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In Summary
We are happy to announce that Generation Hemp Inc will be a headline sponsor at the Texas Hemp Convention this November in Dallas Texas!
Gary Evans, CEO of Generation Hemp Inc. joins us on the HempList this week, hosted By Chase Nobles, Founder of Kush.com
In this 20 min interview Gary walks us through how Generation Hemp Inc went public, how they’re using one of the largest Hemp processing facilities in the USA, and even future expansion plans.. First Chase asks about how Gary took his experience from fundraising in the oil and gas industry to taking a hemp company public (and why?). Then learn about what exactly Generation Hemp Inc is doing right now, and some of their plans in the near future (NASDAQ?!).
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Transcript (Auto-Generated)
hey everybody chase nobles here founder
of kush.com i’ve got an awesome show for
you guys today i’ve got gary evans ceo
of generation hemp incorporated how are
you gary doing great thank you for
having me here today
right on well i’m i’m really excited
about the show because you guys are the
headline sponsor of the texas
hymn convention coming up here in dallas
in november yes we’re excited about it
right here in our own hometown yeah it
makes a lot of sense so you guys are in
dallas um texas got a little bit of a
later start in hemp but then what
happens is it seems like there’s a lot
of
very serious entrepreneurs getting into
the market down there tell us a little
bit about how texas has been and what
the market looks like in texas and what
you guys are doing down there
well the only reason um
we’re kind of a dallas fort worth based
company is because i live in dallas and
my
two
key
employees live in fort worth so we call
ourselves dallas fort worth um
all of our operations though are in the
state of kentucky and kentucky is kind
of at the forefront of the
hemp business because
uh the state senator mcconnell was
instrumental in getting the farm bill
passed
in 2019 when president trump was in
office
and um the state has had a long history
of growing him uh back from the
beginning of the the country in the
1700s and our forefathers so
um everything we’re doing is there it’s
a perfect place to to be involved in
hemp and we just have our headquarters
here in dallas
that’s an interesting point that you
bring up when it comes to politics you
know for for a long time it seemed like
it was a left right issue and then you
have mitch mcconnell
being a massive supporter of the hemp
industry which was just such a sigh of
relief to anybody that was watching that
going oh wow we’ve got bipartisan
support for a new agricultural product
and for you that must have been some
alarm bells ringing going oh wow i i
can’t miss this train looking at um just
the market and what what the potential
is here
well you know a lot of americans
don’t really understand the history of
the hint business which
you know
goes back to really uh the beginning of
humans on earth and hemp is a very
unusual plant it’s one that has many
many qualities we all think of hemp as
being a cbd
product but in reality the industrial
use of him is what’s made it so uh
attractive to me and our company and so
um it was a natural when we see a
republican like you say mitch mcconnell
pushed this through trump pushed it
through
they were really looking for
opportunities to start a new industry
and that’s what’s happening right now is
a brand new industry with a plant that
has multiple uses that we’ll continue to
hear of
being used throughout our lives
now let’s talk about something that’s
not so new as him oil and gas
your background has a pretty substantial
record in the oil and gas industry
tell us a little bit about that and what
led from going from that market
to such a different market
in terms of sustainability the hemp and
the hemp industry here
well it’s a great question
i tell people i’ve gone from oil and gas
to grass
and
i i really
the primary reason that i made a
complete switch
in industries is number one the the only
gas business has so many similar
qualities to the hemp business and you
go well how in the world is that well in
oil and gas we drill for oil on the
ground we have to do all these
operations to get the oil out of the
ground and use it for products hemp same
thing farmers grow the plant but the oil
out of the flower is used in all these
other ways and so you have processes
like midstream that’s what we call
ourselves a midstream company you have
downstream which is the final product so
in many many ways it’s the same and then
you have volatility oil and gas prices
go up and down up and down oil and gas
companies come and go same thing has
happened in the hemp business so far if
you’re in the cbd side of the world
prices were real high when the bill got
passed farmers were growing hemp like it
