Creatd Inc Stock

Thanks, everybody, for being here. I'm just going to take a few minutes, and then I'm going to pretty much turn it over to you guys. Your questions are worth a lot more than my monologue. My career began at a firm called Kidder, Peabody in 1990. I sat on what was called a distressed debt desk. Drexel Burnham, which is where a guy named Michael Milken had created the junk bond industry now called the high-yield bond industry. Drexel had just gone up in flames. And the savings and loan institutions that were built out of the '80s, they were on fire. And everyone I knew thought the market was ending. It wasn't really ending. It was clearing.

The wreckage of that era became them raw material over the next 30 years. You had firms like Salomon Brothers and Kidder, Peabody give way to Citadel and Ray Dalio's Bridgewater. And every one of those firms, they were born in distressed environments. They were built by people who understood that a debacle of value isn't necessarily a graveyard. For some people, it's inventory and that's kind of where the micro cap space is right now.

There's thousands of subscale public companies real operators, tracked inside broken cap structures, the shells and zombies and dilution machines sitting shoulder to shoulder with good businesses. And nobody can really see through that noise. The space doesn't need more commentary, it actually needs filters. It needs fixers. It needs people who are willing to kind of do the slow ugly work of consolidation, balance sheet to vendor contracts, transaction by transaction going through that and fixing broken structure.

And the ability to do that kind of thing at the scale that the micro cap space has Creatd in the last -- really in the last 5 to 10 years. So I've been in this space 10 years. The first 5 were very different than the latter 5. The space now reminds me of those distressed worlds that I was talking about earlier. And so why Creatd, it's because we didn't just study the pathology I'm talking about. We bled it. We traded under $1. We stared down multiple reverse splits that could have erased us. We fought short sellers, failed to deliver. We fought the birth of algos and the volatility that often destroys a stock if that volatility cannot be maintained, but is manifested by the existence of the algos and the predatory paper that the algos exist -- that the algos understand exists. That's how all that works. Every mistake that this market can force on a company, we came to understand it, and we survived most of them.

The survival isn't -- I always tell people, it's not a scar. It's more -- it's not even like a badge. It's more like a credential. You can't really repair something that you haven't broken. So here's what Creatd is becoming today. It's a cornerstone of the repair cycle that's in the space. It's a financial company in the old mold built out of distressed the way the great ones always are. We buy, we fix, we structure, we monetize, and we don't walk away. When we build or turn around a company, we keep equity and we keep typically a long-term type service contract. So we keep equity and we keep current revenues, upside in revenues. That's upside in revenues on the same asset at the same time is a good way of describing our business model, our arbitrage.

So one of those companies, Flyte, we sold the majority of earlier this year. We kept 20% to 25% of the fully undiluted share -- the fully diluted shares, we kept approximately 20% to 25%. But at the same time, we're still deeply involved in that company. And so as we develop technology with them and help them grow their business, which has multiple threads of opportunities for us, we're also maintaining that stake in what I believe -- I mean, people ask me all the time what I think Flyte is worth. I can tell you that -- and again, I tell you this based on my own perception of value that Flyte or VTAK should be worth $100 million when it comes out of the gate fully registered with all of its shares issued and outstanding, that number that exists now is not reflective of what that value truly is because those shares currently exist in a preferred form.

And again, when you build companies, when you turn around companies like we do, you want to be able to continue to be involved in the process of their success. And that really is kind of the key to the future of how Creatd does business. Meanwhile, we're closing out the original arbitrages now that we have completed Flyte and those original arbitrages was Vocal and the OG Collection, which now operates under a brand Archive Gallery, which we'll talk about in the future. Completing those original arbitrages is key to what we're focused on right now. And on the Vocal front, I mean, to me, Vocal, if I look at substack and I look at medium and I now look at what are 2 years of auditable numbers for Vocal and the fact that it has a pristine balance sheet.

We're in a great position now to realize the real value that I've always thought is inherent to it. And we also have the ability to recognize that because we have access to the capital needed because of the success we've had on previous transactions. We have access to the capital needed to overcome whatever exchange requirements exist or existed in the past that were hindrance. Same with OG and with Vocal. I mean I've always been quite frank about my plan to spin off pieces of those to shareholders and new investors because that's the key to survival in this space is transaction. It's a transaction-oriented space. And to make the most money in the space, you want to be on the part of the space that's creating those transactions. And to do that in a public company like we have, that's the objective at the moment.

