Atco Mining (CSE: ATCM)(OTC: ATMGF) CEO Etienne Moshevich on a Trillion Dollar Trend

 

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the President and CEO of Atco Mining, Mr. Etienne Moshevich. Etienne, How are you today?

Etienne Moshevich: I'm doing great, Gerardo. Thank you so much for taking the time. I really appreciate it.

Gerardo Del Real: No, listen, let's get right into it. Atco Mining, to me, is one of the more compelling speculations in the hydrogen storage space, because you happen to be in the right address and you happen to own a lot of the neighborhood. You have first mover advantage along with a couple of other companies in the area, all of which are trading at many, many multiples of Atco's market cap, and I think that first mover advantage isn't being recognized by the market yet.

To that end, you just released your initial interpretation from the seismic on the Flat Bay Salt Project, and you closed a private placement, which I wrote another check for. And just to be clear, the first check that I wrote, I believe, was at 20 cents. This one, I wrote it at 10 cents. I haven't sold a share. I'm looking to add in the market. I have pretty significant exposure. I know you are the single largest shareholder, so I thought I'd reach out and wanted to talk about the financing and wanted to talk about that seismic and what comes next.

Etienne Moshevich: 100%. So first I want to, again, thank you so much for taking the time. This is a super exciting time for us with Atco. What happened was, I'll just talk about the financing first. There was a shareholder that I've been speaking with, high net worth individual, very, very successful in the mining space. I've been speaking with him for a long time. And finally I was approached. I've been showing him Atco and everything, and I was approached by him and for him to want to get involved in the Atco story and write a check.

So that's why, and for everything that we saw that RESPEC has given us, because in the first news release that RESPEC gave us that we issued a couple of weeks ago, we talked about that they've confirmed that we basically have salt in our salt cavern on Flat Bay. So that was a massive thing for us, and so now that they were able to confirm that, the next thing that they're going to talk about is the size of the potential salt cavern.

And then the news release after that that we're looking at potentially doing is to show how much hydrogen we could potentially store in our salt dome. And remember, we're doing this for Flat Bay. We also have another potential salt dome at Eagle, on our Eagle Flat, on our Eagle salt project. Because remember, we have 21,000 hectares in the area. I believe we're the second-largest landholder in the St. George's Bay Basin right after Atlas Salt. I believe before Vortex did the Galloper acquisition, they had 17,000 hectares. We have 21,000 hectares, and they're obviously trading at much higher market caps than we are.

So when we announced that first news release from RESPEC that said that they confirmed that we have salt on our project, we knew this was a game changer for us and we're going to keep going and really do as much work as we possibly can on these projects. And so we wanted to go ahead and raise some money, and obviously it is at 10 cents, or it was at 10 cents. We raised just over 1.1 million bucks and in this market, raising 1.1 million bucks, and we did it, we announced it on one Wednesday and we closed it the following Wednesday, the interest was incredible. The support that we had from existing shareholders and new shareholders was incredible.

I know, Gerardo, you got some questions about me selling stock, about me participating in the financing. So I wanted to just put it all out there so everybody knows exactly what happened. I was approached by a large investor that wanted to take a position in Atco in the financing, but wanted free trading paper. And because the financing is four month hold, I said, "No problem, I will do it." So I sold, I believe it was just over 2.6 million shares at 11 cents, and I took that, that was about 2.366 million shares that I sold at 11 cents. I was in gross in total of about 260 grand of stock that I sold. And then I put not only all that money back in at 10 cents, I increased my position from 2.3 million shares to 2.85 million shares because I wrote a check for another 25 grand on top of that. So I reinvested all the proceeds plus an additional 25 grand for a total of $285,000.

So it was a great deal for the investors that took a position, they got a big sizable free trading position, and the company got all the money plus more, and I increased my position and got more warrants. So that's exactly what happened and obviously fully announced everything.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. And I'm assuming these are long-term sticky shareholders, Etienne? Obviously I'm biased because I am a long-term sticky shareholder and anytime that we see a strategic come in, we like to see those shareholders be long-term, be committed. I'm assuming that's the case with these groups here.

Etienne Moshevich: That is definitely the case because this is not their first position in Atco. They've been an Atco shareholder. You got in on that last financing at 16 cents. They've bought stock at 15 cents, at 25 cents, and over 30 cents. So they are big supporters of Atco. And they have been for a long time, and they bought stock at a lot higher prices than where we're trading at right now.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. I appreciate you addressing that. We talked about it off air, I mentioned I thought it was important and you graciously offered to clear that up.

Let's talk about where it gets exciting for me as a shareholder and for you as the largest shareholder, there's a lot of activity in the hydrogen storage and salt space in Newfoundland. Can you talk about some of the developments and the major catalysts that are coming up? Because there's a lot of them.

Etienne Moshevich: There's a ton of them right now. And this is kind of the most exciting time for our business because we have, hopefully any day now and week now, the Newfoundland government is going to come out and say who they're going to give bids to to build wind projects in the area. And this is going to attract billions of dollars of investment, billions of dollars of investment in the area. Atco, I just want to make sure everybody understands, Atco has a $5 million market cap, just under a $5 million market cap Canadian right now, we're not one of the ones that are looking to build a wind project in the area.

It's multi-billion dollar companies that are willing to invest billions of dollars in the area to do that, but they're all going to have to store their hydrogen somewhere and that's why we're doing all the work we possibly can as quickly as we can with RESPEC so we can have all the data either to show to the market that we could store hydrogen in our salt domes, and I'm saying domes in plural because we have Flat Bay and Eagle, and as well as potentially give all that data to one of these people that are there building these wind projects and maybe cut a deal with them. So, this is all the stuff why it's getting so exciting because it was, at the beginning of the summer, the Newfoundland government was talking about that this is what they're looking to do, but they never gave a more definitive or firm timeframe as to when they're going to make a decision.

But in our couple of news releases before, we said that the Newfoundland government said that they're going to potentially make a call by the end of August, so we're pretty close to that. We're in mid August right now, or just past that. So, I think, and that's just the macro news that we have, plus with all the news that we're coming out with RESPEC, I mean the first news release, like I said, was that they confirmed that there's salt on our projects. And the second that they could talk about is the potential size of the domes that we have and then potentially how much hydrogen we could potentially store at Flat Bay.

So there's a ton of news going to come, and if you compare our market cap to Vortex's, to Atlas Salt's, I mean we are minuscule compared to them. We're sitting at less than a $5 million market cap Canadian company, and I'm obviously extremely biased, I'm the largest shareholder, I'm the CEO of the company, but I think we're at an incredible point in the company where we're cashed up, we have the cash we need, where a lot of companies do not have, but we have enough cash to really do everything that we need to do with our projects. It buffers us, it gives us a lot more breathing room, and we're able to really give our shareholders a real fighting chance to make this a super successful company.

Gerardo Del Real: No, look, exciting times. I appreciate that thorough update. I'm looking forward to having you back on. I suspect that the fall time's going to be a very, very busy one for Atco. Etienne, thank you so much for your time again. Anything to add to that?

Etienne Moshevich: No, I mean I really appreciate your time, Gerardo. I really appreciate your support and all your subscribership support as well. So, look, this is going to be an extremely exciting time, September, October, it's going to get very, very exciting. And feel free, anybody that has any questions that is listening to this podcast and this interview, just feel free to get in contact with me at info@atcomining.com, and I'd be more than happy to chat with anyone.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. Appreciate it. Thank you so much. Chat soon.

Etienne Moshevich: Thank you, guys. Appreciate it.