Aqua Metals Announces Intention to Sell McCarran, Nevada Plant as Part of Its Non-Core Asset Disposition and AquaRefining Lic...
September 22 2020 - 8:00AM
Aqua Metals, Inc. (NASDAQ: AQMS) (“Aqua Metals” or the “Company”),
which is reinventing lead recycling with its AquaRefining™
technology, announced today that as part of its accelerated
equipment supply and licensing strategy, which includes the
disposition of non-core assets, the Company has officially placed
its novel lead acid battery recycling plant for sale. The Company
built and then operated the demonstration plant commercially
through 2019 and successfully manufactured over 35,000 ingots of
ultrapure AquaRefined lead. The Company believes it has achieved
the demonstration purposes of the plant, resulting in the
successful validation of AquaRefining technology and commercial
sale of ultrapure lead. As stated previously, and as part of its
long-term business strategy, the Company now plans to monetize this
non-core asset with the sale of the plant as a means of financing
the Company’s continued acceleration of its core business of
becoming an equipment supplier and licensor of AquaRefining
technologies.
The Company intends to market the land and
building as a general use industrial facility. Residing on 11.5
acres, the 136,000 square foot plant contains 14,000 square feet of
operational office space. The facility also includes three exterior
dock doors with seven exterior grade level doors, 13,000 amps of
total building power and a temperature-controlled warehouse with
negative or positive pressure.
The Company has also initiated a separate effort
to sell certain non-core lead recycling equipment into the
secondary market for used equipment. The Company believes the land,
building and non-core equipment may have a strong attraction as a
fully-integrated package for any buyer looking to engage in lead
recycling activities. The Company expects to apply the cash
proceeds from the sale of the plant to further strengthen its
balance sheet. The Company believes the sale proceeds, potential
future insurance collections (total policy of $50M for equipment
losses from the November, 2019 fire) and the $20.3M in insurance
collected to date will be sufficient to fully fund the AquaRefining
licensing business strategy as the Company transitions towards
scalable revenues.
“The AquaRefinery has been a successful
launching pad for our novel AquaRefining technologies,” said Steve
Cotton, President and Chief Executive Officer of Aqua Metals. “We
have proven the technology to work and have demonstrated its
commercial viability to industry partners with the sale of our
recycled lead to Clarios at premium pricing and are now moving
towards supplying AquaRefining equipment and licensing this
technology. The plant will no longer be needed as we complete our
V1.25L program at our leased, 14,000 square foot office and
warehouse facility just a mile down the road. Given its strategic
location in the highly desirable, but currently sold out,
Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center, we believe this timely sale can
significantly strengthen our balance sheet. The plant can become a
renewed launching pad for another lead acid battery recycler, a
lithium battery recycler or frankly any industrial process player
looking to quickly get into this strategic location. Furthermore,
if the eventual buyer turns out to be a lead acid battery recycler,
there could be additional opportunities beyond just the sale of the
plant and land, whereby Aqua Metals can also supply AquaRefining
equipment and license our leading technology. Regardless of the
buyer, we are looking forward to completing our accelerated shift
to a capital-light business model and further fortifying our cash
reserves in order to fuel the completion of our vision of providing
the World with what we believe is a sorely needed environmental,
capacity generating and product quality upgrade to the $65B+ lead
acid battery industry.”
The demolition and recovery work from the damage
caused by the November, 2019 fire at the plant has commenced and
the Company expects to complete a material amount of cleanup work
throughout the remainder of this year as all physical damage
inspections required by various experts have concluded. The Company
has been advised by its commercial brokers that the clean-up
activities will not materially impede the marketing of the land and
building and that the marketing process can commence
immediately.
The sale of the McCarran facility is being
managed through a bid process by D|C|G (Dickson Commercial Group).
The full listing can be seen at the link: 2500 Peru Drive Property
Brochure. Interested parties may contact D|C|G directly: Joel
Fountain (office) (775) 850-3136 (email) jfountain@dicksoncg.com,
or Tom Fennell (office) (775) 850-3117 (email)
tfennell@dicksoncg.com.
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 battery 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, Nevada.
Aqua Metals has used, and intends to continue
using, its investor relations website (https://ir.aquametals.com),
in addition to its Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube accounts
at: https://twitter.com/AquaMetalsInc (@aquametalsinc), https://www.linkedin.com/company/aqua-metals-limited
and https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvxKNWcB69K0t7e337uQ8nQ respectively,
as means of disclosing material non-public information and for
complying with its disclosure obligations under Regulation FD.
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", "estimates”, "potential“ and variations of
such words or similar expressions that convey uncertainty of future
events or outcomes, or that do not relate to historical matters.
The forward-looking statements in this press release include our
expectations for the sale of the land and building at our McCarran
facility; the sufficiency of any sale proceeds coupled with any
further insurance recovery to fund our operations and the
development and completion of our V1.25 electrolyzer; the benefits
of the V1.25 electrolyzer; and the future of lead acid battery
recycling via traditional smelters. 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) the risk that we may not be able to sell the
land and building at our McCarran facility on a timely basis, (2)
the risk that we may not realize the sale proceeds we hoped for
from the sale of the land and building, (3) the risk that the terms
of any such sale may include indemnities or other provisions that
pose potential contingent liability to Aqua Metals, (4) the risk
that we may not be able to complete the development of our V1.25
electrolyzer; (5) the risk that we may not realize the expected
benefits from our V1.25 electrolyzer; (6) the risk that our
insurance recovery from our claims relating to the November 2019
fire at our TRIC facility and proceeds from the sale of legacy
assets will not be sufficient to fund our accelerated licensing
strategy; (7) the risk that we may not be able to satisfactorily
demonstrate to potential licensees the technical and commercial
viability of our V1.25 electrolyzer and AquaRefining process; (8)
the risk that licensees may refuse or be slow to adopt our
AquaRefining process as an alternative to smelting in spite of the
perceived benefits of AquaRefining; (9) the risk that we may not
realize the expected economic benefits from any licenses we may
enter into; (10) the risk that we will have to engage in additional
sales of our equity securities in order to fund our future
operations; (11) the risk that further funding, by any means, may
not be available at all; (12) the fact that we have not generated
any significant revenue to date, thus subjecting us to all of the
risks inherent in an early-stage company; (13) the risk that our
patents and any other patents that may be issued to it may be
challenged, invalidated, or circumvented; (14) the risk that we may
not be able to successfully conclude our proposed joint development
agreement with Clarios or, if we do, realize the expected benefits
of such agreement; (15) changes in the federal, state and foreign
laws regulating the recycling of lead acid batteries; (16) our
ability to protect our proprietary technology, trade secrets and
know-how and (17) those other risks disclosed in the section "Risk
Factors" included in our Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q filed on
August 4, 2020 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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