So meanwhile, we're closing out those arbitrages, and we're in motion on multiple layers of transactions, different sector specialists, particularly in the AI front -- on the AI front. I mean I can't -- I'm not going to try to hype the AI thing too much because it's almost like it's hard to articulate the type of changes for our business that AI has presented. And a lot of pain that had to be absorbed to truly break from old ways of behavior to embracing new ones, particularly in a world in the microcap space where, I don't know, maybe for lack of a better statement, change is not welcome. People don't want to see change. Service providers, they want things to stay the same, regulators want things to stay the same, bureaucrats, even the investors because they want their models to continue to work.

But those days are slowly moving behind us, and a lot of that has to do with embracing technology and more importantly, embracing data. These days, Vocal gets often between 35 million to 50 million visits in a month. Vocal has become in its newest version that was released, it's everything that we had dreamed of. And none of that would have been possible without the Flyte transaction because the Flyte transaction allowed us not to have to tap the capital markets, not to have to tap toxic paper, but to have generated more than enough cash to leverage all the other assets properly now. And so that's really where we're at. I hope that gives you a good picture of it.

And with that, I'm going to open it up to Q&A. We could talk about anything where we are with the uplisting process, where we are with transactions. And just, I guess, what's the way we're going to do this? We're going to thumb up people, if they have a question, they'll put a question in the channel. [indiscernible] no way I can see.

So that's the first.

Okay. Hold on.

Or we can just let him speak.

Yes, I'd rather the person engaged. That's Jim [indiscernible]. If Jim [indiscernible] actually wrote a question, I'd rather hear the question or unless Jim doesn't want to speak. Jim, do you want me to just read it? Jim is not going to read his own question. Okay. Let me just hold on.

One of the issues with the microcap market right now is that there is tremendous volume of sellers mostly looking for liquidity in order to participate in the AI trades. Perhaps this has slowed down a bit in the past 2 to 3 months, but there's still a monthly net outflow from the microcap market. As we all know, stock prices drop when there are more sellers than buyers. And it's pretty that -- it's pretty much you saying that simple.

What will Creatd be doing that is different from other microcap companies in order to try to swim against this strong outgoing tide? Well, as Jim knows, having been a long-time investor and one of the investors who has consistently stood up and supported the company, it's all about math. I could make a mathematical argument to you that eventually, if you keep investing at the right proration, then -- and truly only a small percentage of investors, I think, get this. If you find a company that you like and you keep investing at the right proration, then -- in the end, there will reach a moment where -- I don't know if it's that the investor base has consolidated to a point where those investors have a more unified understanding that they have invested not in something that gives liquidity.

I mean I think that's the biggest issue is that the time horizon for any investment in a microcap stock should be no different than a private equity. It's like a 5-year time horizon. And in crisis moments, it could be 7 years. And I think you see that in all these private equity credit shops restricting the kind of redemptions that they would normally be under. I mean we would see a collapse in certain private credit markets if they didn't do that.

And so the way Creatd combating it is to first and foremost, understand what is that shareholder base at the moment. A certain amount of selling, okay, let's see. I'm with -- I'm just as excited to see at this moment where the selling stops or where it doesn't begin. For instance, I guess I would take an approach to Jim's question and say, any selling, buying or theorizing about the price of a stock and what it means and how a CEO should react to it while that stock trades on the OTCQB is literally a waste of time, because the value of the stock is meaningless to any other thread other than those money flows. And so to play into that money flow narrative is to truly waste a lot of time and self-fulfilling destroy your company.

Meaning the truth is everybody should do the opposite of playing into that narrative. And by doing the opposite, you focus on, first and foremost, a pristine balance sheet, no debt, no warrants, no preferreds, no structured products, no anything or you might as well get the f*** out of the space because if all you're going to do is take on more of those kind of securities after you learn the lesson of the last 5 years. Some of that paper I had to pay the price of, I'm still paying the price of.

And so like what I'm going to do different is I'm never going to take paper from those kind of individuals that create these toxic e-locks and other exotic structures. I'm going to do deals that are reflective of what we do as a company and the implied multiple of revenues or other metrics that, that should imply. And I have my own perception of what that value does. I've already articulated what I think it is for Vocal.

And on the vocal trade, I expect that our company will take in a similar type of structure, the revenues may be a bit higher because I think on a pure valuation basis competitively to companies, again, that I hold it up to like substack, like medium, I think that, that company will present the opportunity that differentiates further after Flyte, what we do that's different than some of these pure-play narrative companies.

