Purpose and Confidentiality
This Confidential Information is intended for shareholder purposes only and is not a prospective or solicitation of any kind regarding Ascend Nõvus, Inc. The financial projections and other forward-looking information or any such financial projections and information are based on assumptions as to future events that are inherently uncertain and subjective. The Company makes no representation or warranty as to whether the Company will actually attain any projected financial results. All projections of the Company’s future performance is based on uncertain assumptions and the actual results may materially and adversely vary from the projected results.
Shareholder Letter
To Our Shareholders:
To Our Shareholders:
We are excited to bring you the Shareholder update and communicate our execution through for 2023 EOY and the first quarter of 2024.
First, we want to address this new digital form for our Quarterly updates. However, if you prefer a hard copy, we are happy to send via mail, please just notify us. We will address the financials for each of the following activities, moving forward on a quarterly basis.
• Marketing/Media business- Ascend2Unique (“Unique” marketing) and Ascend2Events (“WGES”).
• Manufactured homes for Masterplan and Scattered Site developments- Ascend2Housing (“Housing” development).
• Support Services for Housing- General Contracting, Architecture, Engineering, landscape, Solar, Mortgage Financing & Technical improvements. (“Housing Services”)
• Golden commercial Head Quarters- Ascend2Property (“Design Center”).
Housing Development
Ascend2Housing line of business continues to grow its revenue, primarily through our continued pursuit of M&A activity in this economy. This approach will help drive our in-house services, while internalizing those margins and services necessary to grow our services for this business unit. Our first order of magnitude was to address the scale required to deliver on our Master Plan (“MP”) developments.
• Our initial acquisition in 2023 for 50% of $1.79M revenue for Coffey Engineering, to perform civil and land development services for our MP.
• Later that same year, we merged the Architectural Team of Corinthian Architecture and Design. Tony Shafer (https://www.linkedin.com/in/tony-shafer-15560974/) with 35 years of custom housing development and a certified architect to lead the design and construction Team.
• In Q1 of 2024 we signed an incubator (B-3) agreement for our fabricator Ironclad Construction (https://www.ironcladco.com/) which will be rolled in as wholly owned subsidiary over next 12 months.
CORPORATE HQ
Ascend2Property is finalizing the completion of our commercial real estate buildings and the corporate HQ and Design Center for Housing. (Note we will soft launch in July 2024 stay tuned for invite)
• We have entered a purchase contract with our landlord to provide seller financing for our current leased building, to purchase the ~16,600 sq. ft commercial facility of our media business. This will allow a lower cost entry for the purchase at market rate financing to bolster our balance sheet at a price that will be the similar to our monthly lease cost.
• The Ascend Nõvus team which includes a recent acquisition of The Cloud Council (https://www.linkedin.com/in/cloudcouncil/) and its founder John Shelley our CTO. With this team at the helm, we are entering into development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for our smart homes starting with security and building a Data Lake with MicroAge (https://microage.com/ ), a 47-year-old, $250 million dollar technology company.
Unique Marketing
Unique’s revenue is continuing to experience record growth under our ownership, and we continue to add M&A activity to address the equipment, personnel, and diversifying customer growth.
• In October of 2023 we closed a $900,000 dollar revenue acquisition of Client Keepers (https://keepmyclient.com/Home), an automated direct mail marketing program designed to help real estate and bank clients.
• Noteworthy brands; FBC Mortgage Banking (https://fbchomeloans.com/) and Northpoint Bank (https://www.northpointe.com/) to increase our much-needed entry into the financial sectors.
• Additionally, in December we closed a merger of the former Kwik Kopy Denver team, when its owner retired and turned the franchise back to the Corporation.
• Noteworthy national brands; Hercules Industries, a western super-regional HVAC supplier (https://www.herculesindustries.com ) and Pivot Lending (https://pivotlending.com).
• This gives us an Annual Compounded Growth Rate (“CAGR”) of 175% over 2022A to 2023A. The trajectory of activity continued and improved our CAGR of 807% over the same period of 2023A to 2024P.
• In Q2 of 2024 we are currently closing our transaction for over $2M in an asset purchase of cabinet maker, wood technology and the 3 FTE’s that run the business.
