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ADVANCED INHALATION RITUALS: CEO INTERVIEW $CAEP to $AIIR
Recorded: Jan. 26, 2026 Duration: 1:06:40Space Recording
Short Summary
In a dynamic discussion, market experts analyzed the impact of political events, technological advancements, and strategic partnerships on the crypto landscape. Key trends emerged around the influence of major tech stocks, the resurgence of the mining sector, and the integration of AI, all suggesting a bullish outlook for crypto enthusiasts.
Full Transcription
Thank you. What is up, everyone? Welcome in, welcome in. Happy Monday.
What is it? January the 26th. It's 1 p.m. Eastern. It is time for the Small Caps show that we run
each and every Monday.
See a couple of our friends here.
Go ahead and request up on stage, and we'll dive into it.
We do have a special treat for you guys.
We're going to have a CEO interview in the back half of the show today,
so we're going to dive into it pretty quickly here.
But hope everyone's doing well.
Last week, holiday on Monday, so didn't get to have the show.
So we've got two weeks' worth of stuff to catch up on here in the first half hour or so of the show.
And then we'll go a little bit further than that.
So I'm not going to take too much time here on the intro stuff.
I know a lot of people are working their way into the show.
Go ahead. Like I said, boom, there we go.
Got a couple more speakers up here.
Ben, I'm going to shoot your co-host try
to give it a few seconds there because you never know the way this co-host thing goes i think it
worked and we will dive into it ben how are you happy monday great to great to hear your voice
again been a while um yes i am hopefully you can hear me okay um yes, sir. Yeah, I'm stuck in Florida.
I was out here for a cruise for a week, and then the snowstorm hit.
So I'm in Miami, not in my office.
I don't have my full setup, but I'll do the best I can here.
Beautiful.
Well, go ahead and kick us off with some of your thoughts around the market quickly,
and we'll get through everyone on that.
And then we'll see if everyone's got a pick or so before we have our interview in the back.
Ben, big week, FOMC earnings.
Every basket I feel like is reporting at some point this week across the market.
Geopolitical stuff still there.
What's going on?
What's your take?
So, yeah, big week with FOMC and big cap tech earnings.
And I think that's what's important.
I think that's what's going to move markets.
I think we have Meta, Microsoft, Apple, and Tesla, I believe.
Is that correct?
And then we have FOMC Wednesday.
You know, there's a lot of noise about the tariffs on Canada with China,
and then they back down.
I don't care about the tariff stuff.
There's always BS to me
and just noise and you should always
buy any dips on tariffs. I wasn't
worried about that.
Also, to me, the government shutdown thing,
I mean, markets always go up during
government shutdowns and I wasn't worried about that.
I'm a little bit
surprised that today,
even though the indices are up, I think
IWM might be down a little bit,
but not too bad. All of the hot sectors are getting smoked today. Now, it happens to be,
and perhaps the reason is all of those hot sectors are sectors that have been supported by
the government and the Trump administration. So nuclear, rare earths, defense, drones.
There's one more thing I'm forgetting. But
you know, all those sectors are down today. And I was very surprised. I thought they were
going to catch a bid because of the additional support we see in rare earths in USAR by the
government. And they're down. And I think the only possible explanation is that the government
shutdown might be back on the table and i guess the
the thesis is you know i don't know have less money to to come into those sectors i i don't
get it to be honest with you i think it's kind of a missed pricing or a wrong reaction here today
and i got caught up up in it a little bit you know i'm in some drone
stocks from last week um more for geopolitical stuff if we strike you on but also this morning
i got into a bunch of rare earths and just really surprised to see that price action
and i'm gonna stick with it i even have to swing some of these names i i just don't really
understand that price action today.
The real risk, again, to me, the bigger risk is what happens with FOMC, which I have no idea.
Actually, I didn't even check. I don't even know what consensus is in terms of is there going to
be a cut? 97% hold. Hold. So, okay. So I guess that's what they're going to do. If it's at 97%,
they gave all the signals for the market to be able to predict that.
But then, you know, at 2.30 p.m., the market moves on the commentary more than anything else.
But, I mean, how many months does Powell have left?
Not much, right?
So I'm not sure.
There's probably a lot of volatility around that and his comments.
But I don't know that it really fundamentally in like
any kind of time frame more than a couple weeks i'm not sure the fomc even means much this week
um you know so i think it comes down to the big cap tech earnings and then we have that
geopolitical risk with with iran which i think also is uh you can see a lot of volatility around
it for a day or two but i think that's actually bullish long term and I think you buy any dips because of the
war that's coming up so I guess overall I'm sounding a little bit bullish and a
little bit upset my hot sectors are down today I mean we'll have to react to the
big cap tech earnings and see what they do but i mean there's a small cap show anyway um and and uh the rates
are coming down and inflation by the way uh is in check i don't know if you track truflation
truflation's been in check and what's going to happen this is the silver move is crazy um silver
copper uh oil's been kind of staying a little bit elevated uh i think because of the geopolitical risk
but at some point can all that creep into inflation might might be something we have to be
aware of for for small caps but overall it's going to be a crazy volatile week there's a lot going on
but i'm bullish and a little bit confused and disappointed why those hot sectors are down today
disappointed why those hot sectors are down today.
Yep, I hear you on all those pieces. It's very interesting. You wonder, does Trump come out,
just kind of try to big league Powell again and make his announcement maybe ahead of the FOMC?
It just seems like something out of the Trump playbook that would happen.
But the next three meetings, they're not pricing any rate cuts until June at this point, which I'm guessing is Powell's out in May, quote unquote out in May.
Who knows what actually happens there, obviously, with all the fighting and stuff going on.
