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The Gift of Teak: How a Single Parcel Can Become a Lifetime Legacy

Webinar

November 28, 2025

Why Teak Is Becoming the Ultimate Generational Gift

Each year, more families are looking for gifts that mean something. Not another gadget, not more clutter, but something that lasts. And that’s exactly why the Gift of Teak has become a powerful tradition among investors, parents, and grandparents.

Unlike a typical investment, teak gives you something rare:

A real asset you can touch.
A 25-year harvest cycle that repeats for generations.
A hedge against inflation and volatility.
A way to restore deforested land while creating long-term value.

As Mike Cobb shared during the Gift of Teak Webinar, “The gift of teak is more than an investment. It’s a lifetime inheritance.” And that’s the heart of why this asset stands apart.

Why Panama Is the Ideal Place for Teak

You don’t get great teak everywhere. You need the right climate, soil, elevation, and — most importantly — a long dry season. Panama’s Darién Province offers exactly that.

Here’s why it’s considered one of the best teak-growing regions in the Americas:

3–5 months of dry season needed for high-quality wood
Well-drained alluvial soils ideal for straight, tall growth
Political and economic stability, thanks to the Panama Canal
Decades of forestry expertise from established engineering teams
Strict reforestation laws that promote long-term sustainability

This is why teak grown in Panama commands strong demand globally — and why plantation teak is now more valuable than wild teak.

What Makes Teak So Valuable?

Teak has been prized for centuries because it lasts longer, resists the elements, and commands premium prices. Modern buyers use teak for:

Outdoor furniture
Marine decking
Luxury flooring
Architectural accents
Decorative wood products

A simple teak bath mat can cost $250. An Adirondack chair? $800+. Gates? $65,000 and up. That’s the power of rare, durable, sustainable wood.

And the numbers are even more compelling:

Teak prices have risen an average of 5.5 percent annually for over 50 years.

Combined with the natural volume growth of the tree, the long-term impact becomes dramatic.

How the 25-Year Cycle Creates Generational Wealth

A teak parcel starts with roughly 110 seedlings on a quarter acre. As the trees mature, the forestry team trims, thins, and shapes the plantation, ultimately leaving 25–26 premium trees for the final harvest.

Here’s what that means for you:

Newborn Teak Parcel (quarter acre)
- Investment: $8,680
- If teak prices never rise: roughly $26,000 in harvest value
- If historical 5.5 percent annual price growth continues: around $100,000

This cycle repeats every 25 years — indefinitely — as long as the parcel is replanted (which costs only a few hundred dollars).

It’s the reason endowments, billionaires, and family offices have used timberland for centuries. Time magnifies everything.

The Gift Packages (Limited to Year-End)

To make teak accessible, the Gift of Teak program includes several bundles designed around your goals:

1. Newborn Bundle – 3 Parcels for $18,999

This bundle was priced intentionally just under the U.S. gift-tax exclusion. It’s perfect for gifting to children or grandchildren without triggering tax implications.

2. Residency Bundle – 2 Parcels + Legal Fees ($24,600)

Own teak and qualify for Panama permanent residency — your Plan B.

For many families, this residency alone is priceless.

3. Laddered Bundle – 5 Newborn + 1 Teen Teak ($60,000)

A mix of long-term and near-term value.

Teenage teak is limited and only offered when bundled with five newborn parcels.

How the Sawmill Multiplies Returns

One of the most powerful parts of the project is the vertical integration.

When the mill takes logs and converts them into lumber or finished products, the value multiplies:

Log vs lumber: up to 5–6x value
Lumber vs finished product: significantly more
Even the waste becomes revenue — pellets, compressed boards, cellulose cement blocks

Because ECI earns 20 percent only on what they earn for owners, every improvement in efficiency boosts both your return and the company’s.

This alignment is rare in forestry — and incredibly valuable.

Sustainability You Can Be Proud Of

Teak investing isn’t just profitable — it’s restorative.

Families who buy teak often cite one of three motivations:

Give back to nature by reforesting degraded cattle pasture
Diversify into a tangible asset with global demand
Leave a legacy that grows long after they’re gone

The plantations are managed by one of Panama’s top forestry firms, and the project just became the first private company in the entire Darién Province to receive its environmental impact statement — a huge milestone toward full FSC certification.

Bonus: A Complimentary Teak Plantation Tour

Every parcel purchased this year includes a complimentary guided group visit to Panama.

Tours available:

January
May
October

You’ll walk the plantations, plant your own teak seedling, visit the sawmill, and see the full process behind your investment.

It’s one of the most meaningful experiences families share.

How to Get Started

Whether you’re thinking about legacy planning, diversifying your portfolio, or gifting something meaningful this year, teak offers something rare: simplicity, tangible value, and generational impact.

Here’s what to do next:

Request the business plan for detailed projections.
Talk with a property consultant about the best bundle for your goals.
Secure your parcels before year-end pricing ends.

The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago.

The second best time — especially for your children or grandchildren — is now.

Transcript:

00:12
Lora Hassen
Hi, everybody. Lora Hassan here. Just waiting for some folks to arrive. Thanks for joining us for the Gift of Teak Webinar. We’re going to get started soon. If you can go down to the bottom of your screen and find the chat feature and let me know where you’re coming from so where you’re watching the webinar from so we can learn a little bit about who’s here. Just waiting a few more minutes for folks to start coming into the webinar and we’ll get started soon. We’ve got Angie coming in from Belize, Laurel from Costa Rica. Looks like we got it. Tennessee, Colorado Springs. Fantastic. We’re going to get started soon, folks. We’re all here for the Gift of Teak Webinar. Starting soon. Yeah.

01:42
Mike Cobb
Hi, Laura, Mike, how are you? Good.

01:47
Lora Hassen
How are you?

01:48
Mike Cobb
Good, good.

01:51
Lora Hassen
Just give a couple more minutes for folks to come in and then we’ll go ahead and get started.

01:57
Mike Cobb
Okay. Want to generally be respectful of people’s time. I appreciate everyone joining us this evening for the Gift of Teak Webinar. As many of you know, this has been really a passion project for me now for 27 years. I think that’s right. We started looking for the property back in 1998, which is, I don’t know, is that 27 years ago or. Diego, you’re on. You might have to help with the math there. It’s a while ago anyway, but thank you all for joining us. And Laura, is it okay if I go ahead and start?