• Furthermore, we see a clear alignment with the market adopting our “Land Light” balance sheet approach by working with strategic Landowners in partnership with our master plan developments.
• Building from our initial proof points in 2022A, where we showed a loss of ($56,108). We have seen that change to positive EBIT on $752,200 over the same period of 2023A. That number for 2024P, with a trajectory of $2,220,425 or 195% CAGR, largely based upon our M&A as well as new service proof points.
Housing Services
We have sourced and entered into wholesale agreements with service providers. Those service providers include the following:
• Granite/Marble and Quartz with Granite Depot (https://www.shopgranitedepot.com/) and containers from China to reduce our cost per slab to a little as $500 dollars.
• Stone crafter (https://www.stonecraftersco.com/) and stone fabrication.
• Ironclad Construction (https://www.ironcladco.com/) to assist in adding additional template and installation services to meet our semi-custom upgrades currently performing with $7.2 million in revenue.
• Cabinet manufacturing with Wood Technology, a Centum Company currently performing $3.4 million in revenue.
• We will be undertaking full website modifications and have already made significant progress on our investment towards building web portals for Unique customer conversion of our top clients adopting our technology to provide analytics in their corporate dashboards.
• This will permit Unique to generate contracts with our long-term customers, providing fixed pricing and agreements that set out our development of integrated solutions.
Finally, we have entered a purchase contract with our landlord to provide seller financing for our current leased building, to purchase the ~16,600 sq. ft commercial facility of our media business. This will allow a lower cost entry for the purchase at market rate financing to bolster our balance sheet at a price that will be very similar to our current lease cost. We hope you enjoy the details of our continued hard work. Many thanks for your attention and consideration.
Evolution of Our Approach and Portfolio Companies
Ascend2Unique Financials
Overview
Current revenue streams for Unique are largely derived from accretive acquisitions of complimentary equipment, customers and human capital.
Core revenue from existing customers has been diversified over new services and increasing off-set press providing more margin and services from the core customer base.
Unique has also reinvested much of its early profits to update most if not all the software, equipment and human capital pay to prepare for growth.
Revenue History - $000’s ( Unaudited)
stub Calander Year March to Dec 2022
Ascend2Housing Financials
Overview
Current revenue streams for Ascend2Housing are derived from sales of our housing development, management fees from ecosystem companies and their services to our customers.
Ascend2Housing has capitalized on its success through acquisitions to add services, human capital and scale to prepare for master plan development.
Revenue History - $000’s ( Unaudited)
Ascend Nõvus Financials
Overview
Current revenue streams for Ascend Nõvus are derived from management fees from ecosystem companies and development of its R-3 and B-3 proprietary consulting approach and commercial building leasing.
Ascend C-suite manages strategy/Vision, M&A, Financials, Execution, Technology integration and Culture development.
Ascends experience is scaling by partnering with larger Enterprise gives a significant advantage to commercializing its portfolio business to support the Ascend2Housing development goals
Revenue History - $000’s ( Unaudited)
Ascend Nõvus Balance Sheet
Overview Ascend Balance Sheet
Ascend2Property & Technology
Overview
Given the current state of the market, we felt it was appropriate to review our lease agreements and investigate the best solutions to maximizing our capital and how we might be able to reduce our cost by leasing new office and production space or possible pur chase. Upon review of the market by several national commercial real estate firms, CBRE, Colliers and Newmark. We found several opportunities that we believed would allow us to increase our balance sheet by purchasing at similar or slight savings to our existing lease. The following outlines those findings and conclusions.
Ascend2Unique ~17,000 sq ft. offices
Current lease payments were ~$24,000 per month and our lease term ended on 3-1-2024. We started a market search in 6-12023 and found three buildings that would suite our needs for a new lease at a reduced price between $20,000 to $22,000.
The move cost quotes were $210,000 and would risk significant business interruption, even if phased over time.
We could also purchase either of these same buildings with Seller financing at $165 to $195 per sq ft price.
Our existing landlord and former owner of Unique offered to match the term and provide seller financing with $200,000 down payment at 8% coupon rate and resign our lease at $21,000 until we completed due diligence to purchase the building. This was the obvious best choice for those reasons, and we believe is at the low end of the markets value.