So I'll leave it at that.
And then you hit on a lot of things.
Silver, what a – I mean, we said it was a crazy move two, three, four weeks ago.
And at this point, it's just, it's absolutely insane.
But with silver, gold, all the metals, you know, going crazy right now.
Very interesting market here.
So we'll see what happens.
Ben, thanks for kicking us off there with some thoughts.
We'll come back around and see if you have a pick or anything that you want to talk about.
Ariel, let me go over to you and see what your
thoughts are around the market right here in January. Hey, well, how you doing, buddy? Yeah,
things are pretty crazy now, as you could tell. We started off this month with a bang. It's like
I had a feeling that we'll have just a lot of work ahead of us in December, and it all came
like an avalanche. And what I'm seeing today,
and just in general, there's this Vancouver Resources Investment Conference that's taking
place today and yesterday. I would say record crowds packed beyond belief. And that's in Canada,
obviously. And that is something that really tells me a lot, right, is that the mining sector
in Canada in general has been dormant for many years.
In fact, all the Canadian friends of mine and issuers have always told me it's like,
oh man, it's dead here.
It's over.
We got to go somewhere else.
You know, US is the only way.
And now it's back and ignited. And I'm only feeling the buying pressure more than ever now.
It's starting to feel kind of euphoric, but I still feel like you have a
couple of endings still left here. Why is that important to me? It's because obviously, as you
can imagine, it kind of reverberates across other industries. So everyone's feeling it, right? It's
like a lot of risk capital is out there. And silver and of course gold is the underpinning
of this movement. But not only that, we saw the movement in rare arts and critical metals.
So all of that is kind of adding to a very brand new, really high risk asset that everyone is all in.
So that tells me then that the same players that are making money here in this industry may dabble in other industries that are tangential in such a way.
Like even I could consider
you know AI and that movement requires critical metals as we all know and for that reason you
know you may be moving into software and along those lines and that's something that I'm slowly
but surely seeing and it's becoming pretty evident to me but then you start looking at another topic
that I'm kind of like you know these are a few things that I'm doing is looking at what are the
major movers what's going to you to affect the stock market today that it
wasn't affecting yesterday? And, you know, I don't know if you've been hearing a lot about
Anthropodic, but they have Claude, right? Claude is this AI agent that's making the waves around,
you know, everywhere in the last, I would say, week on social media. I'm sure a lot of the listeners are starting to be like, yeah, I've heard about Claude
too.
And what's happening now is that it's such a revolutionary kind of movement now is that
people that are actually picking up on Claude is understanding that it's an AI agent that's
coming with you wherever you go.
You could have it on your phone as texting texting to your agent, and it also lives on
your computer. It lives on any device that's literally connected to you. Why am I mentioning
Claude? It's because now you're starting to see companies like Zoom move up today on around 10%
today alone because they own 0.1% of anthrop and and that that 0.1 percent reflects you know
somewhere in around 10 percent of the actual market cap of all zoom because it's valued at
350 billion dollars so what that tells me now is that everyone was worried about this move in ai
as being too much too big too fast right when is it going to slow down when are we going down
now you're starting to see that it's actually as real as it can be, but it's not about the
same players that are going to go up.
Now it's the next mover and the next mover after that.
So this is now the second inning, in my opinion, of AI, when you're seeing that agent now is
taking over and you guys all need to look at that.
And you're starting to, now everyone's asking themselves, who's going to benefit from this
major move of how this, you know, the AI could
actually help every one of us by having a personal assistant that could do anything you could
possibly ask for it and deliver it to you just like any real human would. And so that's something
to think about. Last thing, guys, is to talk about this, of course, the Japanese US carry trade
that has a lot of, you know, also ramifications. Part of the reason why the U.S. dollar is getting smoked is because of the U.S. carry trade, the dollar and Japanese yen.
So that's part of the reason why everyone's trying to hide their dollars in some asset that is, you know, going to allow them to not lose, you know, just by holding dollars.
Right. So that's important, too, because that also, I would say, underpins the valuations in stocks and equities. So you hide your cash in just blue chip companies in general. So again, I'm usually bullish in general, but now I'm sensing many reasons to be.
I'm seeing a direct reflection on what happens if I keep my cash as cash.
And I know I'm going to get hurt pretty bad.
So I need to do something with it.
Either buy silver that went up a billion percent in gold, or do I buy stocks and think about the next move in these industries?
So I said a lot, but there's just a lot going on, guys.
Are there any particular thematics that you're still excited about? I mean, obviously,
anything the administration does or puts importance on, it just keeps running. You think about drones,
rare earths, all those things. I'm just curious if there are certain pockets that you're excited
about right now or if you're more just kind of spread out evenly and patiently waiting.
Yeah. So I'll tell you, like, I think I mentioned on the show a couple of weeks ago,
I've been to USAR, and that's the rare earth.
I mean, they obviously mentioned today the government deal.
That's whatever.
Yeah, it's great.
But you always want to go with something that's strong.
It's already generating revenue.
Okay.
USAR is one of those kind of names that we've been buying.
And that's like the same thing with drones in general. Like we all know drones are going to
be a thing, but like, you know, early on the show, right? It becomes out of favor also to get
smoke, like Ondas, ONDS, for example, everyone loves ONDS. And here you are at 11 something.
Well, why are we there? Because it's not off topic right now, right? And as soon as it becomes a little bit off topic, it's the hot runners are going to get smoked.
But in reality, that's when you start buying it back up, right? Because you want to look for these
kind of players like Ondas. I like Ondas a lot, actually. And you got to look at them that got
funded. Now, the funding wasn't as great as you would have liked if you had to look into the
details, use ChatGPT to help you, but ask about dilution. I didn't really like the structure of that deal.