02:35
Lora Hassen
Yeah, get started. Everybody knows, many of you already know Mike Cob, the CEO with Teak Hardwoods and ECI Development. Mike, I just wanted to mention before we go too far about your book, you’ve got a new book that’s come out recently.

02:55
Mike Cobb
I do, I do. That’s true. I’m excited about it. It is a great book for folks looking to go overseas. In fact, the title is how to buy your home overseas. Get it right the first time Right and get it right the First Time. That’s really the key. I mean, it’s easy to buy a property overseas. Right. But getting it right the first time is a lot more challenging. And this book helps folks do that. One of the things that we’re going to offer everybody on this webinar tonight is the opportunity to get a copy of the book for free. And so if you at the end of the webinar, at any point you want to just get a copy, just send us an email and we will send you a link.

03:36
Mike Cobb
You go to Amazon, the link will allow you to download a copy of the Kindle version for free. And that would be my gift to you tonight as we move into what we’re going to talk about, the gift of teak. So let’s go ahead and get started. And you know, my tenure in the industry goes back right now, you know, 29 years, next year, 30 years. We’ve been doing this a long time. We’ve helped a lot of folks over the years move overseas, make investments overseas. And one of the most popular investments and popular items that folks have really warmed up to is this teak investment in both Panama and Nicaragua. We’re going to be talking about Panama today, specifically. It’s attractive for so many reasons. It’s affordable. It’s something that everyone, almost everyone can do.

04:29
Mike Cobb
Laura, when I was going through the presentation before, I did not see a slide on the finance package. So maybe you can make a note of that and talk about that at the end because we’ve really tried to make this an accessible investment for every single person out there with a finance package that I think it’s what, maybe just tell me, is it like $1,000 down and 268amonth or something?

04:53
Lora Hassen
Yeah, it’s 1500 down and 268amonth. We’ll get someone started.

04:57
Mike Cobb
Yeah, yep. 1500 down, 268amonth. So we’ve really tried to find ways to even open up to more people. But anyway, we’ll get started and get to that later. You know, I love this quote, right? The gift of teak is more than an investment. It’s a lifetime inheritance. You know, and we’re going to talk a lot about generational wealth stewardship and this idea of stewarding wealth into the future. And because you own the land, you own the trees, and the cycle is a 25 year cycle, what you end up with is generational wealth stewardship. And it’s a powerful principle that the uber wealthy, the billionaires and beyond for centuries have been using as well as endowments like big colleges and family offices.

05:48
Mike Cobb
They understand the power of compounding returns over many decades and generations, so that you get this incredible powerful transference of wealth into the future, into our children, our grandchildren, our great grandchildren, long after we’re gone. And that’s what this investment does. And the opportunity is to give that gift. Right. I think a lot of us struggle with what are we going to get someone for Christmas? I know I do. I struggle. What am I going to get my wife for Christmas, my daughters for Christmas. You know, I think most people today kind of have most of the things they want. And so the thing that’s hard to do is become thoughtful, right? Really think about it. What kind of gift would be incredibly thoughtful and meaningful for someone?

06:32
Mike Cobb
And the gift of teek has been that for many people, hundreds of people now over the years have given this gift of teak because it is thoughtful, it’s meaningful, and it provides a legacy investment for a lifetime. Not just yours, but for your children’s lifetime, your grandchildren’s lifetime, and so on. Panama, I don’t think we have a slide. I want to talk about Panama just for a minute, because sometimes I get the question and, you know, why Panama? And you know, the country of Panama is both economically stable and politically stable for one big reason. The canal. The canal. The Panama Canal. It provides, it’s, I call it the ATM machine of Panama. It kicks off about $5 billion a year. I mean, every year in, year out, there are lines of ships waiting. There’s always ships that can’t make it.

07:23
Mike Cobb
They have to go around. So there’s more supply. I’m sorry, there’s more demand than there is supply. $5 billion a year. So from an economic perspective, that canal is Panama’s ATM machine. Five billion bucks a year. Right. The other thing is sometimes we talk about the canal as a vital strategic US Interest. And it is absolutely. It is a vital strategic US Interest, but it is also a vital strategic world interest. If you’re a country that either ships things or rece things, you care about this canal. And that’s every country in the world wants this canal open and free transit, which makes the country of Panama politically stable. So you’ve got the economic piece, you’ve got the political piece.

08:11
Mike Cobb
And when you’re talking about investments that are 25 years, 50 years, 75 years, 100 years on a 25 year cycle, those stability factors are critically important. Our properties are located in the Darien Province. We actually have three plantations now. We have our mature plantation, we have a teenage plantation, and we’re planting baby teak like crazy. We continue to add more land as more and more folks like you all want to own teak as an investment. You know, I remember when I first started going down to Panama for the teak plantation project in 1998 to look for a cattle pasture. People would just tease me at the Rotary meeting across the street. You know, I’m here in Shepherdstown, in my home, and the Rotary meeting was Tuesday morning. At the Bavarian Inn, literally across the street.

09:04
Mike Cobb
And I would go over there and I would miss a meeting. Quite often, actually, I was missing maybe one or two meetings a month. And when you missed a meeting, you had to go put a dollar or $10, $10 in the jar up front. And they used that money for whatever the current projects were. And the people at my table would say, Cobb, like, what are you doing, man? Like, why are you missing all these meetings? I’d be, I’m going to Panama. We found a cattle pasture. We’re gonna, we’re gonna plant a whole bunch of teak trees. And in 25 years we’re gonna make a lot of money. And then we’re gonna plant them again. And that’ll be for my kids. And people were just like, you’re crazy. Like, 25 years, Panama. Like, what are you thinking?

09:43
Mike Cobb
We kind of talked about the Panama point a minute ago. But the 20 really was answered this way. In 25 years, I’m either going to need the money and I’m going to be really glad I did this, or in 25 years, I’m not going to need the money and I’m going to be really glad I did this. Well, here we are in year 26. You know what? I’m really glad I did this. And, you know, we’re going to cut the trees down, we’re going to have a great harvest, we’re going to make a lot of money, we’re going to plant again. And the next plantation is for the kids or the grandkids, and the next one is for the generation after that.