Allowing the cost take-out to, in part, address much of the expenses needed in updating the facilities to be technology enabled.
Ascend2Housing ~12,500 sq ft. offices
Current revenue streams for ecosystem companies include Civil & Structural engineering, Architectural design, Mortgage lending, Realtors and Title closing that lease offices from our commercial building in Golden.
The soft launch of the Design Center and new HQ is slated for June of 2024. Our HQ office will include our C-suite and technology partner, MicroAge.
Ascend's partnerships permit low cost technology development for Smart Homes and Data Lake development as secured repository for customers use and our analytics of the data to permit insight for future home solutions and approaches.
Future State Vision for 2024 Technology Enhancements
CSR
Customized solutions vs.
“order taking”
Efficiency and Agility
Pre-Press
Accelerate customer print and set-up times by reducing Customer interaction i.e.
“Camera Ready Art” and custom design provided on portals as acceptable formats. Increase revenue by charging for services that are commonly considered cleanup of files sent by customers in upload.
Digital Team
Can use past production and analytics from those as services to accelerate scheduling based upon past production run times. Providing better bench utilization and increasing profit per job.
Cutting/Jett/Plate Room
Track production and team utilization and increase efficiency for project management
Bindery
Automation: Reduces manual interventions, errors, and wastage while providing exceptional accuracy and consistent quality.
Integration: Facilitates seamless communication across the entire binding production chain and allows you to monitor and adjust processes in real time, leading to a considerable reduction in production delays and cost overruns.
Support Team/GM
Data review for improvement with AR/AP/Production and team utilization and alignment for bonus and training both internally and with customer/prospects on Next Generation Printing (“NGP”) using data and production alignment
Sales
Proactively offer project solutions and “just-intime” options or other efficiencies to mutually benefit from reduced cycle times.
Digital
6 integrated digital print equipment to provide one upload and multiple machine production with same outcome production. Allowing more margin for multiple shifts as customers can send portal order and system can run production during slower times in other shifts.
Off-Set Press
Track production time per employee and by project to provide efficiency of production and analytics for production availability on the most profitable segment of the revenue.
Staging
Evaluate time in staging and how to create better fluid movement of projects through production, creating more efficiency for starting production and data to share with CSR for when projects are completed in alignment with due dates. Thereby, providing open production windows with tighter management of utilization and customers communication.
Shipping and Mail
Increasing capabilities and tracking as a Mail House, vs. outsourcing. Unique Digital Marketing- mail tracking with QR code on mailing and social medial alignment for providing customer defensible ROI on projects.
ASCEND2HOUSING – PORTFOLIO COMPANIES
1 of 4 Dealerships we own and have set up for our Manufacturing Homes ("MH"). Creating Smart home Technology
In Process Technology Development
Corinthian Architectural Design
Civil & structural engineering, Architectural & Design firms with average of 35 years in business
30-year Class A General Contractor License to provide Licensing and Unique Marketing for customer acqusition
National in-house lenders & Realty companies provide continuity
2024 INNOVATIVE DATA ENGINEERING
Portfolio Cloud Data Ecosystem & Data Management Architecture Acquire Organize
Address Field Data Collection (Immediate – current system engineered)
Adopt Data-Driven Decision Making
Advancing Our Data Architecture for Generative AI Capabilities
Automate
WHAT: Revealing Business Opportunities
“Delivering Innovation (Tech) that Ignites (SMB’s) and Refines (Enterprises) for shareholder outcomes”
Strategic Partnership Technology & Documentation Deployment of Data Tech Framework Across Enterprise “As-Is” Assessment
Current State Snapshot & “As-Is” Assessment for each Portfolio companies
Define Common Technical Framework Across the Enterprise
Immediate Deployment of Communications & Data Collection Solution for AEC (architecture/engineering/construction)
Document Functional Requirements & Technical Specifications to Support New System Concepts
Strategic Partnerships and Team Building
HOW: Unlocking Hidden value
“Through overturning the traditional process of working only in the business, to development of working on the business and providing NEW solutions using technology and insights”