MineHub Technologies (TSX-V: MHUB)(OTC: MHUBF) CEO Andrea Aranguren on Transformative Transaction, Record Revenue and First Chinese Smelter Client

 

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the CEO of MineHub Technologies, Andrea Aranguren. Andrea, it's great to have you back on. It's been a few months. How are you today?

Andrea Aranguren: I am doing great. Happy to be with you today.

Gerardo Del Real: Happy to have you as always. It has been a busy few months for you, and so there's a lot that I want to touch on. I want to start with the strategic partnership that you now have with Abaxx Technologies. That's a transformative deal and partnership, and I think clearly that's going to open a lot of different channels for the both of you, right? There's a lot of synergies there and I know that that word is overused. But can you speak to that a bit? And just for those that may not be familiar with the MineHub model, can you speak to why that's such a transformative partnership for you?

Andrea Aranguren: Yes, absolutely. The Abaxx partnership is transformative in a variety of different layers. I would say one is from a financing perspective. They have a broad and incredibly solid investor base, which understands this unique combination between commodities and technology. And so, it brings a huge amount of credibility to MineHub as a company from an investor and a shareholder perspective, which is obviously incredibly important for us. And then, the other layer is really the more commercial partnership aspect where there are really huge amount of opportunities to leverage their traction and some of the other adjacent commodities markets that we're not active in today, as well as technology that they've built out.

In addition to being an exchange, Abaxx also has built out this ultra-secure ID++ technology, and as part of that, they have a chat feature, which is very appealing to our customers. We've gotten a lot of interest from prospects and customers alike in building out a chat functionality, because naturally, as we are successful in implementing with our customer, that means that they don't really have to email or use Excel as much as they did before. And so, naturally they don't want to have to go to Excel just for sort of one-off inquiries. It makes a lot of sense to have chat embedded in the platform. So, that's really going to be the first phase of the partnership is integrating their chat feature and rolling it out as a premium offering to our core platform.

And then, one way that you can think about the exchange is as a pre-trade platform that helps to facilitate commodities transactions across a wide variety of physical commodities markets. And so, with them being a pre-trade platform, it makes all the sense in the world for our platforms to integrate, where once a transaction is executed, the physical fulfillment and the post-trade operational management of that contract gets executed via the MineHub platform. So, there's a really natural transition point from pre-trade execution on the Abaxx platform, post-trade management and fulfillment on the MineHub platform. And that's really the second phase of the partnership, and it makes a lot of sense in terms of offering a more comprehensive platform to the market. We think that together we can drive even more adoption of our technologies more quickly than independently.

And core to our growth strategy is expanding to adjacent commodities markets. We're very interested in lithium and nickel, carbon. Abaxx owns a carbon contract, and being able to offer that to our customers as a risk management mechanism for carbon is really exciting. So, as you can tell, I'm very excited. And then in the future, I think there's a lot more that we can do in terms of broader opportunities, like bridging the gap between physical and financial markets, helping the market to more effectively meet sustainability requirements, which are constantly evolving. There's a lot more that we can do together in the future as well.

Gerardo Del Real: You mentioned lithium, nickel and other commodities and opportunities outside of the commodity space. I don't think it's a coincidence that you just signed your first Chinese smelter as a platform user. Then, the name wasn't disclosed, but if the current roster of partners and customers is any indication, I suspect it's not a tiny, small smelting company. And if you're going to go China to start with, I got to believe that's incredibly satisfying and opens a lot of doors. Can you speak to that?

Andrea Aranguren: Sure. Unfortunately, many of the companies in this market are incredibly private, so they did ask to keep their name confidential, but they are a major smelter. They buy a tremendous amount of concentrates and they produce cathode. As a reminder, there's a variety of different estimates out there, but many say that the China market represents at least more than 60%, and I've seen estimates up to 75% of the global copper concentrates market. So, it is an incredibly important market for us. And it's a market that is, at times, could be hesitant to use international platforms. And the vetting that we went through, you can imagine from a data security and a legal perspective was extensive. So, it is certainly a huge milestone for us given the importance of China and just given the rigor that we went through in order to get this over the line.

Gerardo Del Real: I got to believe that once you get it over the line, like you have, that it's a green light for other potential partners in that part of the world. Would that be an accurate assessment?

Andrea Aranguren: Yeah, it's certainly opening up conversation with other players. Again, gives us just a huge amount of credibility, this super important seal of approval. It also helps us to gain more direct insight into some of the pain that Chinese companies are facing, so that we can evolve our pitch to them and our offering for them as well.

Gerardo Del Real: What comes next for MineHub? Obviously, there's a lot of opportunities. The last time we spoke, we chatted about prioritizing those opportunities and making sure that you're getting that low-hanging fruit right off the bat, right? You've obviously been increasing your year-over-year revenue and simultaneously reducing operating expenses, which as a shareholder, I have to tell you, is a sight for sore eyes because as you know, in the traditional mining space, that's not usually the way that things go. What comes next, Andrea?

Andrea Aranguren: Yeah. No, a lot of hard work went into that, for sure. We are just laser-focused on executing on our pipeline, which is, thankfully, growing every month in terms of number of opportunities, but also in opportunities that are moving to later stages throughout the pipeline. So, we're seeing a lot of really exciting commercial traction and we're really focused on getting those deals executed before year-end.

Gerardo Del Real: Love it. Love the approach. Love the moat that the company has. I love the new partnership here recently with Abaxx. Anything to add to that?

Andrea Aranguren: The only thing I'll add is that we're really encouraged to see the impact of regulations driving this commercial traction that I mentioned. So, early on the story in our value was really around efficiency as well as risk, given all the supply chain disruptions. But I'm impressed to see how much the regulations are impacting companies’ commitment to digitize, and I'm seeing that as a huge force and function in helping to really drive this commercial traction and having new opportunities come to the table.

Gerardo Del Real: Looking forward to closing out the year strongly and really excited for what you come up with for 2025. Thank you again so much for your time. I always appreciate it.

Andrea Aranguren: Thank you.

Gerardo Del Real: All right. Cheers.

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