Lohum CEO on IPO plans, fundraising, capacity expansion — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:00uh we started back in 2018 in March and
2. 0:03the last seven years have been wonderful
3. 0:05in terms of establishing our presence in
4. 0:08the critical minerals and recycling
5. 0:10space in the country as well as outside
6. 0:12of the country. Uh we've now uh expanded
7. 0:16into multiple critical mineral
8. 0:18categories such as lithium, cobalt,
9. 0:20nickel, platinum group metals and rare
10. 0:22earth metals. uh we intend to continue
11. 0:25both widening these categories and
12. 0:27deepening our presence in these
13. 0:29categories over the next several years.
14. 0:32We intend to go public uh in 2027,
15. 0:35calendar year 2027. Um and we are
16. 0:38building all the necessary uh systems
17. 0:42and processes that are needed within the
18. 0:44organization to help us get there and
19. 0:46deliver to the public market uh very
20. 0:49well. you know from now till IPO uh we
21. 0:52are looking to raise about $200 million
22. 0:55uh which will be a combination of equity
23. 0:57uh and debt uh what will be the exact
24. 1:00size of the IPO round I cannot
25. 1:03communicate right now that's dependent
26. 1:05on multiple factors but from here till
27. 1:07IPO there's an additional $200 million
28. 1:09that the company is raising as part of
29. 1:11its next couple of rounds uh both a
30. 1:14series C as well as a preIPO round since
31. 1:16inception so far we've raised about $100
32. 1:18million
33. 1:19u uh in the form of equity and uh we
34. 1:23don't have debt in the company. So when
35. 1:25we started out there were not uh any
36. 1:29significant organized players in the
37. 1:31critical mineral recycling market. The
38. 1:34first sector that we picked up was
39. 1:35lithium ion batteries which was emerging
40. 1:38as a very important waist stream in the
41. 1:40country and lithium-ion batteries
42. 1:41consist of at least four critical
43. 1:43minerals uh lithium, cobalt, nickel and
44. 1:46graphite. uh you we honed our skills. We
45. 1:49built technology within the company. We
46. 1:51built strong R&D capabilities. We built
47. 1:54a production scale plant to recycle
48. 1:56these batteries and take out battery
49. 1:59grade lithium, battery grade cobalt,
50. 2:00battery grade nickel and uh very high
51. 2:03purity graphite from these recycled
52. 2:06batteries. That was our entry into the
53. 2:08critical mineral space. As we started
54. 2:11doing this, we started realizing that
55. 2:13the problem of uh the broader problem
56. 2:16that the world was facing with critical
57. 2:18minerals was that of domination of one
58. 2:20single country. Today in most critical
59. 2:22mineral categories, China is has an over
60. 2:2690% presence in the category. So the
61. 2:29world was looking for alternatives. Uh
62. 2:31the critical mineral domain was expanded
63. 2:34to about 23 different critical minerals
64. 2:37in the country. And as we started
65. 2:40exploring the challenge, we realized
66. 2:42that the technology that we' built could
67. 2:44apply not just to what we were doing,
68. 2:46but could also apply to some of the
69. 2:47other critical mineral categories such
70. 2:49as platinum, palladium, roodium,
71. 2:51neodymium, so on and so forth. So we
72. 2:54expanded our portfolio. We started
73. 2:56building more capacity, more
74. 2:58capabilities. Today, like I said, we've
75. 3:00got a variety of different critical
76. 3:02minerals that we work with and we work
77. 3:04with a variety of different waist
78. 3:05streams as well. We don't just look at
79. 3:07lithiumion battery. waist stream but we
80. 3:09also have many other industrial waist
81. 3:10streams. We have various other kind of
82. 3:12e-waste waist streams and using all
83. 3:15those waist streams we ensure that the
84. 3:18critical mineral remains within the
85. 3:20country uh by processing the waist
86. 3:22streams effectively.