10:19
Mike Cobb
One of the keys to success is knowing what you know and knowing what you don’t know, or being humble in the fact that we don’t know what we don’t know. And so, you know, I understood the concepts, I understood the value, the big picture principles of a teak plantation. But you know what? I’m not a forestry person. I don’t know anything about managing a teak plantation. And so when we bought the land, we actually had help from a company called Hale Forestall. They helped us look for the right land, look for the right conditions, and they helped us negotiate the purchase of the property. And then we hired them to manage our plantation for the last 25 years. And this young guy right here, his name is Jacobo Melamed.

11:03
Mike Cobb
When I met him, he was a forestry engineer, but he was a, a solid guy. And today he’s the general manager of this incredibly large forestry company. In Panama. And we feel very fortunate that we’ve been working with them now for 26 years. And when you hire a company, you get continuity and that’s really what you want. You want professional management and you want continuity. And that’s why we invest with companies, right, because they have succession planning and they carry on beyond the individuals. You know, they helped us find the right property, you know, all the things, the well drained alluvial soil, the right elevation, temperature, rainfall, all that kind of stuff. But actually the first point on there is the most important three to five months of dry season.

11:47
Mike Cobb
We looked at land in Chitaki, we looked at land in the Ezuiro, and we looked at land in the Darien. And the Darien province is the best location in Panama and one of the best in this hemisphere for teak. And because of the point number one, which is the dry season, you want three, four, five, even six months of no rain, almost literally no rain, because that’s what makes high quality teak. And so this is the seedlings back in 1998. You can see they’re, they’re grown in these little plastic tubes, right? Then they come out and they clear the land, they get rid of the brush that’s on there. This was a denuded, burned cattle pasture. It was horrib. And so we planted the teak trees a year afterwards. You can kind of see them in there.

12:39
Mike Cobb
But the next picture is just incredible to me. By year seven, these trees were already really tall and straight. This is the dry season, the needed dry season, because this is what cures the wood. The other thing you do is you have people like Luis here who works for the forestry company. They’re out there every day. They’re, they’re cutting the brush under the trees so that the nutrients are taken by the trees, not by weeds. They take the low limbs off. If you look at some of this picture, you see the limbs have been chopped off. So what you get these tall, straight trunks. Again, professional forestry management, people who know what they’re doing to create the best possible lumber.

13:19
Mike Cobb
And as we got into trees seven, eight years old, went through what many of you will remember was an incredibly horrible time in the real estate industry. You know, 2008 to 2012, we had stock market issues, we had real estate issues. And my friend Steve Sugarud has a great quote. You know, the trees grow through recessions, they grow through wars, they grow through stock and real estate crashes, which we saw in 2008-2012. They grow through everything they built you in, they give you built investment growth that isn’t guaranteed with the stock. Right. And there’s a little bit of a pun there. Grow, grow. But the fact of the matter is the trees just simply grow year in and year out. And they did during very tough time in the real estate and stock market.

14:06
Mike Cobb
The trees kept growing and, you know, they just kept growing. And here we are, I think 2016, one of the property visits. We do a lot of visits. We take people down two, three, four times a year to see the trees. And, you know, we want people to come out and see the trees. This is our teenage teak plantation. These trees, I think at the time the picture was taken were maybe 15, 16 years old. And then a picture taken a couple years ago in our mature plantation where the trees are just growing incredibly. This is a picture of my wife Carol, my daughter Emily, myself. We were out at the plantation taking Emily so she could see the trees that were going to be, you know, the next harvest 25 years from now. We looked at the reasons people want to own teak.

14:55
Mike Cobb
That really boils down to three things. First, giving back to Mother Nature. The forests are being cut down. It’s horrible what’s happening to the Amazon. What’s that say? 85 acres are destroyed every minute. Every minute. When you look at the deforestation around the world, and much of it for basic agriculture, that’s only good for a few years and then it’s. Then the land is done right, it doesn’t carry anymore. It’s tragic. And so we have the ability to plant trees. We have the ability to go into areas that have been deforested and restart the forests. Number two, global demand is up, global supply is down. This chart, we have two images of this chart. The first one with the pink circle. What it shows is the green line on the left is natural, deforested teak. These are teak trees out of the wild.

15:50
Mike Cobb
And the price of teak going up, up, up. And then somewhere around 2000, it starts to fall off. And you see plantation teak, the red line. And somewhere around 2008 ish, right. The price of plantation teak exceeds the wild teak because people don’t want the wild teak out of the jungle. They want the plantation teak because it’s sustainable and responsible. And so now what we’ve seen is the value of plantation teak exceeding the value of these trees that are taken out of the woods. The other thing is, if we go all the way back to 1972. Which is what, 52 years? Right. The average price of teak has gone up five and a half percent a year over the last 52 years. Five and a half percent a year for 52 years. That is an incredibly long track record. And so I like that.

16:45
Mike Cobb
It just shows that this is a valuable commodity in the marketplace and it has staying power in the marketplace as well. Last reason, above average returns and low volatility. You know, one of the things that’s happening right now is we’re seeing teak being harvested about eight to 10 times faster than anyone is replanting it in plantations. And if we just look at the basic laws of supply and demand, we know what that means. If we’re cutting something down, if there’s less of it and more demand, prices will probably go up. It doesn’t. No guarantees, of course, but. But supply and demand. And there’s a ton more teak being harvested, by the way. The picture on the lower left is our sawmill. We’re going to show that later.

17:28
Mike Cobb
But these are the thinnings that we took out of our plantation last year, getting ready to go into the mill. This slide shows how, you know, the inflation going up since 87, the S& P obviously going up, but the timber index going up even more. Without the volatility you see in the stock market going all the way back to 1970 through 19, 20, 10, you know, a $10,000 investment on a timber future would have produced about $1.5 million. The thing that’s important to see is this IRR internal rate of return. It’s 13 and a half, whatever. I mean, you look at a 13% internal rate of return on any investment, it’s absolutely phenomenal. And when you can do that kind of compounding over decades, the results are like this. $10,000 would have turned into $1.5 million. And the big funds are getting into it.

18:33
Mike Cobb
Like we talked about at the beginning, timber has largely been an asset class of the uber wealthy. The family offices, people like the Harvard. Not people, but institutions like the Harvard Endowment. Right. They’ve been into timber. But what’s happening now is that the institutional investors are picking it up as an asset class as well. This particular Stanford Capital Partners was over subscribed at a little over a billion dollars. Why? Because people get the joke. Like, you know, all of a sudden I can, you know, I don’t have to invest, you know, 50 million or $100 million in timber. I can Buy a fund and you can. And this is, well, it’s oversubscribed so it’s not open anymore. But there are timber funds out there and those are pretty good, right? But owning the actual asset itself is far more lucrative.