Anyway, next question. Are there any other questions in the...

They are not. People can feel free to raise their hands. We have a new one also from Jim.

I like to engage in a -- Jim, I wish you would like -- given the volume of warrants that will still remain outstanding or perhaps they are not particularly toxic, as you mentioned, and just for like shares that will hit every one of them drop you before you have effectively put a cap on the stock price have Creatd.

I mean, I guess, think about these kind of situations is sure, you can argue that there's a cap based on your perception of money flows and what there is to absorb and what the real implied value of a stock on the New York Stock Exchange should be versus what it will be on the OTCQB. Like I don't even know why I would talk about a cap because there's no sense in talking about anything until it's on a listed on a national exchange. Otherwise, it's all nonsense.

So I mean, I think for me, I don't really think about an artificial cap. I've already told everybody publicly, you can't have any warrants or debt on your books when you go to list up to New York. And not getting up to the New York is like failure. We have to get up to the New York. I could question timing and make arguments on timing, but that's the mission. So you can -- if you don't believe in that we're getting up to the New York, then most assuredly, you should figure out how to sell as much of your stock as you can right now. And sure, whatever price that creates because of money flows, it will sustain itself for however long the money flows take to shift the other way.

And in the interim, I'll keep doing what we do, which is staying away from any type of financing that would further hinder the balance sheet and getting us to a cap structure of all common stock that will be accepted by the exchange. And we're already a great way there. And that's why I think I answered some of those questions and the 14 questions. I don't know if everybody read them, but I would recommend reading the article that we published that was the 14 questions that we received. It's in the chat. It's also on the Vocal site. And you should probably -- if you're on this call, you should probably follow what we publish on the Vocal site about the company.

Any other questions? What's the next question?

[indiscernible]

Q1 included approximately $11.3 million of stock-based compensation. How much of that amount was specifically tied to the CEO. Wait, didn't we -- this question was answered in our 14th question. Yes. So again, I'm going to put a link to the article. That's the best way to get that question answered.

Any other questions?

[indiscernible] end of the year uplifting to value the target for warrants.

First, I appreciate the question. And I hope that there are more questions like that, direct questions. How often does an investor group get a chance literally to ask the CEO a direct question and get an answer in real time like this.

So yes, I am. But like one is targeting me. So here's where I am, so you can have the same knowledge that I have. You can't go to the New York, which is the exchange -- preferential exchange that I would like to. I mean we've been up on the NASDAQ, and I can tell you that I have different perspectives on that, but I'd rather be up on the New York. It's a better exchange in my opinion. It's a better exchange for what create it wants to be. There are certain companies that are better off on the NASDAQ. But for us, we're better off on the New York.

In any event, to do that, you have to be registered with the SEC. And so to be registered with the SEC, you need to have an S-1 filed, which we have. And we're down to one comment, which I got back literally. We're down to 3 comments, 2 of which are minor, one of which it's not that it's major. It's just that it takes a few days to write it up, get legal to sign off on it, get an auditor to sign off on it, do that all around first week in July, and it's hard enough. So figure that takes a week and then figure the SEC takes another week to review it.

And at that point, at that point, we'll get approval. And once we're approved, I would probably put a timing of like 120 days of back and forth with the exchanges. And hopefully, that puts us in a target range of before the end of the year.

Yes. I am feeling confident in my uplift probabilities. Again, if you ask me to cuff it right now, I'd probably cuff it like 70-30, 70-30, meaning 70% probability, 30% -- and what that means really is it means that if you're in the CEO seat, it means you better have a plan for that 30%.

You previously decried an unscrupulous accounting firm that delayed and at least temporarily damaged the firm's [indiscernible]. Was there any legal action against that firm?

Wow, good question. In settlement with them, I did something that if I had to do again, I wouldn't do, which is -- the firm that we -- I don't mind even going to mention their name. The firm that we engaged as auditors that created this horrible cycle that we had to go in and go through was not barges, the one that was like more infamously known, but it happened at the same time. I don't know if that's coincidence or not.

And that firm had their -- one of their senior partners barred from the industry and I guess, what one would consider a very rough audit by the PCAOB that must have scared the living s*** out of that. And ostensibly, in a moment like that, I don't know how an audit firm survives, but the path to getting an audit done with them became so impossible such that they were protecting their a**, so that they couldn't be really sued and at the same time, never completing their job and pushing me into limbo. And that's something that I now after interviewing scores of CEOs and CFOs as I have over the last 3 or 4 years, that's something that I now understand is rampant in the space, which is yet another component that needs to be addressed and fixed.

