All –
As many of you know, the infringement litigation was lost without a trial. The technologies that the Company developed are used by more than 95% of the industry to produce billions in additional annual profit. At least seven of twelve corn oil extraction patents remain valid and enforceable. We have a viable offer from a new litigation firm to restart from scratch on a contingency arrangement. However, the path to monetization is fraught with significant risk and additional delay, neither of which any of you deserve. Critically, that path will also cost the Company between $500,000 and $1,000,000 per year ancillary litigation expenses for several years, and, inasmuch as the defendants in the corn oil litigation remain bent on the Company’s extinction, the only form of financing available to cover those costs would carry a certain dilutive expense for an uncertain recovery. As I have stated many times, any risk of additional dilution without a clear path to accretive returns is unacceptable.
Consequently, the Company is focused on delivering an alternative path to liquidity for its shareholders that is not linked to the fate of corn oil and the infringement litigation. The Company is working through the details in that regard with counsel. Additional information will be provided after OTC Markets accepts the Company’s application and current financial statements are posted to www.otcmarkets.com. However, until then, the Company can confirm the following in response to recent questions from several of you:
- Neither the Company nor its intellectual properties will be acquired, in spite of our best efforts. No discussions are being held to that effect. Any speculation to the contrary is unfortunately not correct. The continued aggressions of the defendants in the corn oil litigation, and the implicated risks and uncertainties, have rendered any such options impossible.
- The alternative path to liquidity will likely take the form of a distribution or other transaction under which the Company’s common shareholders of record are issued shares in another publicly-traded company at a premium to the Company’s current market price, subject to fulfillment of the required conditions and the blessings of counsel for all applicable parties. That transaction is likely to involve a pre-existing equity interest in Artizen Corporation.
- The Company changed its name to CleanTech Alpha Corporation and will have limited operations beyond the infringement litigation after each of you successfully receive shares in the new company. More information will be provided on that front in the Company’s pending financial statement disclosures.
Speaking personally, I can’t overstate my gratitude for your heroic interest, support, and patience through many years of brutal adversity, from the 2008 financial crisis and the loss of the $50 million GE equity financing, to the dilutive toll of holding the line to protect and preserve the Company’s corn oil platform through over $110 million in debt repayment, to the decade spent at war with the ethanol industry, to losing that war without a trial. We have all invested with blood, tears, and years. In spite of what it may have seemed from our silence, I have never once lost sight of that, or of you and your investments. The corn oil saga should have produced a vastly different result. Our technologies have offset more than 260 million barrels of fossil fuel and produced more than $12 billion in additional profit industry-wide since inception, and that value has recently increased to more than $3 billion per year. We disrupted the industry. We shifted the consumption practices of millions. I’m sorry that I and we were not able to ultimately convert even a sliver of that success into increased shareholder value for all of you. The liquidity alternative above is intended to offset that outcome for each of you. It is the least that you deserve.
Again, thank you for your interest and support. The Company will provide an additional update after OTC Markets accepts the pending application and current financial statements are posted.
Regards,
Kevin Kreisler