And that's why the stock kind of got smoked in the last two weeks.
But that is a stock I'll be buying right here.
Because I like the thematic play.
I like the fundamentals of it.
I know they're going to sell a ton of this stuff.
So that's two examples of USAR and Andes and buying on the dip here. But for sure, man,
you have to look at the thematics. You have to look at these high flyers and pick them when
they're going down, not on the way up, but those that generate revenue. It's very important to me
that I see real validation by contract wins and something that is something I could feel that's tangible.
Yeah, great thoughts. Appreciate that. Laptop, I want to go over to you next and see if you have anything to add to the crew. What are you watching this market? Any general market thoughts you want
to sneak in? Yeah, so kind of like what Ben said, I echo that is that I'm not caught up in the daily noise of what's hot and what's not today.
I have a long-term view on the markets, especially this year.
And my number one thing that I've been pounding over and over for a while is hard assets.
And I know that the previous speaker just talked about hard assets, but power.
Power generation is going to be key to everything that we're going to see coming with AI and
with data centers, all these things that are coming.
So with that, I'm very big on nuclear and always looking for opportunities
right there. I like SMR, CCJ. Another thing is metals, but really with that is rare earth
minerals. Very much with, I believe that we're going to see continued accumulation even mergers with
that u.s government smart move i think to take advantage and capitalize on the positioning right
now and the rhetoric with the greenland to help us so this move with usar mimics the other move with crml which critical metals
i like uh foremost uh f fmst it's out of canada which might make people worry about tariffs but
again it's an essential uh it produces essential minerals copper really, really like copper. I like Western copper here, which is
whiskey, Romeo, Nancy. And just over the weekend, I raised the red flag, the caution flag, the big
alert on silver. We're headed for a major correction. If you look at a daily chart,
it cannot be sustained. So I'm very cautious about that.
Going forward, I'm very interested in watching what the dot plot looks like for the Federal Reserve.
And the dot plot is basically an anonymous chart of what the governors have voted or state that they believe the long-term rates interest rates to be
and so that's something i really want to focus in on where we're going to be there because i know
investors are watching that kind of disappointed with crypto but it makes sense i think that the
sparkle and the glitter shine has fallen off of that only because we have a strong stock market.
Why put your money in crypto, which maybe a lot of hardcore investors really aren't sold on yet.
And the play has been these digital asset treasury companies, which have fallen on their face recently.
And the incentive to own crypto is not there yet.
But that story will change, so I'm waiting to see that.
But right now, for me, it's power.
It's nuclear.
It's energy with oil, critical metals,
and I really hope and think that at some point
we've got to embrace solar again.
So that's where I am.
Appreciate you sharing those thoughts, Laptop.
Yeah, solar has been interesting lately.
We heard Elon over in Davos talking all about it again, which he has for quite some time.
And he can make the argument he's talking his book some, but there's others talking about it as well. And you're seeing some of the solar stocks starting to perk up a little
bit. So it'll be interesting to see. Power, electrification, all that stuff, hot thematic,
doesn't seem like that one's going anywhere at all. I appreciate that. Dougie Fresh,
want to make sure we get a chance to jump over to you and see, I know you're a big chart guy.
I am too.
I'm looking at these charts.
The NASDAQ, the S&P, I mean, IWM coming off the highs a little bit,
but the S&P itself, the NASDAQ, it looks so set up.
And I know we got a couple little news bombs that took us down a little bit,
but we're right back here.
It looks like it wants to go, or a percent and a half off the highs on NASDAQ.
Yeah, I think it looks pretty good. And being a small cap show or iwm looking pretty decent it's down a little bit
today but it does not look bad and then your queues are up today to spy and like you were just saying
your uh nasdaq and everybody they're up i mean they're not looking bad at all they look like
they want to run some more so the market is interesting usar obviously had big
news over the weekend i think that it uh it got sold off this morning with that huge jump up but
i think there's a lot of room for this thing to continue up and keep running i had mentioned that
uamy before um a couple weeks ago and that's like one of them metal ones so yeah the metals are
looking good obviously silver i might agree with uh laptop travel guys keep your eye on it we've been watching the inverse
excuse me we've been watching the inverse of silver and it is getting topped out there i could
see it dipping back a little bit so we're keeping an eye on that silver and gold obviously running
up huge and then you have your fomC your rate cuts that's 99 percent right now
no change according to poly market and it doesn't look like it's jumping off a cliff I think if we
were going to see it it's going to happen in March if we see another rate cut I didn't think they
would do it in January anyway after they just caught them a couple times so that looks like
it's a no cut on Wednesday at two o'clock then you have your
earnings big earnings coming up with your apple tesla and microsoft and meta and uh yeah government
shutdown looming i thought they had gotten past that but it looks like that was a headline today
so i was kind of surprised to see that but i guess you can't be surprised to see anything in this
market at any day but the market does look pretty damn good i have to say
that so overall i can't complain about the market crypto though was pulling back it keeps coming
back down it keeps trying to get set up in this bullish channel and then just keeps getting
knocked back down into this 88 000 87 86 to 88 000 range and it just can't buck that trend and it seems like it wants to
and then it just won't do it so i don't know what's exactly going on with crypto i think it
will eventually move it's just taking its good old time here and we have to wait for that but yeah
that's what i see in the market but it does look pretty good overall so i think we could be moving
up and you know what you could see a little rotation because we just saw all them small,
the other stocks kind of running like your ONDS, your drones and things of that nature.
And now I think Apple, Meta obviously getting set up.
Microsoft looking pretty good.
Google not looking bad right there.