And so when it came to settling, they had put me through such torture and my people through such torture my accounting people because we were basically put in an unwinnable game until certain people started to practically break from it. And so I was faced with a horrible decision, either fight and really risk everything breaking apart or retreat. And I had to retreat. And now I know when people should and shouldn't retreat.

And I didn't pursue legal action after because they claimed that the amount of work they were trying to get to do, which was, in my opinion, mostly concocted by just a mandate that must have been turn over every stone, even when stones don't need to be turned over. It's just like ask for silly things. And that's, by the way, a problem that again has infected the bureaucracy of audits and particularly the PCAOB standards of behavior. And so they claimed that their hours equaled, I don't know, some stupid number, hundreds of thousands of dollars. And I said, I will never ever pay you, I'm going to sue you.

And in the end, it was like many other types of battles you face. Did you want -- did I want to fight them into eternity? Certainly, I never paid them 250. They dropped that requirement and they -- or whatever it was more, they dropped that because they knew they were wrong. And so they settled quickly. And in the settlement, I said that I wouldn't disparage them. Interestingly, I then met with an attorney to understand what it is that I had said. And what I really said was that I wouldn't make up things, but I would tell facts. And the facts are that I don't see how any firm could ever engage Turner Stone for anything.

Any other questions? It's a fun memory to bring up. An Australian firm, Think Mill at one point, claimed that they still own part of the code base of Vocal. Was that claim resolved in full?

So that claim never existed because the word code base doesn't really work here. So like if we were going to even use the word code base, we might say like Vocal platform. And first of all, Vocal is a subsidiary of Creatd. We own 51% of it at this time. And Think Mill owns equity in Vocal as well. I don't have the exact numbers in front of me, but it's approximately like 5% is my recollection.

And in the upcoming transaction, we expect Think Mill to be a partner in both advising and leveraging what we're hopefully going to build there. And Think Mill was essential in the release of the newest version of Vocal, which, again, you should -- if you are on this call and you own the stock, you really should understand what Vocal is.

So Think Mill, there's no -- there's no claim on platform or code. It's -- the platform is owned by the subsidiary and shareholders own the subsidiary, of which Creatd is the largest by 51% of that.

Those are all great questions. Where are you coming up with these questions? Are you just -- I hope these are not just like some very smart GPT bot. And I'm being -- someone's running a test on me.

Are other CEOs looking to Creatd as an example of how to navigate the space?

Yes. This is all -- like how many people are on the call at the moment. And the call is being recorded, right? I'm glad that you asked the question. I mean I speak with scores -- I speak with CEOs of many of the stocks that trade in the microcap space, many of the investors. And when I say trade, they are the ones that everybody is talking about that we're trading $100,000 and then went to trading $5 million to $100 million even in some cases.

And so I talk to all those CEOs. I actually would say that I have the unique look and blessing because of my capital markets experience in the institutional world and because I kind of chose this path for myself, I have the unique ability, unique blessing and privilege to speak to just hundreds of really f****** great CEOs, COOs and CFOs.

Now that's hundreds out of tens of thousands, but I'm saying that I get to speak to the hundreds that I think are legit. And that when I talk about the massive consolidation I expect in the microcap space, I mean, these are the individuals that will lead that space. And I think I tend in my investor channel, which, again, if you're on this call and you're not in the investor channel at the Slack channel, you're probably missing half the story.

But I would say that they're not necessarily looking to us as much as actively participating in conversations around what transactions and what moves make sense. Even -- I mean, most recently, some of those discussions have been all around the notion of -- if you're going to be acquisition-oriented, like what are your boundaries? Are they vertical? Are they horizontal? Are they dimensional in nature? What are the things you have to look for, what makes a good stock swap versus an exchange of a controlling interest, how should they be structured those things, where should the money come from? It's just the list goes on and on of the type of conversations we have. So I don't know that they're necessarily looking to us. But I think I think we definitely represent a group that's at the tip of the spear or that's carving out new territory in the space.

Any other questions from anybody else or just the incredible questions that you were able to bang out the last 6. Nobody is using a GPT to create a quick question. How many of you -- thumbs up, how many of you use GPT? Can you tell me that? Give me some information? How many of you actually use it? Any thumbs up? One thumb up. So that's what a thumb up looks like on this.

