Below are the highlights of the interview conducted between The Executive Headlines and the Founder & Chairman, Mr. Benjamin Ballout of ENERKON SOLAR INTERNATIONAL, INC.

 

Enerkon Holdings Background and Overview

• Commenced as a private energy firm with a Turkish partner.
• Spun-off into a U.S. holding company with diversified investments across multiple industries including alternative energy, biotech, and defense sectors.
• Responsible for overall project operations along with delivery of corporate goals through established partnerships.
• Existing operations across the USA, Canada, Eastern Africa, the Middle East, and Europe.
• Strong national and international government relations.
• Working with GMIHA & the AREC to Promote Hydrogen Transformation in the Global Energy Space.
• Ticker Symbol: ENKS

 

Notable on-going projects

• 500MW Solar Plant in Gaza Province Mozambique (Sold to Al-Fada Holding U.K. For $38 Million Note Swap).
• Hydrogen Electrolysis Plant at the ChNPP site.
• 5G Telecom Network Consortium Management and Financing for Ukraine State Telecom Holding.
• Pennsylvania land lease with option to purchase along with developing 20MW solar and 100MT/month Hydrogen Production Facility in combination with an Agri-Tech Test Program at the same site (Hydroponic - AI-driven computer controlled Indoor Agriculture).

• CoviKlear U.K Holding co. Acquisition to co-sell a device owned by GLC Canada; a patented OEM medical device for rapid testing of Covid19 using graphene biosensor technology.

• Wattozz Holdings, a New Electroshock System for Police Control (Taser Gun type non-Lethal Wireless Weapon System).

 

Patents

• AI OX Fuel Cell Disruptive Technology (USPTO Provisional Patent #62960410)

• COVID-SHIELD PI ™ (Pending Approvals & Trials; USPTO/TM #88933756)

• Wattozz Wireless Electroshock Weapon (USPTO #2018/106577 A1)

 

Share Structure

• 200 million Authorized Shares
• 65 million Outstanding Shares
• 15 million Float
• 50.3% Chairman/CEO Ownership
• 0% Insider Selling
• 80% Share Buy-Back (TBC in July 2021)

 

Financials

• $17.5 million cash on-hand (deferred revenue)
• $84 million in total assets
• $36 million in total deferred revenue as of end of March 2021
• $16 million in gross profits

 

Upcoming Activities

• Progress ongoing projects.
• Launch new website by first week of July 2021.
• Complete second phase share buy-back by July 2021. 
  • https://www.nasdaq.com/press-release/enerkon-solar-international-inc.-enks-announced-second-phase-stock-buy-back-today
  • 80% of outstanding shares
• Invalidate 14.2 million shares of former management and 2 service providers (in progress).
  • Up-list to NASDAQ upon reaching $4 target price (may necessitate additional share buy-back).
• All past and future Press Releases can be found using the following URL https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/enks/press-releases

 

What challenges did you face in your initial years? What can your peers learn from it?

Some of the challenges that came along with that include:

• Ensuring that my vision was well-articulated and that I had the support of my colleagues to bring this vision into fruition.
• Time management was a constant challenge as I had far too many things on my plate to handle. I felt overwhelmed at times and could not manage my time effectively.
• I had to ensure that all the holdings’ policies and procedures are in-line with the company’s aspirations, goals, and overall culture. It was a challenge to ensure that all employees were adhering to these policies and procedures whilst ensuring that we continuously growing as a company.

 

“Earning trust and respect of consumers all around the world is through consistent focus on delivering high quality in all of our actions,” how do you interpret this statement?

This statement is crucial to the success of any company. 

Any company that wishes to ensure a high percentage of customer retention must deliver high-quality products and services at all-times. It is of much importance that the customer life-cycle management is well-thought out and adhered to accordingly. 

At Enerkon, we pride ourselves in being customer obsessed. We realize the importance and the need to provide high-quality products and services to our clients to maintain a successful, long-term business relationship. 

Working with the federal government is no easy task. Our consistent efforts to provide high-quality products and services have certainly allowed us to earn the federal government’s trust and business.

 

Fostering a culture of feedback is crucial to the success of every organization. How is this true within your company?

Enerkon appreciates the importance of receiving constant feedback – whether from internal or external stakeholders.

Internal stakeholders always aim to provide constructive feedback that allows Enerkon to fine-tune our processes, enhance our products and services offering, and ensure customer satisfaction.

Equally, we are constantly seeking feedback from our external stakeholders (the federal government, in this case) about ways we can further improve our products and services offering. We execute that through regular review meetings in which we solicit this feedback from our clients and then return to Enerkon to find ways to make things happen for our clients to ensure their satisfaction is realized accordingly. 

 

About adaptability, how do you stay relevant to the consumer interests and needs in this highly volatile market?

The nature of this highly volatile market, especially at these times, requires that we pay close attention to the needs and the interest of our clients along with keeping a close eye on our competitors and the way they are adapting accordingly as well. 

Involving our consumers directly in our decision-making process is a strategy that has worked out quite well for Enerkon. We make decisions based on the demands and the needs of our customers to ensure that we adhere to their needs and to their requirements. This strategy further allows us to learn more about the government’s preferences and avoid potential losses that we may face from investing in products and services that may not be of interest to our clients; thus, resulting in immobile assets.

Moreover, we are constantly holding best practice sessions within Enerkon to learn more about the ways in which our competitors are offering their products and their services to their own clients. This allows us to further fine-tune our offering to ensure that we are one-step ahead of our competition by offering the latest and the greatest products and services to our own clients.

 

If you have to list five factors that have been/are the biggest asset to your organization, what would they be, and why?