So I think maybe you got a little rotation going back into your big caps maybe for like a couple of weeks.
And we do see that
happen oracle's up today so keep an eye on them at them uh plays right there yeah oracle looking
pretty good curling up so maybe the big caps are gonna run for maybe a week or two two weeks or so
and then the uh money will shift back around but that's what i see right now
appreciate that dougie and uh moving a little bit quicker
today because we do have that great interview coming up here in just a little bit uh ben i
want to go back over to you and see if there's any names uh things that you're looking at you
want to talk about today yeah absolutely well there is one name that I'm very familiar with. I've talking about $100 million worth of insider buying,
which you're not going to see on a form for.
It's through convertible debt or something like that.
I forgot how it works exactly.
I'll have to refresh my memory,
but it's an effective $100 million buy by a director like a month and a half ago.
Fundamentals, great.
Earnings, great.
Company turning around.
And here's the next catalyst.
We saw it.
It was alerted in our Discord by someone in our community.
I jumped in at like $7.50 with like massive size here.
And it's about, it's a great catalyst because the catalyst retail cares about a lot, expanding
their pharmaceutical portfolio with four new regulated products, okay?
So Kodak shifting to pharmaceuticals. I know for a fact, kind of unfortunately, that most of retail doesn't give a shit about the earnings inflection and and the balance sheet and all that.
All they care about is this growth and movement into pharmaceuticals.
I mean, so they're going to love this news.
They're going to love this news they're going to lap this up Kodak's up 6% now just pretty violently
since that was announced
just 20-30 minutes ago
but I think this could have a 2 or 3 day
move, the RSI is not overbought yet
moved up to about 49 here
so far in this news today
you have the 20 DMA at 787
50 DMA at 803
given where the RSI is
you might want to actually pull up a weekly chart
on you know kodak i don't know could see eight to 850 i think for starters maybe over the next
couple of days but this is what i was waiting for to get back in kodak and i'm back in it
if you want more i can give you more but yeah that's good yeah no i would love me uh may come
back to you uh we'll see if we have time but i want to make sure laptop uh any uh any ticker
tickers in particular before i'm looking at uh foremost fmst uh that is uh again lithium rare
earth uh out of canada and copper i like freeport mcmoran uh that's a big cap uh and also like
western copper uh whiskey romeo nancy We're going to see a run-up
as we go forward. It's an industrial metal. It's required for so many things
and absolutely is going to be a part of this power focus that I have going forward. So western copper.
Western Copper.
And turn it back to you.
I took a bite of a sandwich right in the middle of that.
I'm trying to sneak in lunch during this as well.
I appreciate that.
Got unmuted here, laptop.
I appreciate that.
Ariel, I know sometimes you don't mention tickers.
You mentioned a couple earlier.
I'm just curious if there's anything else on your mind that you want to sneak in here.
We've got about four or five minutes until we start that interview.
Yeah, thanks for that, guys.
Yeah, so look, I'm on the buy side now, guys.
So no longer worried about too much.
I mean, they always worry about FINRA.
That's great to hear.
No, that's great to hear because we get more in-depth thoughts now.
Yeah, yeah.
You're hearing now me mention tickers.
Just, I always tell everybody,
please do your due diligence and research
and all that stuff.
And you don't have to listen to me, that's for sure.
But yeah, look, I'm also looking at like the,
obviously the NVIDIA chips are still hard to get, right?
And that's something I've been watching a few companies
that are starting to
actually get their hands on those chips. And you're seeing some major moves in some of these
companies like MOVE had a crazy move, right? And that is because if you were to look at,
you know, what they actually did was simply bought GPUs, very similar to mining 1.0. Now it's
crypto mining 2.0 because you have the
compute power. And now they're getting paid somewhere between $4 to $6 per chip per hour.
When you start doing the math on that, the ROI on some of these NVIDIA 200s are running around
250% a year. So what I suggest everyone to do is start doing your homework. I will tell you to look at one ticker that is interesting.
Do not buy it unless you do crazy amount of due diligence.
It's ATON.
And that one is just put it on your radar.
Watch it.
It got smoked because they did a recent deal, RD.
But when you start understanding the underlying business and you start reading,
and that's the key, guys, read, read, read, read,
you know, you'll see that they got those GPUs
and they funded it.
Now what's gonna happen is you have to assume
that they're gonna do rather well
and their margins are pretty high.
So that's an example of another thematic
that we talked about, but one that makes too much sense
based on we all agreeing that AI is here to stay
and it's just gonna rotate into the next game here.
Yeah, it seems like the market's made enough room.
Like this morning, there's a headline
that Microsoft was developing its own chip at this point,
but you can develop your own chip for specific things.
So we saw this with Google
and they came out with their little TPU thing.
I don't want to say little because obviously it's a big deal. But at the same time, it's like
everyone's consensus seems to be there's plenty of room for all that and more with NVIDIA and
nothing's touching NVIDIA still. You don't have enough compute power until, what do they say,
2030 to supplement what is currently in demand. So again, when you look at Claude, that agent,
you'll see that every single person in the US
should have run that for themselves.
When you think like that,
you're like, where are we gonna get all that compute power?
Where's that coming from?
It's not there.
You just can't generate it fast enough.
So Microsoft, Nvidia,
everyone and their mothers could still come out with these chips and won't be enough.
Yeah, and obviously we're seeing what's going on in the memory space as well as people are figuring out,
hey, as we get all this compute, we've got to have memory to be able to run it all.
And we're shortages on that across the board as you're seeing Micron, San Sandisk, Western Digital, and all these names go absolutely crazy.
Some great thoughts there, Ariel. I appreciate that. Dougie Fresh,
maybe the last thought over to you. Anything you're really watching?
