Roundtable Discussion; The Future of Mineral Sands. Watch the video here.
Nice to see the Leanbiome launch confirmed, you need to go back to the Commercial update RNS to see its initial value to the company ;
" A large initial order of £116k from a leading weight management and sports nutrition brand in the USA. We anticipate launch in late 2023 or Q1 2024. This is a major sports nutrition brand who are making a significant investment in LeanBiome® as a key differentiator in the protein market and, if successful on launch, will have a material impact on future revenues "
One bit of good news toyin is that I noticed on 6th Jan that the Acne Study recruitment landing page had been taken down (link I posted now returns a 404 error). Elric kindly checked the reason for it being removed and was informed by the Company that the recruitment has been filled (Are any of the 300 spotty teenagers part of your extended family:) )?
There you go mol
https://www.costco.com.au/search?searchOption=au-search-all&text=optislim
You have already been told what to expect in the near term in the Nov trading update. 2023 revenue "The Company expects revenue recognised for 2023 will be c. £2.2 million" and 2024 with the benefit of this new test "Revenue recognised for 2024 is expected to treble compared to 2023 with the growth of distributor sales, and with the planned launches of the Portrait PD-L1 test (services), see separate announcement today, the Portrait+ antibody staining kit (products), and the Parsortix BiDetectTM DNA solutions combining ctDNA and CTC-DNA analysis (products and services) all contributing to the Company's sales growth ambitions."
...and the link
https://www.hull.ac.uk/staff-directory/james-hobkirk
Probably not, but with Dr James Hobkirk a strong advocate for Opti, who has run the recent Wellbiome trial for Cardiac patients, also trialling the Zoe app, he will be well aware of the Microbiome Modulator progress and the ability to tailor prebiotix mixes to target specific good microbe deficiencies highlighted for individuals tested with the Zoe app, and hence the prospect for a tie up in addressing patient needs
Well at least we know that things are underway with the acne study, just came across this
https://axisbiotix.com/en-im/pages/acne-study
Elric, one thing you, Tom and Thomas all have in common is your assumption that sufficient revenues will be generated from the Croda deal early 2024, or at least in time to ensure that no further fundraises will be necessary to keep the lights on, and that may not be the case.
Put yourselves in Stuart’s shoe and cast your minds back to the 2021 Results RNS when the following commentary was given which would have been based on the information provided by Croda. “During the course of the year Sederma updated SkinBioTherapeutics that it had made significant progress against the key collaboration milestones. Lysate production had been optimised and analytical sample screening and formulation work had been completed. Manufacturing scale-up from 1 litre to 600 litres had been completed successfully and with the formal handover of the project from Sederma in Paris to Croda's manufacturing facility at Ditton, near Widnes, the final scale-up to 20,000 litres is now being progressed. This is the capacity required to mass produce the SkinBiotix® product at industrial levels to market to Sederma's portfolio of 12,000+ global cosmetic customers.
Throughout this collaboration, Sederma has identified additional potential scientific and marketing claims for the end ingredient. The eventual claims will be an important component of the launch and long-term commercial success of the ingredient. To this end, Sederma is continuing its lab work to further substantiate these additional potential claims. This work is not impacting the manufacturing scale-up. The Group continues to anticipate 2022 as the period for initial royalty revenues.”
Well 2022 has come and gone as has 2023 and far from the substantiation of additional claims impacting the manufacturing scale-up and subsequent commercialisation, the opposite has been true. So unsurprisingly, Stuart at the tail end of 2022 when it became apparent that Croda revenues would not be forthcoming within the timelines provided by Croda, decided to embark on an acquisition route to put pressure on Commercial Partners to deliver, whilst at the same time ensuring the Company could generate sufficient income and profit without the Croda revenue to prevent the need for further firefighting fundraises.
Hopefully, Croda will deliver on their forecasts this time and early revenues will find their way into Skinbio coffers, but if that does not happen and Stuart had passively done nothing to mitigate against this risk then shareholders would rightly be calling for his head. The nature of the early acquisitions proposed, a manufacturer and one with established front end sales outlets, provide an exciting opportunity to grow Skin through cross selling current/soon to be current products such as axisbiotix for psoriasis and acne, whilst enabling the new skinbiotix lysate, supplied at cost by Croda, and the brand promoted by their marketing team, to be quickly incorporated into the established products from the acquisition
The irony is, if Stuart had not ventured his opinion on completion dates then this RNS following on from the Placing and Results RNS represents solid and positive progress in terms of the official acquisition reporting.
