process rapidly—and then a rotary kiln dryer. Those are the two major pieces of CapEx left to spend, and I trust that I've answered that question.
Operator
Thank you. As the Calgary research facility could be a profit center to itself, how do you see that ramping up?
Steve Harpur
It's not going to be a could be; it's going to be a will be, and I say that with a confidence. We have about five potential clients that we're in discussions with.
First things first: grand opening next Thursday, March 26th. We showcase the state-of-the-art facility that has everything we need to do ASTM C618 or natural pozzolan testing, but Dr.
Brown, he's very entrepreneurial himself. He knew that from the date that we first hired him, we had an understanding that this lab would be a profit center for us, and I do expect that we'll see our first revenues in either Q1 or Q2 of the next fiscal year.
I think between May, June, July, August, September, October, I believe in that 6 months we will see our first revenue. I'm not going to pinpoint exactly where, but I'm confident that we will start generating revenue from that facility in the first two quarters.
Operator
To clarify, that would be, let's say, as a contract research organization doing research on behalf of other organizations or what services exactly?
Steve Harpur
Yes. Analysis, particle-size analysis, compressive-strength analysis, whether products are hydrophobic or hydrophilic, all sorts.
We have multiple companies right now that are in cement tech that are bringing competitive solutions to the market that are dissimilar to ours that we are in discussions with. There are lots of other industrial mineral companies that have waste powders that we envision us looking to evaluate as candidates for Planet LCD.
With Planet LCD, it requires a source of limestone. Limestone is essentially a universal product.
Gypsum is somewhat universal as well. There's different grades, but the diatomite can vary in its chemical composition, and so we want to test various, and we have already had inquiries from very large companies, unsolicited, asking us about Planet LCD.
Got a lot of press, a lot of media. CBC is coming here tomorrow to interview us.
We caught a lot of attention when we talked about the 50%. You can substitute PozGlass up to 50%, but it doesn't have the seven-day strength.
Planet LCD has got exceptional seven-day strength, and so builders are very concerned about both seven- and 28-day, especially if you're using bracing or platforms to hold up a platform construction layered high-rises. It's cheaper if you can remove these rentable braces earlier, early strength is very important.
It's not just that. It's the supply.
It's the materials. There are billions of tons of diatomite around the world, all around the world.
The only continent that doesn't have diatomite is Antarctica. There are not billions of tons of post-consumer glass.
Post-consumer glass, it is a niche solution. We love it in the circular economy, but just the numbers alone, there is not enough post-consumer glass to replace all the fly ash that's needed and continues to grow.
If you add 20% to a growing base amount of Portland, and just in the US alone in 2011, there were 62 million tons of Portland consumed, you take that by 20%, and you get just over 12 million tons. It ballooned from 2011 to 2021 to 91 million.
So 20% of 91 is a 50% larger number than 20% of 62 million. Each one has its place, and again I said I don't think you'll see us invent any more cements.
We just want to focus on perfecting and commercializing the three that we have.
Operator
Are there any residual fees associated that could be expected to be recognized in Q4 or subsequent quarters? No.
Steve Harpur
We put the entire fee in Q3. Do we expect to see the benefits of it, Marten, for years and years to come?
Yes. This is a company we've done business with for a couple of decades.
They're very large. We've had three SKUs in there for decades, and now we have six.
What I did mention in the presentation is that there is a focus, there is a promotion, we will provide some discounting on pricing, which will reduce our margin, but that we are not incurring any cash out in slotting fees, but in Q1 of the next fiscal year, we are providing some small discounts to promote for endcaps, these products will all sit at the endcap at the beginning of an aisle for every one of the 2,434 stores. We're getting purchase orders now.
We are just getting swamped with orders to fill gearing up for that promotion that starts in May.
Operator
With the new CapEx that has come online, how will that affect earnings through depreciation and amortization as well as the tax impact on that along with cash flows? Maybe that's
Steve Harpur
I only answer the easy questions. The hard ones go to Chris, you're on, Chris.