Real quick, we had mentioned that UAMY before.
Data Vault, DVLT, dipping down a little bit. Keep an eye on that. That's probably
going to be a good opportunity. And NAC right n-a-k it's up like 21 today but that looks like it has some room and that is
a northern dynasty minerals that's a metals and mining mining one in canada as well and i've been
watching this can and can just kind of pull back a little bit but just keeping that on my radar and
that's about it i'll kick it back over to you guys Real quick Dougie. What do you think of the Kodak?
I meant to mention Kodak and what you guys Kodak looks beautiful definitely ripping up there
It's gonna pass that 786 probably real soon. And yeah, it's uh, it looks really good
I saw mentioned in the discord. So what a beauty right there and then uh
discord so what a beauty right there and then uh etan right here that could get set up that's a
nice dip right there ariel so i'll keep an eye on that we watch that every once in a while
and foremost fmst not looking too bad i had a spike up today i'd have to look at it but that
looks like it could have a little dip but then get run in there so kodak definitely looking really
good i could definitely run for a day or two and
Yeah, they just came out the news. So that's what I see. Yeah, I'd say kodak
850 short-term 915 915 really soon maybe by Friday
Beautiful great back and forth great there. That chart does look good. I just pulled it up off my screen as well. It's one of the things that I always do during this. I encourage
all of you in the audience to do as well. Make a watch list out of these names. Put them down. Do
your due diligence as always on anything mentioned on here. Ariel did a good job of explaining that
as well. Always do your own research. use this as kind of a launch point.
And when I say launch point,
I also am excited to have Stuart back on with us
from enhanced inhalation rituals
to get a little update there.
Real quick, hold on, hold on.
Before you introduce Stuart,
I just want to introduce also my co-host here
on Story Trading Spotlight.
Rhett Foster there behind the mic on story
trading spotlight for you know any of the ceo interviews and everything we do we bring that
spotlight account on so i encourage everyone to follow that account that way you can get all the
updates on you know any ceo interviews we do uh other news and there's tweets on there there's uh
like little uh what do you call it? Like little highlight videos and highlight reels
of interviews and stuff like that.
So make sure to be following
the Story Trading Spotlight account there.
And Rhett, are you there?
Let's just do a mic test.
Yeah, I can hear you guys perfectly.
Can you guys hear me?
Beautiful.
So Rhett's there, I hear you.
So he'll be participating on this as well.
So go ahead, Wolf.
You can go ahead with that intro now.
Yeah, absolutely.
Glad to have Rhett and the transparency across the board.
That's what we're all about here, of course.
And as I was saying, great to have Stuart on again from Enhanced Inhalation Rituals.
As always, this is a sponsored segment.
We do want to say, do your own due diligence.
We're talking about a publicly traded company here.
So please do all of your research and please know that this is a sponsored segment,
but we do like to put stuff on your radar
and get great insights from CEOs and likewise.
And Rhett, I don't know if you have anything
from your side that you want to say up front
before we dive in with Stuart.
No, I'll let Ben take it away.
Yeah, well, I will say regarding sponsored segments there you made that note we like to
you know bring breaking catalysts to and everything bring you new information one of
our sponsored segments i think it was two or three weeks ago mobilicom we had him on this show
i believe also on our separate story trading show that stock has just been exploding since the CEO kind of revealed information, nothing inside information.
Of course, if there is, they do an SEC filing at the end of the day, but it's a great place to get insights on market moving information.
So, all right, with that, we got Stuart Brzee back here. Stuart, mic check. Are you there?
Yeah, I can hear you. Can you hear me? I hear
you very well. Great. How are you doing? I'm very well. I'm very well. Thank you. Good to be back.
Awesome. Glad to have you back. The first thing I just want to catch up on and just make sure
everyone understands we're talking about it's currently ticker symbol is C-A-E-P. So this is
a pending SPAC merger with air inhalation rituals. Ticker symbol is going to be
AIR. So can you give us an update on timing, progress? Has there been any feedback from the
SEC regarding the filings? Yeah, sure. So just to remind everybody, a definitive BCA was signed with CAEP, which is Cantor Equity Partners 3, back in the first half of November last year.
And we made our first filing to the SEC in the early part of December.
Now, there is a little bit of a backlog there
due to the government shutdown in 2025.
And so we have not had anything back from them yet,
but we're expecting to get the first return
in the first week of February.
So hopefully we are still on track
for that first half, the SPAC and listing in the first half of 2026.
That's cool. That's great.
First week of February, that's pretty specific.
Is this like you have like an ongoing conversation with them?
Are they kind of letting you know?
Yeah, you have, you know, you have a contact person there,
sort of an account manager who, you know,
updates you on what's going on and what they're aiming for. Yeah.
All right. Beautiful. So that's coming up pretty soon.
So excited to see if they want you to make changes or if we're going right
for the merger. That'll be beautiful.
Look, I, you know, I, I, I'm not hugely familiar with, with the process,
but I understand there's usually, turns is quite sort of normal.
They ask for more information on certain areas.
And then you have a little bit of back and forth and it begins to accelerate the closer that you get to the actual listing date.
And of course, as they get all the information that they require.
Awesome. So we'll be keeping that ticker on closer watch because it looks like that'll be accelerating.
That's C-A-E-P. OK, Stuart, anything new since we last talk to you that you want to bring up first?