1. Employees: Our most valuable asset is our workforce. As they are responsible for our company’s success, we are constantly investing in our employees to ensure that we give them the opportunity to be successful at what they do.
2. Knowledge and Skills: These intangible assets assist in defining and establishing the identity of our company. We are constantly focusing on enhancing this area to ensure that our employees are empowered with the knowledge and the skillset that they need to meet our customers’ needs and requirements.
3. Liquidity: Ensuring that we are constantly liquid to continue our operations and to build and deliver to our customers’ needs and requirements is of much importance. This is realized by building a pipeline of customers who are already interested in our products and services offering.
4. Patents: Our product offering is unique. We have taken the appropriate measures to ensure that our offering is legally protected from any potential infringement of our copyrights.
5. Customers: Enerkon would not exist or be successful at what we do without our clients. Hence, everything we execute at our company is done with the ultimate goal of meeting and satisfying our customers’ needs and requirements.

 

Customer service varies, but companies can still be successful. How do you maintain your customers’ trust and loyalty?

At Enerkon, we strongly believe in providing our customers with up-to-date, high-quality products and services at a fair price. As a result, our company earns our customers’ trust and loyalty by staying current with industry trends and by not taking advantage of them from a pricing perspective. By doing so, we are also guaranteeing that we improve the quality of our products and our services while still offering them at a competitive price.

We also believe in operating with complete transparency with our customers. Therefore, we tend to keep our customers abreast all the latest developments within Enerkon from a product roadmap perspective, as well as, from the changing industry standards. By doing so, we tend to manage our customers’ expectations (through avoiding overpromising on our deliverables), as well as ensuring that our customers are well-versed with the industry’s hottest and most in-demand needs and requirements to ensure that they also remain competitive with their offering.

 

What do you feel are the reasons behind your company’s reputation?

Our company’s reputation has been recognized through our offering of high-quality products and services at a fair price. Moreover, we have successfully managed to provide consistent non-chargeable product provisioning and check-up services. 

Furnishing/servicing our products for our customers while adhering to specific legal requirements (such as ensuring that products have not been tampered with by another external organization) and providing the consistent delivery of high-quality goods and services has always kept us at the top of our game.

We are delighted to share that due to our company’s reputation, our existing customers have referred us to new customers who would be potentially interested in our offering and establishing a business relationship with Enerkon.

 

How do you and your company contribute to the global I.T. platform and society at large?

I.T. is our most important communication channel and the only safe way to install renewable energy equipment within the EPC facility (engineering, procurement, and construction).

From a practical perspective, our company is one of the most significant users of information technology. As a result, we support I.T. companies and platforms by purchasing their products and services and incorporating them within our own solutions to further meet customer needs and requirements. 

Furthermore, several of our team members are also closely monitoring and investigating some of the I.T. issues, which are relevant to our industry, and relaying this feedback through the appropriate I.T. forums to further enhance their respective offering, for the good of Enerkon, in specific, and society, in general.

 

When companies are involved in social welfare/CSR activities, what do you say about this?

Corporate Social Responsibility is something that should never be taken lightly by any company out there. As a company, we are not only responsible for ensuring that we remain profitable. We also have the responsibility of ensuring that we do so in the most ethical manner as well. 

Our products and services must also be benefitting the society in which we are part of, and are in no way posing any harm to the environment we live in.

Moreover, we also need to ensure that we are actively involved in giving back to the community through volunteer work which would benefit society as a whole.

Ultimately, when a company is behaving in a corporate socially responsible manner, this allows society to feel more interested in the company’s business, products, and services. Hence, when a community feels connected to a company, the company’s business performance along with its financial stability become a shared concern. Therefore, it becomes a win-win situation.

 

As a question on sustainability, where do you see your company a couple of years from now?

Given the success we have realized thus far, I am confident that our company will continue to deliver excellence to a wider range of customers, both nationally and internationally.

Our client-base will serve not only government entities but also private and public entities in need of our products and services offering.

We will establish relationships and expand our reach to global clients to ensure that we become a leader in this space on the international front as well.

As a result, we will establish physical presence in different parts of the world, thus leading to hiring new employees and increasing our market reach within these regions, respectively.

This will ultimately lead not only to an increase in our customer-base but will also bring further value and returns to our shareholders.

 

The leader behind the success of Enerkon Solar International, Founder & Chairman, Mr. Benjamin Ballout

Mr. Ballout offers a strategic and legislative platform to discuss global economic policy, trade, and investment between the U.S. and foreign government officials, committee members, industry leaders, and multinational corporations. His expertise stem in assisting clients succeed in a complex international commercial environment.

Mr. Ballout has a diverse career as a leader and director of international operations for several U.S. and foreign corporations. He has worked on numerous domestic and international issues involving technology, transportation, defense, education, alternative and traditional energy, financial services, health care, and the environment. He acted as a Senior Government Affairs Executive at Global Heavy-Lift Holdings, a USA Defense Contractor since the year 2000 to commercialize the C-17 airplane to enter the international heavy and outsized shipping market along with its strategic use for national and allied interest and benefit.

Moreover, Mr. Ballout acted as a senior associate at Thomas H. Miner & Associate, an international consulting firm established in the 60s.

Mr. Ballout has gained notoriety as a public policy spokesperson due to a wide range of activity including speaker, panelist, and moderator on topics such as Security and Development in Africa, First Islamic Banking and Development Conference Maputo Mozambique 2013 and 2017, Project Novo Mozambique, and the Committee on Combating Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing - Cairo Egypt, which supports the Cairo Declaration against Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing.

Mr. Ballout has brought and hosted many dignitaries, officials, and celebrities from around the world to his receptions.

His education includes an LLM in International law from the and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Law and Foreign Affairs from Switzerland.