was going out of style and then prices
came down because there’s oversupply so
fortunately we’re in a period now where
there’s equilibrium occurring and
there’s great opportunities uh to to
grow the plant and so
i’m also able to use my capital raising
expertise in the only gas industry i’ve
yeah i’ve raised around seven billion
dollars in my career
and that’s all been on wall street all
with public company all started as
embryonic companies like this so this
will this is my fourth public company
and i’m trying to use that capital
raising expertise and business acumen in
a brand new fragment industry
now being on the public markets that
must come with some challenges as well
when it comes to financial reporting the
sec legal counsel all of those
challenges that come with that but also
is a pretty big unlock
what drove the decision to take the
company public so early and what were
the mechanics of which you were able to
do that being a startup
well first of all
i recognized that
the canadian companies were at the
forefront of the marijuana business and
had raised tremendous amounts of capital
in canada and here in the us
and there was not a clean pure public
hemp company
so
wanting to be kind of the first out of
the gate we made a decision to take our
assets and merge them into a public
entity based in denver about a year and
a half ago changed the name to
generation him
and hence became public
so we’ve already graduated from the pink
sheets otc pink sheets to now what’s
called the otcqb which is a higher level
and we’re in the process of going to
nasdaq our goal is to do that by the end
of the year so
again my background being capital
raising opportunities in the oil and gas
industry i wanted to use that expertise
with wall street to do it now in a brand
new industry that people like you know
when i told people i was in the oil and
gas business people kind of you know
look the other way and talk to you later
i tell people in the hip business
they’re all over you know my pool guys
buying my stock you know my guys are
doing my lawns by myself everybody likes
the business it’s eco-friendly it’s good
for our environment uh everybody wants
it so uh it’s it’s very unique being
something that people like
now
you are a public market company and
there’s there’s scrutiny there’s all the
other challenges of that but you have
unlocked this fundraising train that can
take you much further than potentially
staying private in this space especially
in an oversplay especially when prices
are dropping now let’s get to the core
of it
you say you’re in the midstream market
of the hemp industry what does that mean
exactly to anybody listening wondering
what do they actually do what what is
this business and how do they operate
what’s what’s the plan here um if
somebody’s looking at your company uh
from that perspective
that’s that’s that’s a great question so
we
we are the company where when the farmer
grows his hemp crop
he has to get ready to be processed for
extraction that’s where they pull the
cbd make isolate this lid out of the
flour
they bring
super sacs these huge bags of hemp to us
our facility in western kentucky it’s
the largest in the country
and it’s 50 000 square feet and we have
these huge dryers so we basically take
that material we dry it we clean it we
strip it
we get ready for
extraction for the cbd
um
so we have farmers from all over you
know our area about 150 mile radius we
just won a large contract from two
farmers in alabama so
um
we survived the downturn the hip
business has had over the last two years
and are prospering well
so we got to thinking okay by being a
midstream guy we don’t take the
commodity rights we’re like a toller if
you were to take your dry cleaning to
the laundry
um you pay a fee and you get it back
same way the farmers bring us their hemp
we get it all cleaned up and we give it
back and we get paid a fee per pound
that we we operate with so
that has enabled us now to find new
segments of the business because what’s
left after we pull that
flower out to be ready to be made for
cbd is
biomass are heard and there are all
kinds of new industries using that
material in their products such as bmw
is now making car doors out of him
you got hemp concrete coming that’s
already out hardwood floors are being
made out of him plywood’s being made out
of him
animal bedding we just started an animal
bedding division
we’ve ordered all the equipment we got
it should be arriving in about a week to
10 days
and that’s called rowdy rooster animal
bedding and we will be using that
biomass material to make
eco-friendly animal bedding for for
chickens for hogs for
small rodents uh dogs with heavy and so
uh we expect that to really take off so
what what makes us unique
is that we probably have
in our inventory today
ten times more biomass material than any
hemp company in the united states and
why that is so important is the big boys