I believe that we are -- I was just having a conversation with a target and then we'll end the call. I was having a conversation with the target and I was explaining to the target that I use the -- what I think is kind of like the best of layman can use some of the AI products prior to getting to the point where you're developing agents that are developing software that are thinking for you, et cetera. And that I find that if our targets are not embracing it the same way as we are that that's not going to wind up being a transaction that we can wrap our heads around. And so that's how important the AI part of the future for us it is.

And with that said, I want to thank everybody for joining the call and hearing what I have to say tonight. We'll keep you updated, and please ask any of your questions in the investor Slack channel. Thank you.

Good afternoon, everybody. Thanks for joining. I'm going to get us started here in about a minute. So I figured if you don't come today's call without a question for me, I'm not 100% sure why you're here. You have to have thought of some question or some piece of knowledge you're trying to gain from joining an investor call like this. I try to think about these calls more as Q&A opportunities than there are opportunities for me to speak too much. I wrote down a few thoughts.

Often, we talk about inflection points. If I look back over the last 10 years, I'm sure I've written many letter as a CEO and as a Chairman about an inflection point, and the truth is, is that in the micro cap in the small-cap world, the entire journey is defined by a series of inflection points because it's so much about survival in the beginning. It's not as much as people think, I have a great product. I have a great team. It's about how you deal with a lot of rough times getting something off the ground. And all entrepreneurs know this and all the best ones have gone through it.

And shareholders in this space in the public markets, which let's not call them something that they're not. They are public markets, but they behave like private markets. First of all, any investor who invest is in the small-cap entrepreneurial world and is looking for short-term gain is in the wrong space. This is like the private equity market. It's 6- to 10-year holding period. And if it's a score, it's a big score. So this is really about in our world, it's really about surviving particularly when there is very little there's very little clear paths, it's a space filled with obstacles. Many of the shareholders on the call today are from an acquisition we did recently with FLYHT previously named [ Fluger ].

And really, when you look at that acquisition, that was a win-win for both sides, that's the kind of -- if you're a shareholder, and you're in a company, for instance, that's entrepreneurial-minded like [ Fluger ] was looking to IPO itself and along comes an opportunity for a company to purchase it that's on its way to that IPO. That's an inflection point.

Now, when you're a shareholder in this space, you're looking for something real, something transformative, big score. And that 6- to 10-year waiting period has to be rewarded with the proverbial 10 bagger. But there really is a deeper truth that drives both companies and investors forward. And that is creating or in our case, recreating or being part of the future.

And in an age of radical transparency, I thought we'd get right to the point of the call, which is the future. What do you want from it? And what do we want from it? You want to be able to have tradable liquid shares in a company that I hope you're invested in over time that will make the time invested with the value earned at the end of it.

And so when I look at what I want, I want to be able to be rewarded for providing you with that opportunity. I would like to be able to run a company that competes in the public markets, makes money in the public markets and trades at a significant premium because of the quality of its team, its earnings, its product and its entire narrative.

In our case, that narrative has changed recently. And that's because economic cycles change rapidly, not just that they change rapidly in terms of the scope of the change, but they change rapidly in terms of the time between business cycles today. Utilizing a publicly traded entity to buy or build private entities to create that arbitrage of value is something that people have chased for hundreds and hundreds of years of modern capitalism.

I think that when we look at created and what it's gone through the past I would say, 6 months since the acquisition of FLYHT, it has been to set us up to deliver on that value. How we're going to deliver on that value is by racing for a listing on a national exchange. And I hope that when we get to the national exchange, rather than find the reward of management to be sellers. My goal is hopefully to have turned many of you into buyers.

And with that, I would say, again, what you want, I understand. That's the role of the CEO. Many of you I have spoken to directly over the phone. Many people are uncomfortable with this kind of radical transparency that I practice. I don't know any other way of doing it. And so for me, I know what you want. I hope that you know what I want. And then you trust that you'll put your money into an investment that I will take seriously and work to create the return on that investment that you initially made in either my company or FLYHT.

With that said, I don't want to discuss things that I've already put in the press release. I'd like to talk about any questions that you may have regarding the earnings regarding the revenues, regarding the uplifting regarding getting liquidity in the stock. Any questions that you have I'd love for you to just ask the question whether it's through the chat or raising your hand. And one of us will see it and answer your question. So who's going to ask the first question?

Okay, I see 1 question. What's the question? Aya, do you have the ability to....