Chris Halsey-Brandt
Sure. Just confirming you can hear me.
It's been a while since we've chatted, Marten.
Operator
Yes, all good.
Chris Halsey-Brandt
Perfect. There's two parts there.
From the accounting perspective, we will start to amortize the equipment and the building related to the PozGlass pilot plant likely in this quarter assuming that we are on schedule and we are basically fully operational and functional. You will see a depreciation charge starting in Q4 or certainly in Q1 of next year, and our depreciation on that equipment will be tied to the life of the project.
Essentially, the equipment will be written off over about a three-year period. There will be a meaningful depreciation charge to write off the PozGlass pilot plant over that time frame, and we'll probably break it out on the income statement just so it's clear what's going on for users.
For the tax impact, it does have a significant tax benefit. These expenditures are going to be tax deductible.
They will shield our taxable entities, and I expect we will not be taxable in fiscal 2026 on a company-wide basis, and of course we're going to be doing everything that we can to limit or eliminate taxes in the next couple of years, and a lot of that will be due to the CapEx that we've incurred in this year, both on the PozGlass pilot plant as well as we've invested significantly into equipment in the legacy operations. Just to be Go ahead.
Sorry,
Operator
go ahead.
Chris Halsey-Brandt
We are limited. We do have significant tax losses, about 11 close to $11 million in noncapital tax losses.
There is some limitation about how quickly we can use those, as well as we have some other tax assets, with a combination of the tax shield from the equipment and those other tax assets, we expect to have very low taxes for the foreseeable future.
Operator
All right. Just to clarify, the depreciation and amortization from that equipment are all noncash expenses, correct?
Chris Halsey-Brandt
Absolutely. Most of that, as Steve mentioned, almost all the cash expenditures for the PozGlass pilot plant as well as some of our legacy upgrades have been incurred.
The cash is out the door, and then we're going to amortize that for accounting purposes over the next 3 years essentially.
Steve Harpur
Just want to add, we do have $1.9 million in grants from Fortis where we have to spend 2.6, and one of those projects is approximately a million. We've ordered a new air classifying mill.
Final payment on that will be when it's just before delivery. We expect that to be delivered late in Q4 or early in Q1 of the next fiscal year.
Then one other major CapEx expenditure, we have an automated valve packer. Right now, we have two people that manually hold the paper valve pack bags.
This is a valve pack bag. If you see, you put it on, and you fill it up.
It's like any cement bag. There's the Pure DE.
Right now, our operators put those on, fill it up, and then stack it on a pallet. We have ordered from Spain an automated valve pack filler.
There will be no more manually filling the bags, and then the bags will be conveyed to the robot that we installed, the second-generation Proba that was commissioned last quarter, and so we will see a significant increase in productivity on our second biggest line, which we call the valve pack line. That makes all of our Red Lake Earth 40-pound bags, one of our top three sellers, and it also makes all of our geothermal grout, and it also makes our bentonite clay feed additive.
There's significant volume from that line that will be automated. We cannot make the equipment.
This one's coming from Spain. Arrive any faster.
When it arrives, we will finish the CapEx on that. There are two significant CapEx events that We have not fully invested.
It was all budgeted, approved by our board, but some of the equipment's taking a little longer, supply chain issues than what we initially hoped. I think that we can comfortably say that both the new valve pack and the integration of our two main lines into our new robot will be functional by Q2 of 2026.
Operator
Could you clarify the strategic rationale behind the investment of additional shares in the public company, and how does this investment integrate with your overall business strategy?
Steve Harpur
Yes. When we reclassified from a Tier 2 junior mining exploration company to a clean-tech industrial manufacturer Tier 1, we have the ability, unless we issue shares, we can acquire both private and public shares for cash without exchange preapproval unless we exceed 10%.
