Member Info for BoringBernie

Gixer

Oh, absolutely, and that'll likely have been happening over the last few years and contributing to some of the growth we've seen from the AA.

Sadly, that's pretty slow progress, and until our income and therefore our profit ( or at least sensible forecasts underpinned by info from Ford ) justifies a market cap of 10 million plus, then the sp relies on peoples thoughts on the financial potential* or otherwise of Fruitflow

BB

*obviously there are plenty of people who are content with just saying "this'll be huge" without any idea of what huge is and how, long term , that'll be reflected in the market cap, because large parts of AIM is for dreamers, and for feeding off dreamers views.

Gixer

Yea, that's a good point, so would give us more cash from existing customers as part of the profit share.

I also noticed in the last accounts that it appeared ( so not 100% definite ) that the cost of goods for FF+ had come down giving us a higher gross margin. That might be down to DSM continually working on production costs and passing savings on, but it might just have been down to us putting a bigger order in and consequently getting a better price, don't really know.

Time will tell on the difference that ByHealth actually getting going will make to our cashflow. It'll certainly be good, the debate really is how good ? You're also right when you say ByHealth might be a catalyst for other countries / companies sitting up and taking notice, but that'll likely take some time, so is very much more jam tomorrow.

If, some time next year ( or even this year, but that seems unlikely ), we get an RNS saying ByHealth has got regulatory approval for Fruitflow , and firm orders have been placed, then it'll be interesting to see if any financial guidance on it's effect to PXS is given at the same time.

For example, a statement of "... and we expect this to mean the company will be profitable this FY " , or H2 at least, " or "... and we expect this to mean the company will be profitable in FY 2022/23" would be helpful. Will we get such a statement ? Well, if only to control speculation, both overly negative and overly positive, we should do, but I wouldn't be surprised to see something unsuitably vague !

BB

Relatively slowly isn't small Alf.

As for DSM making a contribution to launch costs, we don't know how common, and to what extent they've been doing that. All we know is what they did for us.

For smaller companies, it's likely they'll help out, but, as larger companies come on board, I think that will likely change and they'll mainly, be not totally, be after a good discount on the ingredient price commensurate with the large volumes they're ordering and they'll be less interested in short term ( effective ) discounts.

The info we've been fed in the RNS's which talk about By-Health certainly support that. "That" being they'll want it cheaper than others are paying. DSM's job is to use economies of scale or other methods to make the price attractive to By-Health while still making a decent margin. Again, recent RNS's suggest we're confident they can do that, but not to the point where they can maintain present margins, which is fair enough, it's what you'd expect as you deal with bigger companies, and to be fair to Ford, that info is there in black and white for any shareholders to read.

BB

CB

On timescale, as Sphinx says, ByHealth will have to buy Fruitflow from DSM, so, and there's a bit of guesswork here, it should be recognised in our accounts within a few months. How they roll out any new products, and the price they pay for FF is probably more important than the timing.

I guess you have to work out what potential significant multiples by volume and multiple by value might mean in terms of cash received by Provexis ? The wording suggests that, not unreasonably, that the volumes of Fruitflow that ByHealth intend to buy mean they'll be getting it cheaper than most, if not all, of DSM's customers.

So, if for example, "Potential sales volumes remain at a significant multiple of existing Fruitflow sales." meant sales volumes were 5 or 6 times existing volumes, then maybe "potentially at a multiple of Fruitflow's existing annual sales." means the value of those sales is 2 or 3 times existing sales ?

I think those are reasonable assumptions, though others will likely disagree and put forward a coherent argument for a higher cash value of sales than 2 or 3 times. Anyway, if you assume our share of the profit remains constant, then, once By-Health are fully up and running, we could well be looking at receiving 3 or 4 times ( what we currently get, plus the extra generated from By-Health sales ) what we currently do via the AA. So that might be 700 to 930k , which, assuming our costs are fixed, would give us a profit of something in the order of 400 to 600k.

Would we get that level of cash immediately ? Probably not, I'd guess By-Health would start relatively slowly, but I'd be surprised if the initial 12 month uplift to our share of the AA wasn't well in six figures and, assuming retail sales went well, would rise pretty quickly to the 700 to 930k which is my guess.

