Q&A with Laurence Wainer of Blow & Drive Interlock (BDIC) on Recent Update with 2017 Dead Ahead
Spotlight Companies Follow | Friday, 09 December 2016 10:26 (EST)
We had an excellent Q&A with Blow& Drive (BDIC) CEO Laurence Wainer on the back of the recent shareholder letter. Enjoy the read below and always feel free to send questions for any CEO to content@equities.com.
Equities: You said in your recent shareholder update that, “Revenue growth is up over 50%. Additionally, our gross profit increased, quarter over quarter, by 60% while we simultaneously reduced our cost of revenues by 18%. This is a result of operational efficiencies….” Can you expand on this and how you see this metric as an important data point for investors?
CEO Wainer: Sales are as high as the number of BDI 747 machines we can produce. In other words, as quickly as we are producing and deploying machines our investors should expect to see monthly re-occurring revenue increases on our balance sheet while our costs continue to remain steady.
Equities: Can you talk about the following timeline: “Once, we complete the production and deployment of these 1,600 units we believe our reoccurring revenue and assets will meet requirements to move our listing up to the QX marketplace or NASDAQ exchange based on revenue and asset requirements”?
CEO Wainer: There are practical, internal, and revenue requirements that BDIC needs to achieve. With our new funding from The Doheny Group of almost $1 million and the current production of 1,600 additional BDI 747’s we are anticipating that these machines will all be deployed and monetized by the end of Q1 2017 and going into early Q2. Having 2,700 units total, on a re-occurring monthly revenue stream, we believe that we will be very close to generally complying with these up listing requirements.
Equities: While BDIC is technically approved in eleven states, currently, you are operating in only seven. How many states do you see BDIC operating in by mid 2017, and what does this mean for the top line?
CEO Wainer: Even operating in only 7 states is a bit of an exaggeration. We are barely able to meet the demand we have in California, Oregon, and Arizona so these are really the only three states where BDIC is firing on all cylinders. In the other 8 states, BDIC is either not operating at all or only has a minimum viable infrastructure. For example, in the state of Tennessee we only have one service center in Chattanooga because until BDIC received funding we were constrained due to a lack of inventory. I am not focused on adding more states but rather truly building out BDIC’s infrastructure in the states where it already has received regulatory approvals.
Equities:You said in your recent shareholder update that; “Results of the recent election and the legalization of marijuana… are just a few of a combination of factors that are quickly expanding this market.” Can you expand on this?
CEO Wainer: Yes. The legalization of marijuana, immigration reform, and jail overcrowding are just a few of the factors that could be expanding the market demand for interlocks. We also believe increasingly more states will follow the Colorado “Drive High Get a DUI” campaign, which is a strict enforcement campaign targeting people who like to smoke weed and drive by requiring them to have interlocks installed in their vehicles. We are closely monitoring the legislative and technological advancements with this; we are ahead of the curve and have our finger on the pulse.
Equities: When you were first launching BDIC, what was the interview process like for hiring and recruiting your first employees?
CEO Wainer: None. I didn’t interview anyone. I hand-picked the best people based on their knowledge, experience, contacts, and know-how in the criminal offender monitoring industry. I cherry-picked people from some of my competitors because the length of time it would take for someone to learn about all the rules and regulations in each and every state, and the ability to remain compliant in the states where we are approved in by properly handing the regulatory frameworks, would just be too long to teach someone from scratch. Someone with too much to learn would never be able to keep up with how quickly we are trying to do things here.