Anything new? Well, start of the year year we've started started the year well I suppose some of the people on the call might not be so familiar with the business so I'll just
give a quick introduction on who we are and what we do so the the company is called air
what we do. So the company is called Air Advanced Inhalation Rituals. And we are the largest
manufacturer of shisha molasses or hooker molasses, as you might call it in the US,
globally. We also own the largest brand in the category, which is called Alphaja.
brand in the category, which is called Al Faja. And it's a flavoured driven category. So flavours
are very, very important. And we own three of the top five flavours globally. And these flavours
are proprietary. So you need to think of them a little bit akin to sort of the secret syrup in Coca-Cola. So they're very well-protected flavors.
And I suppose a little bit unusually for a SPAC,
we are a business that's very, very profitable.
And, you know, we've got sizable revenues.
So in 2024, for our core business,
our revenues were $374 million, and that drove an adjusted EBITDA of $148 million.
But probably most impressively and most importantly, our consolidated net cash generated from operating activities was $150 million.
So like any tobacco business, it's very, very cash generative.
And that's important for us because it not only allows us to continue to invest behind
our brands and to continue to invest behind our people, our capability, our infrastructure, but also has allowed us to invest in innovations
and products that we have started bringing to market and also developing products in
an innovations pipeline with plans to bring those to the fore as well.
So it's a business that has a very strong core business,
but it's also a very innovative business
that is looking to the future
and is looking to actually revolutionize,
I suppose, a category that hasn't changed much in 600 years.
So it's an exciting story
and it's a very, very well-ed path to to actually be a listed company so exciting
times ahead for us yeah absolutely and that is what you mentioned there about an unusual prospect
to be you know having earnings and cash flow that is the primary reason why we, besides, I don't wanna say the primary reason,
it's a prerequisite, let's say,
to get the story out there for companies
who want to get their message out there.
We really look for that.
And that's definitely incredibly rare to have that.
So I'm very interested in following how the de-SPAC goes,
because a lot of these SPACs are garbage, you know, like years and years away from sometimes even revenue, let alone earnings.
So it's definitely an unusual situation, an interesting opportunity for everyone here.
Let me – Ray, are you there?
You got any questions for Stuart?
Yeah, I was just going to ask about how you guys are doing in terms of like
the like health side of things. I know you launched the Vant. I know last time we spoke,
I talked about how I ordered the pod, but then I actually just got in a couple of weeks ago. I
got the Vant and I had my buddies try it that are in the space and like that are very entertained and
follow it very closely. And they said your product is very clean and they said it is very effective so how's that going for you
guys?
Yeah, thanks Ray.
Look, we're test marketing or testing the VAMP product in the New York area at the moment
and also in Madrid, in Europe.
And it's certainly a new to category product,
just so that listeners understand what it is.
It's a product that is designed to give functional benefits.
And there's four benefits that we're aiming for. One is energy.
One is focus.
One is zen.
And one is to help you, you know,
just before you're going to go to sleep.
And there's, so for example,
the energy one has caffeine in it.
So you're actually able to inhale caffeine.
The sleep one has chamomile.
It also has passion flower and also has valerian root in it.
And the technology in it allows you for the first time to actually inhale these products and go straight into the bloodstream so
it's much more efficient than actually taking a pill or something when you take
a pill about 80% of it is lost in the stomach and it takes about a half an
hour to actually actually start working so there's definitely a huge consumer
demand for these products over the last years, we've seen a few companies actually
launch them, but we're very excited to test our products, learn what the consumer reaction
is to it, understand better what messaging we need to get behind these. And then obviously
our intention is to roll them out further around the world in due course. So did you actually get to try it yourself, right?
I was able to try it myself, and I actually tried the Focus,
and I found it was actually very productive for me to sit there,
I guess, what would you call it, take a few reps or hit off the band,
and then you just sit there and just keep working.
It really worked, in my opinion.
Yeah, and you felt it was quite a smooth experience as well.
Definitely. My buddy, my, uh, my buddy that tried it in this in the space,
he mentioned that it was very smooth and it wasn't burnt.
Like most the majority of these that are out there,
I don't know how big of an impact,
but he said that is pretty huge when considering, um, uh,
buying these products that they want a smooth taste compared to like a burnt
taste. so he said
the product is probably one of the smoothest ones that he has yeah so so what it what it's actually
using is something called a quantum chip so you know traditional vapes use a coil and wick
and the the coil is is made of metal the wick ceramic or you can have a ceramic chip in there
and the challenge with with some of these products is that when they ceramic or you can have a ceramic chip in there and the challenge with with some of these
products is that when they overheat you can get heavy metal residue or you can get ceramic particles
so what we're using is a much much cleaner tech so it's a a chip that doesn't have ceramic or
or any heavy metals in it and therefore it's it's a very, very clean experience. It also allows
for the particles to be much smoother or smaller, which means that when you're inhaling, again,
it's a much more efficient process. So, you know, we partnered with a company up in Canada
to do this called Green Tank, who have the technology.
We have exclusivity to use this chip in the functional benefits space.
So we're very, very excited about it.
It is very, very innovative.
We're getting some good feedback on it.
Good feedback from different people about the different benefits that they're getting from it.
And we're continuing to expand the test.
And I say we'll look to roll out further later in 2026.
So, yeah, really fascinating space.
And, you know, we're able to do this, of course, because we've got this growing core
business, right? So I want to remind everybody that, you know, 98% of our revenues today are
on our core business, but we're able to innovate and we're able to use the infrastructure of the
business that we have, the supply chain and the distribution, and we've got distribution across 90, over 90 markets globally,
we're able to plug these new products into our machine and get them to consumers.
So, you know, we're excited because of the core business, because the core business is very cash generative, because the core business continues to grow.
And because we're able to take some of those proceeds from the core business and invest them in innovative products that we believe will help us accelerate our growth into the future.
So that's basically our model.
That's awesome. And then another thing I want to talk about here is how is your collabs going with Snoop Dogg and Cookies?