like pillsbury kellogg’s coca-cola
pepsi those companies when they start
using products in their cereals or in
their what whatever business they have
we have supply and that’s what
differentiates us from any of our
competition
so let me see if i get this get this
right your
you know kind of tool processing whether
it’s drying stripping you know cleaning
up the products that the farmers bring
to you but then you’re actually
keeping all of the excess you know what
what a lot of the farmers would consider
waste and throw out or mulch into the
ground you’re keeping that and turning
that into industrial fiber products
that’s why
what is happening in that market right
now and what’s the timeline on it
because it’s been really hard to judge
from the outside saying well you know
five ten years the infrastructure’s not
there you know the supply isn’t there
what’s holding that market back from
being a pretty big super power as far as
a new material that people can use at a
high level here in the us
simple answer supply and that’s what we
have that’s what has kept that market
there’s been two or three other animal
betting companies have started up and
failed they won huge contracts with
walmart petsmart and guess what they
couldn’t keep up with with demand and so
that’s what differentiates us is we have
literally millions of pounds the order
of 10 to 12 million pounds of supply of
material to meet the demand so we’re
going to do small bags and large bags
obviously being in kentucky horses is a
great replacement for straw
and stalls and so
that’s what kind of led us to you know
be a sponsor for this conference so we
could start educating people that wait a
minute we have this material now to to
be able to make products and we’ll be
bringing those products to the
conference
and gary i can’t i can’t tell you how
excited i am to see that come to
fruition because it seems like one of
those things that you would expect first
but it seems to be coming later and you
all are taking a really good shot at
making this happen so excited to see not
just your business be born but the
actual market change and this be a much
more recognized product category versus
you know where it’s at right now which
is truly in its infancy now being a
little public mark oh go ahead gary yeah
i’m gonna just say something that’s you
know i think pretty important for
shareholders um
this is not my first rodeo obviously
this is round four
um you know my first company that i
started at age 27 started with a
thousand dollars and i sold that company
for 2.2 billion
and um
when we went public in 1990 we were the
very first company on the boston stock
exchange in the energy sector and the
stock was at 18 cents a share
15 years later i sold that company for
1770 a share or 2.2 billion in a stock
exchange and the average annual
shareholder return from 1990 to 2005
that 15 years was 38
so
if you had owned that stock at the very
beginning and you would average 38
when we sold the the business i had
about 220 employees
37 became multi-millionaires
because we were generous in the 401k
plan and making sure people could be
you know could benefit from our success
so
we’re trying to do the same type of
thing here and you know people oh your
stocks trading at 70 cents or 90 cents
well i got involved with this company
just a year and a half ago the stock was
at six cents so we’ve gone from six
we’ve gone up to buck fifty two dollars
turned around seventy but we’ve just
begun i mean we’re just now putting all
the bolts together to make this a real
company uh we’re very acquisitive we’ve
got two acquisitions we’re working on
right now um and
you’ll see us diversifying we eventually
wanted to be seed to sales the full
gamut but we started in the midstream
sector because that’s the safest place
to be
and something we know a lot about and
where we think we can grow this business
and the the big boys want to have a
surety of supply and that’s what we’re
trying to do is making sure look you
want supply we got it
well i actually wanted to ask you about
that you know one of the big
expectations is this market is the m a
activity um that we haven’t quite seen
as much as people were expecting yet
but having companies on the public
market makes a lot easier to to actually
acquire
um and merge with different companies
what what are you what are you expecting
there you mentioned two
potential acquisitions coming up soon
but
what’s the plan there with your access
to the capital markets like you have
so
um
fortunately uh two of our large
shareholders are bankers they’re they’re
head of investment banking for large
banks and so they know
you know kind of my
method and they’re are trying to you
know get their toe in the water to be
involved with our capital raising
activities all we’ve done today is
really is private placements with
investors and that’s kind of funded our