19:24
Mike Cobb
You know, we look at the, you know, the people, the individuals and their companies, right? I mean, John Malone, Ted Turner, Red Emerson, right? These are incredible timber magnets. And the thing that I’m always surprised about is the concern that people give me. Oh Mike, 25 years is a long time. I’ll be like, well, I mean, do you plan on dying in the next 25 years? I mean, like it’s going to come if you’re going to be around and if you’re not going to be around because we don’t know nobody’s gifted tomorrow, right? You know, maybe your kids or your grandkids or you got some nephews or you got a college, an alma mater or a great charity. Look, I mean this 25 years is going to come for somebody. Hopefully it comes for you.

20:06
Mike Cobb
But if it doesn’t and you have somebody you want to leave it to, then make the investment. These guys are, look at, these guys are old. I mean these guys are really old and they’re still making investments that are multi decade investments.

20:19
Lora Hassen
They’re.

20:19
Mike Cobb
So when somebody gives me the 25 year thing, I just kind of shake my head and I say, well obviously these guys that are super duper wealthy, they understand something that the average investor doesn’t. And I say average investor. But I’m gonna say ultra savvy investors because you know, it’s hard to take the next step. It’s hard to make an investment outside the country. It’s hard to make a 25 year investment. Cause it runs counter to what the popular norm is, right? Oh, overseas is dangerous. 25 years. But you know what, ultra savvy investors like you, these folks right here in the picture, they get it like the big money’s not made by following the herd. And here are some folks that are doing it and I think we’re going to be able to get this video to play. I hope so.

21:09
Mike Cobb
Diego Laura, let me know please.

21:13
Eduard in Video
I bought two peak plantations for her because I wanted to have a legacy for. I wanted to create something that she can, they’ll have when she starts school for her education. So I bought a teenage teeth one, so be ready sooner. And then I bought a newborn which she just planted so that when she graduates you’ll have money for a Business or to continue her education. Over here. What’s in there?

21:40
Mike Cobb
Say hi.

21:44
Eduard in Video
That’s a plan.

21:47
Mike Cobb
That’s the plan. Kids are great anyway. Yeah, right. Here’s a guy who gets it. He understands that this is for the granddaughter. And the really cool thing is she’s going to get her harvest in 25 years and then it’s going to get replanted and her children are going to get the next harvest. Right. I mean, that’s the beautiful thing about this. There we go. So, you know, why do they own teak, by the way? This is our mature plantation, just taken several months ago. These trees will be harvested in about 60 days where we’re headed to harvest here real soon. But why are these folks owning teak? Whether it’s the, you know, John Malone, Red Emerson or, or our folks like we just saw in the video, the bottom line is teak has been an incredibly valuable commodity for centuries.

22:37
Mike Cobb
The Brits started doing plantations india and what was then Burma, Southeast Asia, 350, almost 400 years ago. And so you have this commodity that’s got a track record of centuries as a valuable commodity. And we saw that slide 52 year history where the value of teak’s gone up five and a half percent a year over 52 years. So great track record, It’s a great wood. It’s got a lot of properties that make it excellent for outdoor furniture, the marine environment and other industrial and flooring kinds of uses. Right. And if we look at the price points, I mean, this is an Adirondack chair and if this thing was made out of pine, it would probably be, you know, 200 bucks. But it’s teak, so it’s 800 bucks, a little bath mat, 250 bucks. Right.

23:28
Mike Cobb
Go online and just look up teak for furniture and you just are shocked at the price points, the sticker prices of this. Because teak has these qualities, it’s seen as luxurious. Now when people are doing these expensive, you know, whatever, let’s say $45 million penthouse in New York City, you know, teak hardwood flooring. Right. So it has this luxe appeal as well as being very high quality in its physical properties. Right. Gates made out of teak, starting at $65,000. Again, the outdoor furniture, it’s expensive, but it wears. I mean, you can see the picture on the bottom. A chair that didn’t look so good refinished. And then, you know, they pulled one up off the bottom of the ocean, right from the Titanic.

24:13
Mike Cobb
Teak has Properties that allow it to last long time in the natural environment and when it’s cared for, you know, almost forever.

24:23
Mike Cobb in Video
Hi, everybody. Mike Cobb in Panama at our teak plantation. This is our mature plantation planted 23 years ago in the Darien province. I mean, just a beautiful teak plantation that once was a cattle pasture like this. Deforestation. And you know what, it’s wonderful to be able to come in and plant thousands and thousands of teak trees and turn a cattle pasture back into forest. It’s also a very lucrative investment, and it’s sustainable. You harvest in 25 years, you replant your children, get the next harvest. 25 years later, there’s another harvest. That’s for your great grandchildren and so on. Please give us a call. We’d love to hear from you. Find how you can take deforested farmland and turn it into beautiful forests and create generational wealth for your families for centuries in the future.

25:14
Mike Cobb
So here’s what it looks like, right? You have the newborn. We call it newborn baby teak, whatever. It’s a quarter acre. And, you know, we always go with medium quality and medium growth. That, that’s really the trajectory we use, right? So you could have great growth, you could have less, but we just kind of go right down the middle on our projections. So 86.80 turns into about $26,000. If, if that five and a half percent increase in price doesn’t happen, right? So if today’s board feet just stays the same, it’s just under five bucks, right? If nothing happens over the next 25 years, teak stays the same price. It doesn’t go up at all. Just the growth of the trees turns 8,680 into about $26,000.

26:01
Mike Cobb
If we look and say, you know, over 25 years, it’s kind of likely that five and a half percent price increase will continue, well, then 8,680 turns into $100,000. And then we have our teenage teak. By the way, there’s a qualifier. In order to own the teenage teak, you must acquire five of the baby parcels. We have a very limited amount of the teenage teak, and we only offer that when it’s packaged with five of the baby teaks. But anyway, you can see if it’s just flat price, nothing happens. You know, eight, nine grand turns into 26. If we get 5.5%, it goes up to, you know, 100,000. And if the supply and demand curve, we’re cutting it down faster than anyone’s replanting it.

