Aqua Metals Receives Additional $2.5M Insurance Collection, Provides Update on Near Term Plans
January 30 2020 - 8:00AM
Aqua Metals, Inc. (NASDAQ: AQMS) (“Aqua Metals” or the “Company”),
which is reinventing lead recycling with its AquaRefining™
technology, announced that it has been successful in collecting an
additional $2,500,000 of insurance proceeds, thus completing the
payout of the first of four layers of insurance.
The Company’s engineering and operations team
has already established key go forward improvement plans and
preliminary designs for building AquaRefining electrolyzers which
we believe will reduce build costs and further improve operating
economics.
Insurance Payout and Cash
Position
Coupled with the $2,500,000 payment made on
December 23rd, 2019, the Company has successfully collected the
first layer of insurance coverage for a total of $5,000,000.
The Company has also extended cash retention incentives to
all remaining employees.
In addition, the Company recently regained
access from the fire marshal to the affected area. Preliminary
assessments of approximately $37,000,000 of insured losses have
been submitted to the insurance carriers of which $5,000,000 has
been paid to date. The Company and it’s retained public
insurance adjustor will continue meeting with equipment, demolition
and construction suppliers to complete further assessments as we
work with the insurance carriers on further payment
tranches.
Investigation Update
Although the investigation is still being
finalized, we continue to believe that the AquaRefining process and
technologies were not related to the cause of the fire. As
previously stated, the plant was not operating for several weeks up
to and including the time of the fire. The cause of ignition
is likely related to on site contractor work that was being
performed the day of the fire. Root cause analysis is still
underway and the Company will provide an update on root cause at
the appropriate time.
Near Term Activities
With plant operations paused, the Company is
updating the AquaRefining electrolyzer design to take advantage of
this opportunity to make incremental and potentially important
improvements to the electrolyzer’s capital and operating costs and
uptime. The version 1.5 design improvements are based on the
learnings obtained from operating up to 24 version 1.0
electrolyzers 24x7 for several months previously.
In addition, the Company is actively reducing
costs while its operations are ceased. These cost reductions
include the suspension of the non-cash fee expense paid to our
partner Veolia in the form of shares while our plant is not
currently operating.
“We are focused on continuing to collect and
carefully deploy our insurance proceeds and further improve our
core AquaRefining technology value proposition for our current and
prospective partners,” said Steve Cotton, President and CEO.
The Company’s management and board have been
meeting regularly and management plans to provide a more
comprehensive update on our then current status and go forward
planning to our shareholders as a part of our next quarterly
earnings call which we expect will take place in early March.
In the meantime, management will continue to provide material
updates as they occur prior to the quarterly call.
About Aqua Metals
Aqua Metals, Inc. (NASDAQ:AQMS) is reinventing
lead recycling with its patented AquaRefining™ technology. Unlike
smelting, AquaRefining is a room temperature, water-based process
that emits less pollution. The modular systems are intended to
allow the Company to vastly reduce environmental impact and scale
lead acid recycling production capacity by licensing the
AquaRefining technology to partners. This could help to meet
growing demand for lead to power new applications including
stop/start automobile batteries which complement the vehicle’s main
battery, lead acid batteries which are in electric vehicles,
Internet data centers, alternative energy applications including
solar, wind, and grid scale storage. Aqua Metals is based in
McCarran, NV, and has built its first recycling facility in
Nevada’s Tahoe Reno Industrial Complex. To learn more, please visit
www.aquametals.com.
Safe Harbor
This press release contains forward-looking
statements concerning Aqua Metals, Inc. Forward-looking
statements include, but are not limited to our plans, objectives,
expectations and intentions and other statements that contain words
such as “expects,” “contemplates,” “anticipates,” “plans,”
“intends,” “believes” and variations of such words or similar
expressions that predict or indicate future events or trends, or
that do not relate to historical matters. The forward-looking
statements in this release include expectations for the Company’s
ability to regain compliance with Nasdaq’s minimum bid price
requirement and provision of further updates. Those
forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks,
uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to
differ materially. Among those factors are: (1) our ability to
regain compliance with Nasdaq’s minimum bid price requirement
during the compliance period by having the bid price of our common
shares close at or above $1.00 per share for a minimum of 10
consecutive business days, (2) our ability to provide
further updates is dependent in large part on the completion
of the fire investigation and our discussions with our insurers,
(2) the risk that the damages and costs relating to the fire at
TRIC are substantially greater than estimated as of the date of
this release, (3) the risk that the Company’s insurance policies
may not cover all or a significant amount of the cost of restoring
TRIC to its pre-fire state and resuming operations, (4) the risk
that the Company may not otherwise be able to fund the restoration
of TRIC to its pre-fire state and resume operations in the event
that insurance proceeds are unavailable or and (5) those other
risks disclosed in the section “Risk Factors” included in the
Company’s Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q filed on November 12, 2019
and subsequent SEC filings. Aqua Metals cautions readers not to
place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements. The Company
does not undertake, and specifically disclaims any obligation, to
update or revise such statements to reflect new circumstances or
unanticipated events as they occur, except as required by law.
Contact: Glen Akselrod, Bristol Capital(905)
326-1888, Ext. 1glen@bristolir.com
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