Member Info for AquaeSulis01

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."

Yes Bazza, Christmas came from Elric in the interview whilst Stuart consistently stated by end of Dec 1st acquisition and End Jan 2024 the second target. I believe one of the acquisitions produces the "blockbuster" product that Stuart's original acquisition target last year (and still in his sights once they have got all their sh 1 t in one sock) sells

Toyin. "All this discussion of, “yes, they may have run the 20000 litre vessel, but was it full" is just stupid. Croda have run the program how they see fit, Croda will tell SA what they want to tell him. Croda are in charge with this one and they are doing it in a way to extract the most profit from this project, which in turn benefits us." I could not agree more and I thought that was the point I was making to NickE in my original email before you jumped in?

There Eason through word used

Toyin the Results RNS stated 'In November 2019, SkinBioTherapeutics signed a commercial and manufacturing agreement with Croda's Consumer Care division, Sederma, which is a specialist in bioactive ingredients for the cosmetic industry. Croda has a global portfolio of personal care customers which comprise many of the major international cosmetics and FMCG brands.

During this financial year, Sederma has been focused on developing quality formulations with their customers, which has seen scaling-up manufacture of SkinBiotix? from 600 litres to 2,000 litres which is expected to ultimately lead to the 20,000 litres vessel required to service the global market. 4 pilot batches have been manufactured which identified significant, unexpected technical benefits which Sederma believes may lead to a justifiable increase in price based on clinical evidence. To this end, the company extended its development agreement with Croda plc to allow a clinical trial to be carried out to evidence the additional activity. This study is fully funded by Sederma /Croda and is expected to be completed early 2024.'

Just to clarify one point NickE regarding the scale-up observation "Lastly, some investors apparently received replies to questions from Stuart that, perhaps understandably, led them to incorrectly perceive that Sederma had scaled up to 20,000 litres or were well on the way. That may be the case but it was clearly stated as 2,000 litres in the final results statement. It appears in the emails Stuart was referencing the size of the tanks installed and (inadvertently of course) left it open for investors to conclude these 20,000 litre tanks had been filled to capacity. The factual scale-up achievement in the official announcement is 2,000 litres."

Sederma achieved the scale-up to 600 litres, the operation then transferred to Croda's Widnes plant where a dedicated 20,000 litre capacity container was made available and used for 4 pilot runs deliberately limited to 2000 litres where the additional activities were discovered. Consequently, the fact that 20000 litres in one run has not been produced in advance of a commercial launch should not be viewed as a sort of hurdle yet to be cleared, the runs at that capacity will take place as soon as commercial deals have been concluded and that volume is warranted

Hopefully you can only see one set of shares now the drinks out of your system 😀

Slimbiome Medical joint 16th on appetite suppressent list

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Best-Sellers-Appetite-Suppressants/zgbs/drugstore/2826471031

Not sure how a debate about Opti's new Financial Director appointment has appeared on this Board rather than Opti's where members appear quite agnostic about it, but as it has I would just add that I find Graham's career history (found on Companies House) at the point where he was appointed "on loan" from Croda 28th Mar 2018 to Plant Impact Ltd to sort out a contract breach between Plant Import Ltd and P I Bioscience Ltd prior to Croda acquiring Plant Import Ltd, more interesting; he is not just some "Pensions Guru". With Opti sat on 49% of a PBX illiquid asset on the AQSE exchange makes you wonder if some deal couldn't been done with Croda's Pharma/Consumer Health/Nutritional Supplements division where Cholbiome would sit perfectly under Heart Health

Nick noted, my own preference is to see novel intelligent research based views ,negative or positive, posted on here rather than repetitive complaints but have accepted there will be all types of posts on a BB and that I can selectively use the filter button for a serial moaner (not you I hasten to add) that never contributes anything research based or just repeats the same arguments once the debate should long have been concluded. Not a perfect solution because some posters persist in continuing to respond including pasting the repetitive noise within their own responses, but generally works well enough

Nick, on the 24th Oct you posted "Thanks Toyin

Thought the interview was Friday but ok Sunday now. No matter. So all the juicy bits have already been said? I am not after free but I only rely on rns's now, but a few not behind a paywall would be nice."