Yes. Here, I see Michael has raised his hand.

Michael, how are you? Michael?

Can you hear me?

Now I can hear you.

Yes. This is [ Steve Cohen ], Mike, are you there?

Yes. I'll go first if its okay for Mike. Okay. So I'm Steve Cohen, and I missed the very first part. But is your goal to raise more money from the investors in order to get to the different offering. Is that your ultimate goal? Because I watch the stock and I watch the price and I've seen it come down. And I don't know if it's being delisted or not. But what's your goal for getting it on a different exchange?

Thanks for the question. That's, again, as I said, it's what you guys want to hear is the plan for that. There's no plan for me to raise any capital in the near term. We have done all the raising we've needed to do. And we will now apply to a national exchange I don't like to say which exchange until we actually do it. But I mean, as a side note here, the very nature of the NASDAQ makes it more susceptible to the thing that I didn't understand when we first started trading on the NASDAQ.

And remember, Steve, I've gone through this process before. The stock was up on the NASDAQ originally. Now I've been CEO throughout that period. And what I learned was if you think that you're going to get an underwriting done to get your stock up to a national exchange and avoid the toxicity that comes along with it, it's almost an impossible feat.

So what we decided to do because to have raised enough cash over the last year, such that we've increased our net equity, we've increased our shareholder base. We've increased our market cap. And now we've increased our cash, we can apply to the exchange of our choice and not have to do a traditional underwriting. We're far from being delisted, man, we were delisted. We were kicked off the NASDAQ kicked down to the OTC kick down to the pink sheets. All because of a series of unfortunate events in a very difficult time in this environment, this small-cap entrepreneurial space.

But far from being delisted, we're getting ready to apply to a national exchange and doing it in a way that others don't try to get it done. And I think that's one of the most important things that I'm trying to articulate that what we're going to attempt to do is list to a national exchange without a traditional underwriting without raising additional cash from here because we have already raised the cash.

Any other questions around that or anything else, I'd love to answer, Steve. Did that answer that question for you?

Can you still hear me?

I sure can.

So -- but doesn't -- like I don't -- how do you go from paying sheets to the NASDAQ? In other words, so we raised revenue. What are we going to do like -- I'm not familiar. Is it a new listing? Is it a public offering? Is it -- how do you get -- it's what?

Well, I mean, it's an application. There's -- at both the New York and the NASDAQ, there's a listing group that is there to work with entrepreneurial, that's their job, getting entrepreneurial companies listed on the exchanges. You have to hit certain criteria.

One of the toughest criteria that micro-cap and small-cap stocks face is hitting the net equity and maintaining the net equity threshold. And sure enough, that's why we lost our standing on the NASDAQ many years ago. And so we already today, because of a lot of hard work by a lot of good people. We've been able to rebuild our balance sheet such that we've got nearly $10 million in positive net equity.

And so when we uplift to the exchange, we've already got the cash needed. And to do that, you need to have approximately, approximately -- whatever your burn is, you have to have approximately 15 months of that value in your coffers cash-wise. Then you have to have over 400 shareholders, of which we have. Then you have to have a minimum amount of shares in your float of 1 million shares. And then finally, you have to have a market cap of approximately $15 million of the float -- the float cannot include my shares or my partners' shares. That one is a little tougher to hit every $0.01 up is $0.01 closer to that number.

But again, there are multiple -- it's like getting listed on a national exchange. It's like a Rubik's Cube. There's auditors, there's as I just articulated, there are qualifications, there are conversations that are subjective about your business model with the listing groups at the top of the exchange then you're signed an agent to look upon your company and turn you inside out and analyze you.

They remember the -- like when we all look at reality of the space and the people who have invested in -- who have invested in our company when it's one of your first investments in sort of this small cap arena, I empathize. I particularly empathize with the horrible 2 or 3 years we've had. Believe me, it's done much more damage to me than you. But the truth is that in the end, the only way to a national exchange is through months and months of work and focus by an expert team. There's no kind of shortcuts.

But if you make it and if you do it the way we're trying to do it then you're the 1 in a 1,000 shot and it really is a 1 in 1,000 shot, right? On the OTCQB alone, there's approximately 1,200 companies. Now that's where we are today on the OTCQB. On the New York Stock Exchange, I don't know, maybe 3,000, I just don't know these days, how many are on it. Of the CEOs on the OTCQB of the 1,200 I wouldn't be surprised if less than 10% are qualified to run a national exchange company. It's kind of like race car driving, right? Steve, it's like you can't get into a car that you can't drive.