Have you guys seen a lot of traction with that?
And do you guys have any plans to expand elsewhere besides Cookies and Snoop Dogg?
Yeah, so, yeah, yeah, thanks.
So both of those products are doing very well.
We've launched them both in the US.
Now the US is a big place, so it takes time to go through the supply chain.
We initially launched them on our online platform.
Our online platform is hooker.com.
That's the largest Shisha or Hooker platform in the US. It's a direct to consumer
platform, but also a B2B platform. So if anybody's interested in trialing those products, I would
suggest that you log on to Hooker.com and have a look at them and get them delivered direct to your home. But we are increasing the distribution of those across the States.
And we're getting very, very good repeat orders on them.
We initially launched cookies back in July.
And we're slightly surprised by the size of the demand for those.
And Snoop was launched in November and, you know, really great awareness of the products
and a lot of excitement on the flavors as well.
And we also launched Snoop in Germany.
And again, very, very similar in germany lots of excitement
um around it and people very willing um to try the the new snoop flavors so you know we will focus
on um on the us and germany initially we will focus on building that distribution
building the awareness of the products and trying to to get those products into the hands of hooker consumers around the States and the US and continue to grow those volumes.
So in summary, so far, so good. Good first steps. And we will continue to focus on that through 2020-26.
I'm going to step in here a second. Stuart, yeah, I love that innovation that you're doing
for an industry that otherwise, like you said, hasn't changed for thousands of years.
It's a very compelling part of the thesis here for your
company but um i don't know if i asked you this before are there any uh these do you view any
direct competitors out there who are being just as innovative as you in this space so we um we're by
far the largest uh player in this space um and you know know, you're absolutely right. It's an industry or a category
that hasn't changed much in 600 years. It began in India. It moved across to the Middle East.
And the Arab population really made it their own. I don't know if anyone's been out to this
part of the world. I'm talking to you from Dubai at the moment.
But, you know, shisha cafes and lounges are really prolific here.
And it's something that people enjoy doing.
It's a social pastime, a bit akin to going out and having coffee or a drink with friends in the Western world.
out having coffee or a drink with friends in the Western world.
But as people have moved around the world, it's no longer just an Arab phenomena.
It is something that has taken hold in Europe, and it's something that's become popular in
the US as well.
And it goes across demographics as well. Everybody has their
own interpretation of it. So, you know, it's a worldwide business, but unusually, we are the only
worldwide player in this space. Our competitors tend to be regional or local.
competitors tend to be regional or local.
And so, you know, as a business, what we do is we're looking always at M&A opportunities
whereby we can pick up national brands at very, very competitive rates
and actually plug them into our infrastructure and take them to the world.
And last year we actually bought a brand in Germany called Nameless,
a very, very popular brand in Nameless that has a number of very popular flavors
that resonate very well with the German consumers.
And as a first step, what we've done is we've
bought the brand, the IP behind it, learnt about the product, and we are now plugging
that product into our European, our pan-European supply chain. And we're beginning to drive
the volumes of this acquisition. So I think there'll also be many more of those opportunities
around the world where we find products that we think, you know, are not just going to be popular
nationally. We can bring them into our portfolio and then share them across the world,
across the 90 plus markets to which we service our products.
Yeah, that's nice. I don't think we've talked about that before. That's pretty interesting.
I know we talked about, I'm wondering now, the SPAC when it closes, because you had mentioned
you don't really need the money.
So, and, you know, we don't know how much you'll get depending on the redemptions and everything.
But am I reading through that right, that maybe whatever money you do get
from that would be mostly towards acquisitions?
Yeah, so, again, unusually, I suppose, for a SPAC, look,
we're not raising a pipe because, as you rightly say, we're not looking or we don't need the cash.
When we actually get to the point where we do de-SPAC, then we will have a look to see what cash is in the business.
And then, of course, it's decision time about what we want to do. There are potential M&A opportunities.
The company also does have some debt.
At the moment, the debt is or the guarantee is about two and a half times.
Sorry, 2.1 times, which is a very, very comfortable level
for us as a business, given our cash flows.
So we're not necessarily looking to reduce that.
So there's opportunities for M&A.
I think it will also be useful
to have a little bit of a war chest.
You know, when we do list,
you know, we'll have to watch the market closely.
Depending on what happens, we could buy some of the equity if we felt that was appropriate.
Or similarly, in time, we could look to return some of that money through dividends to shareholders.
So, you know, it's always nice to have a bit of cash because cash gives you flexibility and cash gives you options.
But we would deploy, obviously, to help us accelerate growth where we see the opportunities. opportunities that might be through M&A or it might be putting a little more juice behind some
of the innovations that we're currently testing in the market. So, you know, I'm personally very
interested to see where we get to when we are actually, you know, listed.
Nice sort of decisions or yeah exactly right great great problems to have
it's awesome to have that flexibility uh rand let me kick it back over to you
sounds good dougie do you have any uh questions yeah i have a question here so stewart um you
said uh hookah was created in india it started in India, it moved over to the Middle East, and now it's obviously a global phenomenon. And you're over in Dubai. I'm in snowy New Jersey. It's freezing cold. My question is, do you find that hookah does better in warmer climates, like warmer climate areas? Do you kind of target them areas or does it not matter?
not matter yeah so yeah good good question so so it is a little cyclical right so where i am at the
moment i mean the weather's perfect this time of year so uh you know from from november right away
through to april the end of april even early may this part of the world it's really lovely to sit outside and enjoy your shisha or your ucha. It's very
cold as you say in in North America at the moment and it's pretty cold in in Europe but we're a
we're a global business so what we see is a you know an upsurge in in the Middle East in at this
time of the year and things tend to calm down in the summer because a lot of people
in the middle east do actually migrate across to europe for the for the better weather or go to the
us and then you see a little uptick um in in those geographies during the summer so because we are a
global business uh it means that it kind of dovetails quite nicely for us.