26:48
Mike Cobb
If the law of supply and demand, if commodities, we know inflation, commodities hold their value inflation, we could actually see even much more than that. If you look at the internal rates of return, 4%, 10%, those are some great numbers. If you can get an IRR that’s over 10% double digit over 25 years, you see how $8,600 can turn into $100,000. It’s powerful, it’s wonderful and it’s what we’re looking for. We want those long cycle investments when we have IRRs in the double digits. Yeah, of course. The best time to plant these trees was 20 years ago. I’m really glad I planted them 26 years ago. I’m super glad I planted them 26 years ago. But the next best time is today, right now. This is the best time that we have today to plant a tree. Because we can’t go back in time.

27:40
Mike Cobb
All we can do is go forward. So right now actually is the best time to plant the trees. I want touch on the sawmill for a minute. This is really important because the return on investment to the teak owners is actually the value of the lumber and finished product. Because there’s a lot of value added there. If you just take the trees and sell them, you get X. If you sell lumber, you get maybe 5, 6x. If you turn it into finished product, you get multiple even above that. And it depends on what kind of finished product. And so, and you’ll see this in the, in business plan. We, our company gets 20% of what we earn for you. Right? That’s how we get paid. We get paid on 20% of what we earn for you.

28:26
Mike Cobb
And so our goal is to help you earn as much as possible, turn as much of the logs into lumber, from lumber into finished product for the highest possible sales price. Because when you earn more, we earn 20% of more. And I like that. I want to earn 20% of more. So my incentive is to help you earn more as well. So we built a sawmill. We hired a guy named Ryan Palmer, came on board about, goodness gracious, almost two years ago now anyway, and he did the work. He figured it out. He’s, he’s a real hands on operator. He got in, he got a sawmill built for us. We built it out near the plantations. You know, we did a thinning which we’re now putting through the mill.

29:11
Mike Cobb
We’ve got our first set of wood that’s coming out, going through the kilns, got it down to 9%. I just got a. We have a meeting every week. We did our prong test. We had incredibly consistent drying in the lumber, which is phenomenal. So we figured out how to do it. And we’re producing lumber from our thinnings. We’re about to move into our actual harvest next year. And you can see we’re going to rapidly ramp up to about 4,500 board feet a day in the mill. The basic process is you mill it, you store it, you kiln dry it, you shape it, do whatever, turn it into the products and then ship it out. And the products themselves are again, valuable in the marketplace, whether it’s. We call them semi finished, which is lumber, right? Just lumber.

30:00
Mike Cobb
We’re just going to sell one by fours, one by sixes, one by eights, two buys, whatever it is. And we’re doing the market research to find out what we need to produce that’s the most valuable and in demand in the marketplace. That’s our semi finished products. Then we have finished products. Whether it’s flooring, which are the floor panels you see in the left picture, the actual tongue and groove hardwood flooring. Just think lumber that’s been finished a little bit more. I mean, it’s a pretty simple finished product to bring to the marketplace. But the value add in the marketplace to go from lumber to a retail product is significant. And then things like cutting boards and other decorative items.

30:37
Mike Cobb
And then of course, simple furniture like these clamshell chairs and some other tables that can be flat packed and shipped in the United States and Canada. So finished products with some of the highest margins. But you know, when you’re cutting trees and, you know, milling them, you have a lot of residual products, whether it’s sawdust or scraps of wood that you can’t actually do something with. You can turn them into pellets, you can turn them into compressed board. And those are the kinds of residual products that will let us move all the way through the cycle and reclaim the highest and most value out of the trees themselves. And we’re actually about to purchase. Maybe we did purchase. I had to jump off the meeting today. I know it’s in process.

31:19
Mike Cobb
A machine that will take, will mix cement with the cellulose to create cement blocks with cellulose in them for the local Panamanian market. But again, this is stuff that would otherwise be just piled up and left to rot. So we’re able to take it and turn it into a commercially viable product in the marketplace. The other thing we’re Doing, and I’ll share a bit of good news, is we’re in the process of getting our Forestry Stewardship Council, fsc. If you want to sell lumber in the United States, FSC certification is critically important, allows you to command a higher price because what it says is you’re doing things in a green, sustainable and responsible manner. It’s a certification process. We’re in the, we’re in the process of getting that.

32:06
Mike Cobb
But just last week we received our environmental permit, which is one of the last prerequisites of the fsc. And it took, I don’t know, a year, maybe more, to get our environmental impact statement done. Here’s the great news. We are the first private company in the province of Darien, which is like a state, in the whole state, the province of Darien, to receive an environmental impact statement. The first private company to get one. This is huge. You know, we believe in doing things right. We’ve always done things right. You know, the right reason to do something right is because it’s the right thing to do. Right. And it’s just fundamental to who we are as a company and our character. But it’s nice to see it being rewarded.

32:48
Mike Cobb
And to have the first environmental impact statement for a commercial company in the province of Darien is absolutely incredible. And I want a big shout out to Ryan Palmer, our guy on the ground there. He’s doing a phenomenal job of making it happen and getting it done. So, you know, why Teek and why now? Yeah, yeah. You can leave a legacy. I think maybe that’s the most important reason, right? Leave a legacy, you know, have an investment that’s going to produce incredible cash flow every 25 years, once every generation. Right. It is a generational wealth stewardship tool. You will steward wealth into the future. You can use a self directed ira, typically one or two parcels.

33:32
Mike Cobb
It’s not really cost efficient, but if you’re doing a five parcel bundle or you’re looking at some of the larger investments, the self directed IRA is a great way to hold it and own it. We do take crypto, we take metals in payment. We’ve done a lot of the transactions in both of those. And then the other factor, and we’re just going to mention it briefly, is it is possible to obtain your permanent residency in Panama with the TEE investment. You know, I think a lot of people are looking for what we call a plan B. Things are a little scary. Things might be going in directions we don’t like politically, economically, socially. And having an option, having a residency outside Your home country gives you options, it gives you flexibility. My wife and daughters and I, we obtained our Panamanian residency this summer.

34:23
Mike Cobb
It’s actually our Plan C because we’re Nicaraguan residents. We lived In Nicaragua for 14 years, we became residents of Nicaragua. But because we could qualify, because of our teak investments, went ahead and for a few thousand dollars, picked up the legal piece to get our Panamanian residency. So I would encourage you to at least think about that, inquire about that if it’s something you’re concerned about. It’s very easy, it’s very straightforward, and it pairs up very nicely with this TEK investment. We do have some big bundles. We have a couple people that have taken a big bite. You know, a couple hundred thousand dollars investment turns into nearly $3 million. It’s 28 parcels. You can pair it up with the residency. It’s a great program.