So do you want belated tit bits or not, make your mind mind up fella? :)

Clio, I suspect PGlancy was referring to TW's later piece on the Board payments rather than his earlier Bearcast rant, but even that contained omissions and an inaccuracy.

TW stated that the pay of the Board jumped from £624,564 to £778,639 despite there being 1 less Director; this is untrue, there was 1 more Director in 2023 as opposed to 2022.

He also then correctly highlighted that Director pay was inflated further via consultancy services for Martin Hunt from his company Invictus by £55,440 and for Dr Cathy Prescott via Bidabris by £28,096, but then failed to mention that those same consultancy services were paid for in 2022 to the tune of £50,400 and £25,200 respectively, but more importantly, our then "part time" CFO Doug Quinn on a salary of £140,414 also charged the company via Quinn Corporate Consultancy a further £126,609 on top which does put Manprit's salary of £261,480 in a slightly better light; in other words the "Gross Board Room pay" did not rise anywhere near as spectacularly as TW would have you believe.

That said, I agree in the current loss making financial circumstances of the company, a temporary salary sacrifice rather than pay increases would have been an appropriate gesture

See why Slimbiome Medical has done well of late

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/02/pfizer-weight-loss-pill-joins-list-of-obesity-drug-flops.html

It would be interesting to get the views of all those pi's that took part in the recent retail investor raise at 19p, had their allocations scaled back because it was oversubscribed, and yet aren't busy filling their boots now the buy price is below 17p? There is no bad news that I can see in the Results RNS, even the actual Croda scale-up is a non-event as you have it direct from Dr D at Croda that full commercial scale production is planned for 2024

Bel, the idea of appropriate acquisitions is to provide retail outlets to cross sell are products and also back our science into, also selling through Amazon should also accelerate axis sales so a linear graph based on the current sales growth is not relevant going forward

I actually think this most recent RNS is well written which is probably down to the appointment of Melissa as Group Financial Controller in March. This leads onto why a Group Financial Controller had to be appointed in addition to Manprit for a company with such low revenue and the answer in retrospect is that Manprit has been brought in almost full time to carry out due diligence on other Companies accounts so that the right acquisition targets can be identified; only time will tell whether this was a shrewd appointment or not once the acquisitions take place and contribute accretiveley to the growth of the Company

NickE, the devil is in the detail of the acquisitions, witness the over 20% rise in Ashtead's share price when they announced their own acquisition yesterday worded thus; "Sharecast News) - AIM-listed Ashtead Technology lifted its full-year expectations on Thursday as it announced the acquisition of ACE Winches from its founders Alfie and Valerie Cheyne, for £53.5m in cash.

Ashtead, a subsea equipment rental and solutions provider for the global offshore energy sector, said the deal is expected to be "materially" earnings enhancing in FY2024 and beyond. " expect something similar from Stuart.

Regarding SOH, as the largest shareholder in Skin so not without influence, it would have been far more productive and professional if he had voiced his concerns with Stuart behind closed doors so that any differences of opinion could be ironed out to the benefit of both parties, rather than air them with TW.

Toyin, this is the first time 2000 litres has appeared on an RNS and it looks as though that is the scaled up figure achieved at Croda's Widnes plant. From the half year report "Sederma has successfully scaled-up manufacture to 600 litres and is testing the scale-up to 20,000 litres in a custom built vessel in Widnes. ". Now read the words from Dr Damien when the contract extension was announced "

On today's news, he added:

. "Four pilot-scale semi-industrial fermentation batches, including down-stream processing, have been completed, and commercial-scale batches are planned for 2024 at Croda's UK facility. "

Over all positive and few new things in there;

Croda have scaled to 2000 litres but not the target 20000 litres yet

Skin Inflammation study expected to run until 2025 but looks quite promising

Margins on axis sales don't look so great when sales and distribution costs are factored in; wouldn't these costs have been included in any partner margin deals?

Acne study recruitment has started with study and results in q1 2024

Amazon certainly a positive move as will encourage those reticent about providing card details direct to a small company they are unfamiliar with to try the product and also provides another way into the US should Stuart decide to list there too