Historically, you know, we've done about 40, 48, 49% of our revenues in the first six months of the year.
And, you know, 51 or 52% in the second half of the year.
Because also in the Middle East, you really do see a pull from the trade, you know, in that November, December time, gearing up for the, you know, for the big heavy season here.
So, good question. There is seasonality to the business, but if you're a global business, you know, the weather's always good in one part of the world at any point in time.
So it kind of evens out for us.
Yeah, that works out well for you.
I mean, it's cold in one area, you do well in the other, and then it just switches around.
So, yeah, it actually, like you said, it evens out perfectly for you.
It keeps the business sustainable the entire year and you uh just keep on cruising i was just wondering because i'm sitting here looking at the snow outside like
how many people are actually uh thinking about a hookah right now yeah but when it's warm and
comfortable it's obviously a very enjoyable fun thing to think about and do so just a quick
question that came to me so thank you but even you, depending on the regulation where you are, you know, if you've got a, you know, a license and you can serve your shisha or your hooker inside, then, of course, people can enjoy it during the hot summers.
Or, you know, it's maybe a nice thing to do when it is cold outside as well.
You know, sit down with a drink or a cup of coffee with some friends and, you know,
chat over a hooker pipe. So again, depending on different countries, different regulations,
you know, there's always somewhere that you can find to enjoy that shisha or that hooker moan.
enjoy um that shisha or that hook them up definitely i agree i think the warmer weather
tends to probably bring in more people um another question i had for you in terms um
where with you guys with social media and all that is there any regulations when it comes to like
uh putting your sales team out there and like promoting and uh partnering with influencers
like what's how's that looking like for you guys?
Yeah, there's, yeah.
I mean, you know, so we, we deal with, with tobacco.
It is a heavily regulated business.
So there are, again, depending on, on which geography you're in there,
you know, there are restrictions on, on advertising and there there are restrictions on on marketing and what you can do.
Some markets in the world are completely dark markets, right, where you really can't do much at all. Saudi Arabia as an example. So there's no online selling to consumers in Saudi Arabia.
There's no direct communication with consumers allowed.
And every single pack of our products of any shisha or hookah products have to be in, you know, the same pack, right? It's the
same color. It's like a not very attractive green. And the only differentiator is the name of the
brand written in Arabic in the same white font, right? Now, I suppose the benefit of that, if you're a big player in this space, is that it's very difficult for people to launch new products into the space, because how do you tell somebody that you've got a new product?
is that as a retailer, you tend to only stock the bigger products,
the products that you know are going to move,
because people will come in and say,
oh, can I have some Alfaka 2 Apple, or can I have some Alfaka Mint?
So what I found, and I've worked in tobacco nearly 30 years now,
the darker the market, the harder it is to market new products and therefore the
bigger brands always win. I've seen it in cigarettes and I see exactly the same thing
in shisha and the hooker market. So, operating in tobacco, you need to be very, very wary
of what the regulations are. You need to abide by those regulations, and you need to have
a very experienced regulatory team. But it really does operate as a competitive moat,
or as a barrier to entry for new people to come in. Right, so it's not really a business that
anyone can stick up their hands and say, right, we're going to go into, you know, into this category and win. So regulation, you know, acts as I say, quite a
quite a moat for our brands. All right. That's a lot of great new information today. Wolf,
I don't know, you haven't had a chance to talk much.
If you have any closing thoughts or questions, go for it here.
That's funny. The questions I was going to ask,
I even had the seasonality question that Dougie brought up
and the global response was fantastic.
So all the questions I had were hit on.
But Stuart, I always ask any roadmap updates, upcoming catalysts, anything that we should be paying attention to coming down the pipe for you guys?
live market tests that we're we're doing for for vant um we talked last time about hookah which is
the world's first electronic shisha or hookah pipe uh we continue to to roll that out um if anybody
lives in miami um look out for it there in miami uh and then from miami we'll move on to to other
cities uh in the us i'm stuck in Miami right now.
I took a cruise to the Caribbean because of the snowstorm.
I got stuck here in Miami for a few days.
Oh, right.
Nice.
It's not bad being stuck in Miami, though.
I think there's worse places.
There's worse places to be stuck.
And, you know, we continue to roll out our innovations.
We've talked about Snoop.
Again, for any hooker, shisha smokers out there,
encourage you to try these new flavors and see what you think.
And, yeah, we'll keep rolling those innovations out, learning, understanding how consumers
are reacting to them, refining the messages.
And of course, for our core business, over the last five years, we've grown the top line
at a CAGA of 5%.
And we'll continue to drive that growth this year. So exciting times ahead. We'll
keep a close eye on the returns from the SEC and all being well, be listed before the end
of the first half of this year. So much to do, much to look forward to.
Awesome, Stuart.
I appreciate you coming on and giving us an update.
Rhett, Ben, anyone else up here have any final questions,
thoughts that they want to sneak in for Stuart before I close up?
No, I think that was very informative. A ton of new information there.
So really appreciate your time, Stuart, and looking forward to your progress. We will look at that news feed. We'll pay attention to that. We'll get the word out once there's things cooking, and we'll talk to you soon.
Thank you so much. Thanks for having me, guys. See you soon.
Thank you, Stuart. Take care.
Bye.
Thank you. Bye-bye.
Cheers, Stuart. Thanks for coming on again. What a great show. Great to have everyone back on here after last week's holiday.
Got some updated thoughts.
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