35:12
Mike Cobb
The bottom line is in all of these teak investments, you own the land, you own the trees, and if you do decide to pursue a second residency, you know, you get the peace of mind on that as well. We’ve got some bundles here. The gift of teak, the newborn teak bundle, three of them for $18,999. I’ll show you why in a minute. We have the residency bundle, which is two parcels, and the legal fees, 24,6. And then the laddered bundle, which is where you get to pull in the teenage teak, which will be harvested in about eight or nine years. Five newborn, one teenage, for $60,000. So these are the packages. And the reason that top bundle is where it is the gift tax exclusion for this year is $19,000.

36:01
Mike Cobb
So you can give a kid or anyone a gift of $19,000 or an investment of that worth, and it’s tax free to them, right? There’s no estate tax on your part, and there’s no tax for them. And so this three parcel bundle has. We’ve pulled it down to significantly, as you can see, $7,000. We pulled it down significantly to make it fit right into that gift tax exclusion. So if you’re thinking about what do I get my kids, what do I get my grandkids, you know, what will be meaningful and significant, you know, for them over the long term. You know, it’s not stuff, it’s, you know, it’s legacy. And if that’s something you want to do, the gift tax and the bundle here is a powerful, wonderful way to do that.

36:49
Mike Cobb
Again, medium quality, medium growth, you know, again, just, you See some incredible numbers there. From A, from an ROI perspective, an IRR perspective, different bundles have different abilities. The three parcel bundle there for 1899, again, because we’ve discounted it, you start to push your internal rates of return up to 12%, 11.9%. That one, in terms of value is probably the best value we have. If you’re looking for peace of mind in addition to the investment, then the residency bundle, and if you’re looking to get something laddered with a sooner return with the teenage teak, then the laddered bundle is the way to go there. So I think I am going to pause and hand the program over to Laura. Laura, are you still here? I’m here.

37:46
Lora Hassen
Thanks, Mike. That’s fantastic. So Mike showed you a little bit about the discounts that we’re offering through the Gift of teak program that we’re doing this year. But something fantastic that we’re adding is for every teak parcel that you purchase before the end of this year, we will include a complimentary guided group visit. So we’ll be doing three visits next year, January, May and October. So you can join us one of those trips to see the text, plant your own teak and get a good look at it. So that’s included. And let’s see.

38:31
Mike Cobb
There you go.

38:32
Lora Hassen
Thank you.

38:33
Mike Cobb
You’re welcome.

38:36
Lora Hassen
So I. We’ll go to questions here in a minute, but we just want to sum up that it’s a great gift to give this year. It’s more than just a something that you’re going to put under the tree that they’re going to forget about tomorrow, but it’s a legacy for your family and forever.

38:54
Mike Cobb
Right. And you know, if you give the gift and you can bring some of the kids or grandkids down, it’s really cool. It’s a tremendous experience to be able to come there and be in the forest itself. Yeah.

39:08
Lora Hassen
Fantastic. Yeah. So those January, May and October, we’ll be doing those tours. So you can join us for that and we encourage you to join because everyone really seems to enjoy that. The tour.

39:20
Mike Cobb
Yep.

39:21
Lora Hassen
Just a couple other notes on other things that we’re starting in 2026. We will be doing, as you see there in the middle, the Panama Tekken Canal tour that is January 25th through the 26th. We also are going to be doing a Nicaragua lifestyle and investment tour in January. That’s the 25th through the 30th. So if you’re interested in learning more about Nicaragua, the lifestyle and the investment, there’s you can join us on that five day trip that’ll give you a little insight into the country as well as exclusive invitation. For those who are interested in learning more about Costa Rica, we will be doing a lifestyle and investment tour that is an invitation only event. But if you’re interested in Costa Rica, please reach out to one of our property consultants who can tell you more about that.

40:15
Mike Cobb
All right.

40:16
Lora Hassen
Okay, so I have a few questions that are coming in. And one of the questions that came in earlier, Mike, someone asked, have we harvested the teak yet? Have we had any harvest yet?

40:32
Mike Cobb
Yes. So over the years in the mature plantation, there are what they call thinnings, right? I’m going to just real quick, two terms because sometimes people say them quickly. And I’m going to be real clear. Trimming a tree is removing the low branches on the tree, right? That’s a trimming of the tree to create that tall, straight trunk. Thinning is where you actually cut trees down. And the methodology we use, or our hayo forestall the forestry company uses, is this what I call over planting. So you come in and you plant about 1100 trees per hectare. I know I’m going to mix metaphors here or mix measurement standards, but anyway, 1100 trees per hectare and ultimately you end up with about 250 to 260 trees per hectare when you come to the final harvest.

41:24
Mike Cobb
So along the way you’re cutting a lot of trees out. But what it does is it forces the trees early on to grow tall and straight because they’re racing up as fast as they can to get as high as they can, as fast as they can to get to light. And so that’s a methodology of creating the trunks and the lumber that you want. So yes, we’ve done thinnings over the years. The last thinning we did about a year ago in the mature plantation. We had a picture of the logs laying in the lumber yard getting ready to go into the mill. And we’ve been practicing with our mill, we’ve been practicing with our kiln.

42:03
Mike Cobb
The first wood that went through the electric kiln just literally last week came out of the electric kiln at 9% weight, water weight in the lumber, which is what we’re shooting for, somewhere between 8 and 10%, which is export quality. And there’s some very important nuances to that. To make sure that the wood itself has dried uniformly is really important because if it hasn’t dried uniformly, then it will crack or warp. And so you can Get. So we did all the tests. We had uniform drying with the prong tests. Now we’ll be moving more and more wood through the kiln process that we’ve already milled into lumber, now that we have that process dialed in. So over the next 60, 90 days we’ll get a couple containers of wood.

43:00
Mike Cobb
We’ve got a guy in Colorado that we’re going to move it up to for initial distribution. These are the thinnings, this is really the samples going out into the marketplace on a distribution channel. And we’re going to begin also producing some of the initial end products like the floor panels. We’re going to be using a lot of the waste product that we currently have stored now for some of the cement block, the cellulose cement block. So we are just rolling into the actual production. But the big thinning or the big harvest, I’m sorry. The big harvest on the mature plantation will start in January. It’ll take three to four months. It will be a clear cut. All the trees will be cut.

