BioLargo Wishing You
a GREAT 2018
Dear Shareholder,
This is always a good time of year for us to review the
past, take inventory of the present, and lay out our goals and aspirations for
the future.
Past: 2017 Was a Good
Year for BioLargo
Notable Milestones:
·
Clyra secured dedicated financing, concluded product
development, and filed its first FDA 510(k) application (still in process) for its advanced wound care products.
·
Odor-No-More proved the market opportunity for
our CupriDyne Clean products by doubling
sales each of the first three quarters of the year. We also secured national
purchasing agreements with three of the top ten US solid waste handling
companies (more coming soon), and secured
our first flagship clients in the wastewater treatment industry.
·
We acquired a world-class environmental engineering
team – BLEST – that previously served two global, industry-leading firms, with
more than 200+ years of field experience. This team helped respond to several well-known
natural and industrial disasters including; Katrina & Haiti rebuild, US anthrax
attacks, and extremely difficult industrial challenges like dioxin remediation.
They are also notable technology developers, which is why we chose them to form
BioLargo Engineering, Science and Technologies (BLEST). They have already entered
into their first six contracts to serve clients in 2018, and are actively
pursuing a wide range of business opportunities while also serving BioLargo in
the scale-up and engineering of the company’s advanced water treatment
technology.
·
BioLargo
Water’s advanced water treatment technology, the AOS (Advanced Oxidation
System), has received over 50 government and industry research grants (and counting) since the company was
formed approximately three years ago. The company recently completed three commercial
proof-of-claim trials and added highly qualified professionals to the team. A
number of commercial projects are being considered for the AOS.
·
Our company won numerous awards and recognitions
this year, including a highly coveted 2017
High Tech Innovation Award Winner in the Horizontal Disruption category by
the Orange County innovation cluster OCTANe, and The
Most Promising Technology Growth Award for 2017 by Uptick.
·
BioLargo secured
important capital resources when it entered into a common stock purchase
agreement with Lincoln Park Capital for up to $10 million of equity capital,
priced at the market, and subject to certain terms and conditions as described
in the Form 8-K we
filed on August 31, 2017.
·
Total direct investments in BioLargo surpassed
$20 million since the company’s inception in 2007.
Was this a good year?
Yes.
Are we satisfied? No.
We are never satisfied until we
deliver GREAT results in all categories and with all our business units.
We can all agree that we all want more commercial adoption
and more financial success. And we want it faster. Let’s face it – conceiving, creating,
developing, and successfully launching disruptive technologies (three and
counting) for multi-billion dollar markets is not easy, it is not fast, and it
cannot be done without proper capital resources.
Are we winning? Definitely.
Our mission to build BioLargo and make life better has required significant investment of time,
energy, and money. It has demanded that
we assemble an incredibly talented team of highly qualified scientists, engineers,
and business development professionals. We weathered one of the worst economic
disasters in history soon after the inception of our company in 2007. We have endured numerous business setbacks as
we pursued licensing relationships in our early years. We have been honored to
receive investments from more than 400 investors. Our journey represents a
life’s work for our founder Kenneth Reay Code. For me, Dennis Calvert, I
consider my work at BioLargo to be one of the most important and worthy
pursuits of my career. Ken and I, as well as our core management team, have
remained steadfast and undeterred, investing directly in the early years, and
all the while electing to convert salaries to BioLargo shares when the company
needed to conserve cash. And, we’ve never sold those shares. We continue to
stretch our company, our team, and ourselves, and we choose to defer our
financial rewards for one simple reason: because we know it will be worth it.
Present: Cornerstones
of Success
We have two active commercial operations and two future operations
scheduled to go commercial in 2018. Our industrial odor control division,
Odor-No-More, which launched its industrial odor control product CupriDyne Clean in May of 2016, is poised
for enormous growth this year. The same can be said of our brand-new
engineering group, BLEST.
Clyra will be ready to go commercial when
its products receive FDA approvals. It
submitted its first FDA 510(k) application at the end of September, and is
working to provide the FDA additional information as required to keep it moving
towards completion. Emergo,
our FDA consultant and a leader in the industry, reminds us to be patient, as
it reports that in 2016 the average time frame for these types
of applications was 177 days. So, we have a bit of work to do, but remain highly
optimistic about our expected success in this process.
As for our AOS water treatment technology, we are smack in
the middle of the famous technology adoption gap that author Geoffrey Moore
coined as the “Chasm”
. We believe our AOS will cross over to
commercialization very soon, and we will achieve this by advancing our claims
and by supporting the next phase of engineering and scale-up (now that we have
the talent on-board with BLEST). We are refining our technical offerings and
claims and working to find adoption by pursuing large public funding
opportunities, potential strategic alliances and/or investment, and by focusing
on first-stage commercial opportunities where we can deliver value to our
customers, such as in industrial wastewater treatment.
Future: Building a GREAT
Company in BioLargo
Do we predict significant financial success for BioLargo’s
future? Absolutely.
BioLargo’s evolution has been careful, deliberate, and by
any account, amazing. Our company is first and foremost a sustainable science
and technology innovator. We now have added the go-to-market talent through our
environmental engineering services group, BLEST, complemented
by an extensive team of highly qualified scientists and business development
professionals, to help serve clients solve serious, real-life problems. We are
highly purposeful in our selection of target applications and markets, choosing
to focus where we can make an impact for good, and where we believe our
technology will serve as a disruptive force for change, as illustrated by our
slogan, “we make life better”.
What are our target milestones for 2018?
We have a series of specific targets upon which we will
focus to enable the successful commercial future that we believe to be imminent.
· Secure FDA approval for Clyra, and acquire additional technology assets to round out Clyra’s Offering to go-to-market in 2018. We hope to secure dedicated capital and position to spin off the company when the timing is right to benefit BioLargo’s and Clyra’s shareholders.Secure large public and/or strategic funding to support the AOS’s scale-up, engineering, and commercial launch.
· Accelerate
and increase sales, marketing and service teams for Odor-No-More to create positive
cash flow.
· Achieve cash flow positive status for BLEST.
· Uplist to NASDAQ to create national market for our stock.
· Continue adding highly qualified staff, including additional talented administrative team members for the corporate office.
· Continue the company’s evolution to become an integrated solution provider with services, industry knowledge, rare science skills, and sought-after technologies and products to solve real life problems.
· Achieve cash flow positive status for BLEST.
· Uplist to NASDAQ to create national market for our stock.
· Continue adding highly qualified staff, including additional talented administrative team members for the corporate office.
· Continue the company’s evolution to become an integrated solution provider with services, industry knowledge, rare science skills, and sought-after technologies and products to solve real life problems.
In closing: we love our company and are committed to
achieving significance, both in terms of our commitment to a greater good as
evidenced by our mission to make life
better, while at the same time deliver a handsome return on investment for
our stockholders.
We are thankful for you and your support.
Remember:
- Matthew Webb
The first man to
swim the English Channel
BioLargo is a GREAT company and we believe 2018 will be a
GREAT year.
Happy New Year!
Dennis
Dennis P. Calvert
President & CEO
BioLargo, Inc.