So like how we get up to the exchange man, I know like I, again, particularly for the investors who are in [ Fluger ] and had been looking for that IPO moment. The problem is, is that the world changed so significantly in this space when the capital markets dried up that if people didn't do the kind of deals we did in that moment to generate the type of net equity you need to qualify for an uplifting to a national exchange than your company is dead.

And so after the OTCQB, there's about 10,000 stocks on the pink sheets of which there's probably only 10% of them -- well, less than that, I would say, probably like 1% of them, 2% of them who are qualified to get their company off the pink sheets up to the OTCQB. And then once you're on the New York, the ability to take your company, the first step everybody talks about is a $100 million company. And that's for another question.

Let me answer some other questions, please.

Andrew is raising his hand.

Andrew, how long have you been invested in following my story?

Around 5 years. I actually -- I invested when it used to be about $3. And I never sold when it had like $10 or $9.80 and I've been stuck since then. By holding.

I wish I -- you know what, I really wish all of you had been able to sell the prices like the amount, like I feel for you, particularly when I see names in our NOBO List, when you run a micro cap stock, people think it's just their impression of you is totally different than what it really is, although I'm sure there are a lot of guys out there who are just bad guys trying to manipulate the system. But when you're not, which I am not and you go through this journey and you see shareholders like you on for 5 years, it's like I was looking at the NOBO List earlier, and we have like 11,000 shareholders and a lot of them have only 200, 300, 500 shares.

And so many of them are familiar to me, and I really -- that's why I get on the call. That's why I try to do it differently than everybody else. Like I -- why the hell else you guys that help us try to build a dream, right? So I appreciate that, Andrew.

We appreciate everything you've been doing. Now as you've seen a lot of my comments, I've always been and will always be worried about reverse split especially after the last one that hit us it kind of secreted us up really bad.

How likely it is for us to have another one. And if we do have another one, what would it be? I know the last one was 500:1, I believe, if I'm not mistaken, what would it be?

That was the survival reverse so to speak. It was either that or wind up in the gray markets, which would have been into everything. I often think about that. I have a few stocks that I invest in the space, like if I think it's interesting. And obviously, I'm always for some f****** reason, averaging down as opposed to averaging up.

But particularly when it comes to a reverse split for survival, the only thing an investor really can do is either sell or double down. And I think that, that was a really tough moment for all of us and for all the shareholders. As far as the future, Andrew, look, right now, you have to trade to qualify for the New York, you have to trade for 20 trading days in a row, 30 calendar days above $3, all right?

Now there are a lot of theories obviously about reverse splits. On the last reverse split when we got wiped. We had to do small financing. Today, we have to do no financing. So of reverse splits where you don't have to do a financing, you're going to be better off than the ones where you do a financing or a toxic structured product.

The New York for some reason and the NASDAQ for its reasons and the other national exchanges have chosen to use static numbers as opposed to derivative variable numbers for their listing standards. What do I mean by that? The $3 number is a random number. It has no quantitative meaning no different than if it was $2.50, $4, $2. And so it's a randomly chosen number. No different than needing 400 shareholders. And remember, if you split 10:1 and you have 1,000 shareholders that prior to it had the qualified amount of round lot shares if you split too large, too heavy, you're going to reduce your round lot shareholders and then you're going to have to attract new shareholders to split.

So you have to be able to balance the needs of all these things when deciding on a split. So what does all that mean in answer to your question. First, it means there isn't really a simple answer that you're looking for. If for some reason, the stock is still here, as we get closer to the moment of listing on the New York of the -- like the application where the gun goes off, and the 20-day count begins, I will reverse the stock if we are here, not because I want to reverse it, but I have no choice.

Now look, we could sit and debate theories about whether or not between now and then the stock gets closer to $3. If it does, I'm less likely to split. Obviously, I'd love to see a self-fulfilling prophecy take place in the stock. It's not like -- it's not like it is an impossibility, it is just a lower probability.

Now someone bought the stock trading at $0.50. Today, traded whatever, 20,000 shares. I didn't quite catch it before the call. But you're talking about, what, $10,000. So if one does the math, you could make an argument that it shouldn't be that difficult to create buying power that would take the stock to that $3 level.