43:43
Mike Cobb
They will be brought over to the log yard around the mill and then the new trees will be planted for the next 25 year cycle later in the year, probably in September, October of next year to catch the end of the rainy season. So anyway, exciting times, but we’re just about to do the first harvest in the next. Yeah. About 60 days from now. We’ll start the next. We’ll start the first harvest. Yeah.

44:12
Lora Hassen
And on that question, Michael asks if Michael comes on the teak tour in January, would the teak harvest be underway during that. During that tour?

44:22
Mike Cobb
Yeah. Yes, it should be underway. Absolutely.

44:26
Lora Hassen
It’d be a great way to see it. Another question, Mike, are the IRR numbers before or after the fees and sawmill costs?

44:37
Mike Cobb
That’s a great question. So all of the numbers that we put are net numbers after the cost of harvest, the cost of processing and our 20% management fees. So when we calculate the IRRs, the ROIs, whatever, it’s always based on your initial investment, your cost, because you have annual cost of $150 a year, something like that, to maintain your parcel. So it’s all your costs and it’s minus all of the fees and it’s the money you end up with. So it’s really sort of a triple net number. I know it’s a long answer, but it’s all your cost, it’s minus all the fees, it’s how much money you get. That’s what we use to calculate the return on investment numbers.

45:24
Lora Hassen
Perfect. Okay. Let’s see what else here. Jennifer asked a question about the fsc. I’m not sure, Mike, if you have this answer or not, but she’s asking who. Who issues the F and how does it need to be renewed and approved?

45:41
Mike Cobb
Yeah, so I can answer the first part. The Forestry Stewardship Council authorizes consultants, basically advocates in different countries or different regions around the world to do their inspections and analysis of projects. And so we’re working with one of those. One of those folks. And I don’t know the name off the top of my head, but happy to provide it, full transparency. So if Jennifer wants to send an email, we’ll get it off to Ryan and he can answer the question. I don’t know, about the ongoing certifications after we get it. That’s also a great question, and we’d be happy to get that answer for you, Jennifer.

46:21
Lora Hassen
Perfect. And there’s several people asking questions about the residency bundles and will it work for them. So I’ll just recommend that everybody’s a little different. So I recommend that you reach out to your property consultant if you have specific questions about residency and how it’ll work for you and your. And your family.

46:42
Mike Cobb
Yep. No, that. That. That’s right, Laura. I. You know, because sometimes it’s singles. It’s. It’s couples. It’s couples with kids. You know, there are a lot of permutations to what’s possible with it. The thing that Carol and I found when we did it for ourselves and our daughters was that Ryan really has a very precise, and I like that word, precise methodology. He sends you a list of all the documents you’re going to need. He tells you exactly what they are. Some will need to be notarized, some will need to be apostilled. He’ll explain what those are, how you do it. You get all those documents, you scan them, you send them to him. He says, yep, it all looks good. You put them in a FedEx, you send them down to Panama.

47:26
Mike Cobb
He gives them to the lawyers, you schedule a trip, and then you go to the immigration office. And for us, it really happened. All in the space. Well, the trip, I mean, and getting our cards. I don’t have my wallet or I’d show it to everybody. But getting our cards happened in less than one week’s time. They do recommend that you plan to stay for, what is it, a week or two? I can’t remember. Just because, you know, government offices change and they’re closed. I mean, it could, you know, whatever. But we had our cards in less than one week. But we submitted all the paperwork, we followed this procedure to the. To the letter. And I think that’s the most important thing I want to convey. You know, follow the process to the letter and you will go through the process. But.

48:18
Mike Cobb
But yeah, each person’s different. And so definitely reach out and we’ll get you connected with the folks that can work with you specifically and personally to make sure you have all the information to look at that process, how it works. And yeah, plan B. Really, really important for my family. It is. And I think probably for many of you as well.

48:41
Lora Hassen
Okay, Mike, we have a question about maintenance fees. The question is, will. Will there be ongoing costs, maintenance costs over the year, and how much will that be?

48:53
Mike Cobb
Yes, there are. And Laura, you get to answer that question, because I don’t.

48:56
Lora Hassen
Yeah, so. So, yeah, there is a per parcel, $185 per year maintenance fee, and that covers all the things that need to happen to keep your teak healthy and safe. So it’s a. It’s a small investment, considering what. What all is covered for that.

49:15
Mike Cobb
Yep. And it can go up based on the CPI of the country, Panama in this case. So, you know, there is an inflation adder, because at the end of the day, having your plantation maintained professionally is what produces the highest value lumber in the end. And so we are going to make sure that happens.

49:37
Lora Hassen
Absolutely. Okay. Bev has a question about how this would work for Canadians, especially the tax part. So I assume she’s referring to the gift tax that we talked about, the 18,000 or the 19,000 deduction.

49:52
Mike Cobb
Yeah, I don’t know Canadian tax law at all. It’s certainly worth asking. The gift tax exclusion really has to do with estate taxes and being able to gift somebody, you know, assets, you know, within the US Tax framework. Definitely check with an accountant, see what that is in Canada for Canadian citizens. And yeah, you know, get. Get back to us. If we can figure something out, work something out that fits within those protocols, we’d certainly be happy to try to do that for you.

50:30
Lora Hassen
Okay, I have a question about. Well, he said trimmings, but I think what he means is thinnings. When do current Teco’s owners receive profits from trimmings? But I think thinnings is what he’s referring to.

50:45
Mike Cobb
Thinnings. I mean, it’s. It’s. It’s in the business plan, and we use just some. Some dates that the forestry company suggests when thinnings will happen. But thinnings actually occur based on the growth of the trees. They could happen sooner, they could happen later. It really depends on growth, weather, some other factors. But in the business plan you’ll see that. And Laura, feel free to open up the business plan and say what those are. I don’t remember them off the top of my head, but yes, the thinnings do produce some revenue, I think, starting with the thinnings, maybe in year 12 or something like that. The first couple thinnings have no commercial value. In fact, the very first thinning, literally they just cut the trees down and let them rot on the ground. You know, put the nutrients back in the soil.

51:34
Mike Cobb
Maybe at year seven or something like that. I think they have some de minimis value as fence posts, which sounds crazy, but that’s what it is. When you get up to year maybe 12, 15, something like that. Now you’re starting to get some commercially viable lumber. But remember this, that it’s the diameter of the tree that produces the value of the lumber. If you have a 1 by 2 or a 1 by 4, it’s worth X. Let’s say a 1 by 4 is worth X. A 1 by 8 which is twice as big might be worth 3x because it’s much more rare. If you have a 1 by 10, it might be worth 4 or 5x because again, the rarity of it, you just can’t get as many out of a log. And so the business plan has some generalized numbers.