We have actually two different investments now. In each case, the entity is involved with industrial mineral processing.
It's in our wheelhouse, and I'm not going to say more about it for strategic purposes, but in one case we see an exceptional potential growth opportunity, and in the other, there's a very strong dividend, and we've also seen a very respectable capital gain. Because we are in the industrial mineral processing business, I think we have somewhat of an edge to your average investor as to what businesses work and what don't in our specific sector.
We actually are owners of shares of two different publicly traded companies which are in our wheelhouse, and I'm just not going to go any further than that.
Operator
The company's long
Steve Harpur
Sorry, go ahead, Marten.
Operator
The company's long-term debt was reduced by $500,000 over the last year. What is your philosophy or strategy behind debt repayment versus investment in growth and share buybacks and so forth?
Steve Harpur
I'll start there, and maybe Chris can add. When we had the $500,000 reduction in debt, we were offered a superb rate, but the debt before with the legacy debt and the new debt were all secured by the long-term leases, and we had five of those leases, and we sold one of them.
It was a property that was 600 meters up the street. You had to cross two streets.
It needed an enormous amount of investment, and we only used it to store supplies, and it was a boneyard where we could easily put old equipment without having to deal with it further. I don't like hoarding, and to me it was an underutilized asset.
It had a very small amount of rent that we were getting from a waste removal company that was using it to store bins. We sold it, and I have no regrets that we sold it.
In doing so, we reduced our assets that were securing the long-term money from five to four. In order to get the optimal ratio and the optimal rate, we elected to pay $500,000 off of the floating rate that we had with a Schedule 1 bank, and then we got a better rate with long-term lock-in.
The limit on the better rate was 72%, I believe, of the estimated value of these long-term leases. When we bought back our shares, we were trading at one point at 75% of book value, and we were very confident in our long-term prospects.
Will we buy back shares again? Potentially.
Chris, our CFO, myself,
Chris Halsey-Brandt
and the board,
Steve Harpur
we look at each opportunity, and we will evaluate the return on equity of a share buyback or investing in a third party or paying down debt. All of our debt now is ridiculously cheap because we have such a strong balance sheet, we are not in a hurry to pay down further debt at this point in time because our long-term debt is at 5.05%.
You're on mute, Chris.
Chris Halsey-Brandt
Thank you. Sorry, I have a bit of a cough, I trying to spare everyone in between comments.
I'm happy to jump in. In terms of, yeah, we paid down the $500,000, as Steve said, mainly due to the kind of the change in the structure of the debt.
We also were really pleased with our new lender. They're growth-oriented like we are, and they are flexible, and they are interesting in partnering us with us on future projects.
When we entered into this debt, it's 23 years. It's interest-only for the first year, which gave us a bit of flexibility because we knew we had significant cash requirements in order to fund the CapEx that we spoke about earlier.
In March this month, our first principal payment will be coming out on that new debt, but it's for 23 years, and we have ample kind of service coverage with our profitable operations. What's our philosophy in terms of that reinvesting versus growth initiatives?
Steve touched on that. I think we do want to grow.
We're looking for opportunities to grow. Some of these are organic, and some of these or we will look at growth by acquisition if the opportunity is right, and we will use the financing that makes sense in order to make that happen.
Whether that's through additional lending from this provider or other sources, we will seek that out. Obviously, we want to do that in a responsible manner.
We think we have a great business. We want to be make sure we can weather downturns or or what have you.
We came through 2025, calendar 2025, pretty fantastic actually, given at the outset we had these tariff threats and so much of our business is in the US, but we want to have a capital structure that can weather challenges. Again, we do want to grow, if there's an opportunity to do that and we can have reasonable debt financing to make that acquisition happen, then we will undertake it.
Steve Harpur
We do frequently get pitched. I constantly get emails from private equity or other family offices, "Can we do a private placement?"
Constantly get offered new debt. We have no appetite right now to increase our shares outstanding.