growth we should we are going to be cash
flow positive you know this year based
on our projections and um you know
you’ll start to really see over the next
12 months just a rocket ship growth in
revenues and so
that’ll start getting the interest of
institutions but today because of our
size we’re about a 70 million market cap
we can really only attract retail
investors we can’t really get you know
the big institutions yet and that’s why
we want to get on nasdaq because then
we can start getting the big money one
of the biggest problems i have in this
industry is that everything is fairly
small because it’s brand new i’m used to
doing 50 million 100 million 600 million
dollar acquisitions we’re doing
you know the last we did was you know
five we got one is four we got one to
six you know so it’s going to take a
little while to accumulate the assets to
get to 100 million 200 million 300
million in size which is our goal um but
the sooner we we start getting that
traction the faster it’ll go and the
fact that our stock has performed well
that the people that we bought so far
have been very happy their stocks have
doubled and tripled so
you know that causes people to want to
be involved and i think they find out
that we are professional we have our own
you know general counsel you know we do
everything right we crossed our t’s dot
our eyes and uh you know i’m the largest
shareholder i’ve invested a lot of money
i put money in the company today in fact
so
we’re we put our money where our mouth
is and um we we see the future and it’s
a very bright one and by being a first
pure play hemp company on a big exchange
we think we’ll people will take note
i think they will too i wanted to ask
you about uh
what gets you up in the morning and you
kind of alluded to a couple of different
things there but whether it’s with the
business whether it’s with the market
whether it’s with uh
something going on right now within the
business what’s getting you up in the
morning staying motivated to build a
great company in the space
well i think whenever you’re involved in
a
new industry like this which i never
have i mean this is my first time in a
business that’s brand new to the world
and so
um it’s it’s fun to look at the history
how do we get to where we are today and
you know the hint business you know
would have been a
very active big industry had it not been
outlawed in the late 30s early 40s when
the dupont family and rockefeller family
they didn’t want him to compete with all
their other industrial
products people don’t realize
the declaration of independence
the bill of rights is written on hip
paper i mean hemp has been around a
while and we just outlawed it well guess
what we just
made it legal nationally not not just by
state nationally so it’s been a it’s
taken a bit of a while to um
uh to get
uh
people understanding the difference
between marijuana difference between
hemp with the factory sister plants we
don’t have thc
it’s minimum 0.3 percent and it doesn’t
make you hallucigenic and so
um but they don’t realize the industrial
applications and that’s where we think
the real future of this business is
going is taking those industrial
applications and applying them to all
kinds of businesses
i got to ask you one final question here
how did you come up with the name
generation hemp incorporated where did
the where did the name come from what’s
what’s the meaning behind it it must be
important to you all
well we you know you think about the new
generation
the the younger generation
this is a new product so that’s what
sort of kind of led to the word
generation is that we’re in a new period
um
of life we obviously wanted to have the
name hemp involved um you know when we
like chose the the name rowdy rooster
when you see the packaging when you see
the roosters involved we’re going to
make a cartoons out of it we want things
to be catchy people go oh gosh that’s
that rowdy rooster hemp you know product
so um trying to be
a little different than the oil and gas
business which was a little you know dry
and a little old
so this is a new product new industry we
got to be innovative we got to be
proactive and that’s what kind of led to
what we’re doing we have a lot of great
people working for us that helped me in
that process and uh it’s been fun
right on well gary it’s been a pleasure
talking with you best of luck over the
coming year on those targets that you’re
looking to hit everything that you got
going on best of luck with the
acquisitions and i can’t say it founder
to founder we’re so excited to have you
be a part of the show there in dallas in
your hometown uh the biggest hip show
that uh the world seen down there in
dallas last year so we’re excited to do
that again so appreciate you being a
part of it be a part of kush.com we’ll
knock em dead this year
all right gary best of luck we’ll talk
soon
appreciate it take care
Tyana Daley