52:26
Mike Cobb
Again, they’re all projections, right? We don’t know what’s going to happen. We could get rain, we could get droughts, I mean, get lots of things. Right. And in fact, let me touch on risk factors because nobody’s asked. But I think it’s important, you know, this is an investment. I mean, it could go up and be worth a lot of money and it could, you know, it could be worth nothing. Right? We don’t know the price of teak in the future, right. Lots of the, you know, there’s lots of elements out there. But the projections are based on historical data from a company that’s been doing this for about 35 years now in Panama. But then it’s also based on historical data of the Brits doing it for 350, 50 years in Southeast Asia. So there’s a lot of history.

53:09
Mike Cobb
There’s a lot of statistical data that goes into the projections and sizes of trees, the volume of lumber they do it by, cubic meters per hectare, things like that. All of that’s in the business plan. It’s well explained. And if you want to Dig into that at some great level of detail. The business plan will certainly let you do that.

53:32
Lora Hassen
And if you’d like a copy of the business plan, you can send an email to that email address that you see on the screen now, infoeakhardwoods.com and we’ll get you all the information that you need regarding the business plan.

53:47
Mike Cobb
Yep.

53:50
Lora Hassen
All right, other questions. Let me just look here and see. Someone asked if they can get a copy of the presentation. Again, if you send a email to us, your property consultant will be happy to send you a replay of this presentation.

54:05
Mike Cobb
Laura, doesn’t everyone get a replay?

54:07
Lora Hassen
Yeah, they’re going to get it automatically.

54:09
Mike Cobb
You’re right. Yeah. Yep.

54:12
Lora Hassen
All right, other questions. We did have a question about secondary market for your land. If you wanted to sell. I’ll just mention that if you wanted to sell your land later, that is something that we can help you do through our team. Or of course, you could do that on your own.

54:34
Mike Cobb
Right? You have title, you own it’s yours. So you can keep it, sell it, dispose of it in any manner you choose to.

54:44
Lora Hassen
All right. And I have a question about can we replant after harvest? And I’ll let you take that mic.

54:50
Mike Cobb
Yes, absolutely. In fact, it’s mandated in the first harvest cycle because under the Reforestation Incentives act, which our forest plantations are part of, you must replant after the first harvest. The benefit is that you get your harvest Panamanian. I’m going to be really clear, Panamanian tax free. So there is no Panamanian tax on the first harvest, but you must replant. To replant your parcel today is maybe 350, 400 bucks. It’s not very much to do that. You’re going to make 100,000. You spend, well, let’s assume it goes up to 1,000 bucks or you get 100,000, you spend 1,000 to replant it in 25 years. It’s a de minimis cost, but you have to do that. But then obviously you want to do that because in 25 years, right, you’re going to get another harvest.

55:47
Mike Cobb
And so I would hope that most people, in fact, I would think probably everyone would always replant at the end of the cycle so that 25 years from that point, you know, some future generation or, you know, charity or whoever you want to attribute this to, would receive the next, the proceeds of the next harvest.

56:11
Lora Hassen
Fantastic. Okay, we have a few minutes left. And I know this question may take a few minutes to answer. James is asking how many trees In a parcel.

56:20
Mike Cobb
Yeah. So the. I’m going to. I’m going to make a statement that a hectare is about 2 and a half acres and a quarter acre is roughly 1/10 of 1 hectare. So, you know, when you start with a hectare with 1100 trees and you end up with about 250, 260 trees on a hectare, you take one tenth of that number and you end up with 25, 26 trees. That’s sort of what you end up with on a quarter acre. So you start with 110, you end up with about, say, 25. So that’s the process. Over the 25 years, you take it from 110 down to about 25 trees, and that’s what you end up in the final harvest, about 25 trees.

57:18
Lora Hassen
And I see that there are several questions coming in, specific owners that have questions about their ownership. And I’ll encourage you, because those are specific questions, to reach out to your property consultant. They can help you with those specific questions. One more question, Mike, I’ve seen a couple times, just to address it, people are asking about, and we hear this as property consultants frequently about insurance. Can I buy insurance on the crop and what does that cost?

57:46
Mike Cobb
Yeah, it’s a great question. Not to the best of my knowledge. I don’t know of any way to insure the crop itself. You know, a couple things. The maintenance fee is somewhat like insurance because the maintenance fee covers a fire break. It covers having people on the plantation pretty much every day of the year. You know, they’re looking for pests, they’re looking for disease. They’re looking, you know, making sure someone doesn’t come in and steal the trees. Right. And so while there’s no formal insurance, the maintenance fees and the. And the professional forestry company, you know, hired to maintain the plantation does a very good job of. Of reducing risk. Not eliminating risk, but reducing risk. But I know of no company that will insure the crop specifically as the question is being asked. I think so.

58:38
Mike Cobb
Hey, Laura, we’re right up at the top of the hour here, and I really like to be respectful of everybody’s time. And I just want to thank everybody for joining us this evening. You’ve got the resources. You can reach out by email. We’ll send you the business plan. You’ve got property consultants who understand the product that can answer a ton of questions for you if you want to move ahead and do this. The. The timing is great for a lot of reasons. You know, we’ve got some bundles that expire here in the next couple weeks. You know, really, we’re going to keep planting teak. We’re always going to have more teak. And you’re going to see us come back and do another teak webinar sometime in the new year. Right.

59:20
Mike Cobb
But, but the reason to do it today is to give that gift of teak, really, to start this generational wealth stewardship legacy for your family. And I really can’t think of any better gift you could give children, grandchildren, or an endowment of some kind than this gift. And I hope that many of you will decide that this is something that you do want to do, and we stand ready to help you and to have the conversations. And again, I look forward to having many of you decide that this is something you want to proceed and go ahead with. Laura, thank you for being here. Diego, thank you for running our IT in the background. Really appreciate that, always. You do a fine job and everything went very well tonight. So thank you.

01:00:12
Mike Cobb
And I thank everybody for joining us this evening and look forward to seeing many of you in Panama. That’ll be a fun time. So, Laura, Diego, hi, everyone. Thanks. Bye now.

01:00:23
Lora Hassen
Bye.