Agree that the share price will likely remain suppressed until more detail emerges about the acquisition and the terms of the secured Convertible Loan Note; amount and the number and scale of likely discounted shares associated with it
Just a reminder of what has been RNS'd regarding acquisitions;
From the Placing RNS
"The Company continues to actively monitor potential accretive M&A targets and has been encouraged by its initial engagement with a number of potential targets. The Board hopes to be able to complete at least one accretive transformational acquisition in the near term, subject to being able to obtain funding on appropriate terms."
and then the Results RNS
"Acquisition strategy
The Group is in advanced discussions to acquire two private companies that either manufacture or sell a variety of branded topical products for common dermatological conditions to NHS hospitals, dispensing practices and national pharmacy chains. The proposed targets are profitable and the Group sees a number of synergies to improve this. However, there is no certainty of timing or execution as the Company would need to agree additional funding using debt and/or equity and any acquisition would be conditional on satisfactory diligence.
In addition, the Group has a pipeline of further acquisitions where active discussions are taking place. Any targets which the Group is interested in purchasing will be accretive from a revenue and earnings perspective, and thus reduce the operating cash burn, with the goal of the Group in the next 12-18 months to becoming a cash generating entity."
So anyone taking part in the "Oversubscribed" placing and retail offer at 19p should have been fully aware of what Stuart was proposing to do and yet saw fit to take part. Wonder how the AGM will go today?
Clio, I refer to the latest interview post the placing on 17th November, where Stuart states "I will have the 1st acquisition done by the end of the year". That wasn't hope to or may, but will. This was circa 15.30 in.
Clio, unless Elric is using AI to superimpose Stuart's head onto is body, then Stuart himself stated in the interview one acquision by end of the year
One person's risk is another person's opportunity, two sides of the same coin and I see more upsides here than downsides
at the current market cap
Bel, always welcome non-repetetive negative and positive views. Taking your points in order, there has been no recent large pump and dump, although there were two interviews behind paywalls requested by TW and Elric which I believe you refer to. Regarding the previous promise on an acquisition, Stuart did qualify that it would be subject to Due Diligence and that Due Diligence revealed an internal founder fallout that Stuart wanted to see resolved before proceeding, however, it remains on the table and at least one of the new proposed short acquisions is complementary to it in so much as they manufacture their " block buster product". The further £35k inventory write down appears to relate to the original £400k stock acquisition rather than subsequent re-orders. £266k was the original provision against a £388.5k stock holding leaving a balance of £112.5k; it appears £35k of this balance was not cleared prior to the best before date expiring. Regarding your last question, if you didn't hold stock would you invest here going forward, absolutely at the current sp which is circa 20% below a recent over subscribed placing price. Acquisitions, acne study, croda trials and commercial launch and two R&D studies reaching conclusion next year should see the sp multi bag. Have a good Christmas and wishing all holders a prosperous New Year.
You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make it drink. Harry has led a whole herd of horses to a tempting waterhole in the dry season but he has no control over when the lead horse takes a drink which will see the rest of the herd follow. Fair to say that as the wet season approaches then that waterhole will become less appetising, but there are still several months of the dry season left.
Tempted I must admit Mad but this is already my largest holding and I was not one of the investors involved in the Retail Offer for that reason especially as I added at 17p prior to the share price rising to 28p pre raising.
Find it odd that on a day when growth stocks are surging because of the promise of falling interest rates, which incidentally will benefit Skin hugely when embarking on the imminent acquisition route, that the share price hasn't moved despite the price being nearly 20% below the oversubscribed placing price and retail offer which saw those that took part having their allocation pared back; why aren't they buying?
Get that for growth stocks generally but as Ceres actually benefits from high interest rates because of the invested cash income does strike me as odd that it follows the crowd up and down
Forgetting the sale of the Greek business are we not?
Yes, appears to be general consensus, this from H&L
"CURRYS NARROWS H1 LOSSES; NORDICS RECOVERY ON TRACK
(Sharecast News) - Electrical retailer Currys held annual guidance as interim losses narrowed and its Nordics unit reported an improvement in gross margins.
The company posted a loss before tax of £46m, compared with a loss of £548m a year earlier. UK like-for-like revenue fell 3% to £2.2bn.
"Our priorities this year are simple: to get the Nordics back on track, to keep up the UK&I's encouraging momentum, while strengthening our balance sheet and liquidity. We're making good progress on all these in a still challenging economic environment," said chief executive Alex Baldock.
"In the Nordics, our trusted brands have delivered substantial gross margin gains, which combined with strong cost discipline have resulted in significantly improved profits. There's still a long way back to healthy Nordics performance, but we're on the way."