And again, I'm a believer that if it gets to 2, it gets to 3. That's just the nature of these type of trending stocks. But if it stays at $0.50, and we want to go to the New York, then sure we have no choice but to reverse -- but remember, that's not reversing so that we can stay on the NASDAQ or survive another day somewhere. It's reversing leaving a lot of cash on our balance sheet and a New York stock without any debt, like when we list in the New York, we won't have any debt, no more. No payables, a beautiful pure play with a fleet that we're building technology that's driving revenues at ridiculous growth rates these days, higher than I ever expected.

So like the reversal come if it has to come, is the answer, Andrew. And I say everybody who fears it, what can I say? There's only one way up to the New York. You have to be over $3. And to stay on the OTCQB makes no sense.

What say you, Andrew?

Okay. I mean that does answer my question. I appreciate it.

Next, we have Leigh, who's had his hand raised.

Sorry about taking so long, Leigh.

Yes. Just curious about what the proposed valuation looks like of that the Board is interested in...

Good question.

For it going public. Obviously, there's been 7 million US raised from my last call with Mark. So taking into account capital, obviously, prerequisite for uplift. Proposed valuation. Just curious on structure.

Yes. Look, on a comp basis, taking a look at our growth rate and our -- just looking at a discounted cash flow for our company, I can easily make an argument that its peers trade in the $150 million to $200 million market cap, like these kind of growing airlines that have what we have, which I think is a little bit of a secret sauce. I don't think you can triple revenues the way we have and lower operating costs without having a little bit of a sauce.

But I think when we look at the company, we look to validate ourselves at about $150 million to $200 million. Now where it trades in the microcap space Leigh,. I don't -- I never have nor will I ever be convinced that a price of a stock on the OTCQB is indicative of anything but a bunch of moods people are in on a particular day and how algorithms behave in an era of rapid trading in this space by a few market makers.

And so like getting the hell off of the OTCQB is when we'll know the truth of what the value is. But that's my perception of value from the deep analysis that I've done, and I could get pretty geeked out over it with you if you wanted to.

Well, sorry, so the $7 million that was obviously raised recently, at what valuation was that money raised at?

Around 50 -- it was $0.50 could be higher. It depends sort of what price we up is that with a $0.50.

Okay. So you're proposing that you think you'll have a go-to-market structure of approximately 75 million shares outstanding. Is that correct?

Depends obviously on the reverse, but you're not that far off.

Okay. And the comps that you're referring to that sit in that $150 million to $200 million mark, which ones are those by reference.

I mean, you could look at a number of private ones, but I think taking a look at where FLYHT exclusive where some of the drone companies that are involved in the EV toll space that we work with. So like you have to look at sort of those type of businesses, you look where parts of the blade business have sold, there are a couple of interesting. I can't remember off the top of my head, the transportation ones that specialize in organ transplants that I think are very interesting I mean, there's multiple ways to look at it on a comp basis. That's the interesting thing about the company, like the tech alone how much is an Avinode and how much you're familiar with Avinode?

No, no.

Avinode is like what I would consider the back-end system of the charter business. that most companies use. Avinode tech, my goodness, I don't really know how much they're worth off the top of my head, but it wouldn't surprise me if it's $0.5 billion to $1 billion. I mean, at least, I mean, the company develops.

And then there's like other interesting tech platforms around the space. Remember, I'm not here to run an airline. That's one part of it. I'm here to build tech around the space.

Any other questions?

Yes. We have an anonymous attendee asked how much convertible debt is currently on the books.

Well, there's -- the money that we've raised will convert on the uplift, which -- and that, as I've said, was priced at $0.50, which is all publicly disclosed. So my guess is that -- my guess, again, is that you'd have at the time of uplisting some, I guess, my structure or the plan is that you'd have 0 debt.

That's when the previous individual was discussing is extrapolation of 75 million. That was -- there would be no convertible debt at that point. That assumes the 7 million and the $0.50 conversion. Does that help anonymous?

I don't see any other questions.

Wonderful. Well, I'm glad we had a chance to do this call. Anytime anybody does have a question, best way to do it is to join telling you just join the Slack channel that I often send out e-mails to join because that's where you really understand what's happening. I've chosen to take a very transparent path with everybody.

And that is really the way to hear the journey firsthand. I'm not really into using the other social media platforms at this point. And I think that anybody who really has invested in the company can take the time to just join that slack and check in every so often. If you're not familiar with Slack, send our IR group a request, and we'll get you hooked up so that you can follow the story.

I've also added the link to join our slack in the chat.

Thank you so much, Aya. And thank you, everybody, for joining. Have a good night.