We got a super clean cap table, but any future opportunity, we will evaluate what is the right debt-equity ratio, is there vendor take-backs, and we do envision growth happening both organically—you saw organic growth in Q3. We envision that continuing going forward Q4, going into the new year.
We do envision growth. I'm not going to get into numbers, but we're in a growth situation in our legacy business, and we hope to also lever potential acquisitions.
An acquisition to us has to be 1 + 1 = 2 1/4. We need to be able to have savings with a combined entity.
We're looking at things that are in our own sticking to our knitting, so that would be industrial mineral processing or in the production or sale of products that are OMRI listed. We've got about two dozen OMRI or organic certified products, we're sticking to those areas for potential acquisitions, and we are seeing some very meaningful opportunities.
Operator
All right. Are there any other noncore assets which could be written off as well?
Steve Harpur
We don't have any mineral assets right now that we're not either drawing from in production or in testing. We draw from our Red Lake Earth.
We mine that daily. Our bentonite clay, we mine that weekly.
Zeolite assets which we share with International Zeolite, it is smaller, but we still sell products. We have two products from there that we sell, Z-Feed and Green Patch, both OMRI-listed products.
Those are our three mining assets that and are all still part of our or integral to our operations. In the Ferguson Creek, we have sent samples for testing to one of the biggest industrial mineral processors in North America for evaluation for a new cement an alternative cement.
Not going to get into any more on that. It's undergoing testing.
We're doing a lot of it testing ourselves internally. We do not envision any other write-downs like the Z-1.
The Z-1, we had not sold any product since we acquired it. Nothing meaningful.
There might have been a truckload I think we did 10 truckloads 5 years ago to a compost facility, but there was no meaningful sales of Z-1. I can't say that about all of our other operating quarries.
They all generate revenue, and so we do not see any write-downs. Then on our exploration, we've kept our best assets.
The assets that were inferior were we let go of inferior assets. We let go of Heffley Creek.
We let go of Z-1, and we don't have anything else right now that we intend to let go of in the near future.
Operator
Can you provide more context on the Ferguson Creek pozzolan property? What are the next steps, applying for a bulk sample permit and a mine permit, and what is the expected timeline for its contribution to SCM production?
Steve Harpur
I'm going to answer that a little differently than how you phrased the question. We want proof of demand for the product before we'll spend money on a bulk sample and a mining permit.
We do not want to waste a bunch of money engineering a mining plan and getting a five-year mine lease without having demand. We are actively sharing samples.
We've developed some proprietary IP on size reduction of that material, and I can't go any further on that because we haven't patented that yet. We are providing samples of various particle size of that to interested parties, and there is strong interest in that material.
If and when that interest turns into potential economic benefit, we will proceed with requesting a permit for a bulk sample and then ultimately for a mining lease, but the demand has to be there first. We've only written one check for $50,000 to the vendor of that property with another $75,000 to complete that.
The money we're spending on it right now is with third-party geological services company that's been doing a bunch of sampling for us, and then internally in our own labs grinding and then providing those samples, shipping, currying samples out to third parties.
Operator
Thank you. From a municipal and provincial perspective, is getting permits and supporting funds, are they in favor, and are you getting any headwinds from the government side on either permitting process?
Steve Harpur
We are not seeing headwinds. Marten, in 5 minutes I have a call with a new prospective customer that wants to engage us to do exactly what we're talking about, which is consulting on grinding and grinding efficiency.
A very exciting deposit in Western Canada has come to us and asked us to do some work. I have a Zoom call in 4 minutes that I need to go to to win this business, I'm going to have to sign off here.
If anybody else has any further questions, I welcome them to email me, [email protected]. Thank you, Marten, for the quality service you provide in enabling us to do these earnings calls.
Operator
Thank you very much, Chris and Steve, and this concludes the conference call. Thank you, everyone.
Steve Harpur
Thank you so much. Much obliged.
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