Another way of looking at the numbers is to make a stab at retail sales and work backwards. If By-Health fairly quickly get to retail sales value of 50 to 100 million pounds then cost of goods might be about a third of that, so 16 to 33 million ? Maybe half of that cost of goods is the cost of Fruitflow, so that's 8 to 16 million to DSM. Guessing an operating margin of 20% on FF for DSM would give a profit to share of 1.6 to 3.2 million ? What's our % share ? No-one knows, but if it's 50%, then that'd be 800 to 1600k to us, which is in the same sort of ballbark to the figure I'm guessing at from the info Ford's put in the Annual Report.

All of that could, of course, be complete and utter testicles, and it wouldn't be the first time I've typed *******s about PXS

BB

If you havn't tried previously, why don't you contact Ford and tell him you're interested in supporting the company in the anticipated forthcoming placing ?

There'll likely be a minimum amount needed before it's worthwhile from the company's POV, but I'd guess something in the order of 5k would swing it ? It's plainly far more use to the company to get new money in than it is to recycle existing shares, so, assuming you're thinking about throwing in more than just another grand or so, it seems like a no-brainer all round

BB

Great to see something in print from them, especially as it implies they're close to the endpoint in trials.

I'd assume that the glycation related product is totally different and nothing to do with WSTC though.

BB

Haha - I'm always grumpy, you should know that by now !

Plastic pots though ffs, why can't people just watch Gardeners World and admire the bloody plant pots !!

Gixer

"There's no point guessing". Probably not, but investing in something like Provexis involves guessing where the company will be in whatever timescale people think of, and how that might affect the sp, which both get discussed. If everything had to have a point then there's something to be said for closing this bulletin board down.

Nothing wrong with a bit of guesswork, so long as it's clear that's all it is, and it sure as hell beats talking about the merits of plastic pots over blister packs !

BB

If there's a sweepstake, I'll take .5p

Ah well, the line about “and expects to make a further loss during the year ending” was in the Annuals, so more cash is required, which all suggests we won’t be seeing any cash coming from By-Health this financial year from sales of FF, or at least, if we do, then not soon enough to have a meaningful effect.

Given they havn’t started all their trials yet, I think it's hard to see By-Health getting Blue Cap before Spring 2021 at the very earliest, so, tbh, us getting any cash from DSM for FF sales to By-Health before summer 2021 seems unlikely. That may have always been the case, but plainly COVID-19 hasn't helped.

On the bright side, our share of the profits from DSM is slowly ticking up, and FF+ is paying for itself. FF+ contributed about 40k to our cashflow, though I’d imagine about half of that got swallowed up by paying Ian a full time wage rather than a part time one, so it's still as next to meaningless as makes no difference.

Bag of a fag packet calculations suggest that at current growth rates for both DSM profit share and FF+ of roughly 20% per annum, then it’d take at least three years to get to break even, with, ever decreasing, annual fund raises needed to bridge the gap.

Bottom line, as an investment, this is a punt on By-Health coming good, financially, in the next year or so. With that in mind, it’s a stick it in the bottom drawer and check it occassionally now and then kind of punt.

Mind you, I wouldn’t be surprised to see an RNS in the next 3 or 4 weeks saying Lucas has gone ( up ) through another threshold so wtfdik !

BB

Re "If there was a cost saving then he should be mentioning it."

What a load of testicles. Any cost saving on packaging would be minor and make next to no difference to our cashflow, so I'd file that sort of info under "Excuse me if I don't give a damn" !

Admittedly, it's vaguely interesting to discuss the minor points of running a retail business, especially to those of us where it's not the day job, but FF+ is pretty much immaterial to Provexis as a whole, and packaging costs within FF+ are a small part of immaterial, so expecting Ford to discuss it, especially via a specific RNS or even a press release is nuts.

It might get a mention in a para in an Annual Report, but I sincerely hope it doesn't, because it'd just be filler.

BB

In theory, unless Lucas and family have added since his last holdings RNS, he'll have dropped under 9%.

Chances are, as he'd only need to have added roughly half a million since the 6th August to stay above 9%, then he has added, so he won't have had to inform the company of a movement across a threshold.

BB

Having full ownership of the BP IP is plainly good news. Depending on your point of view, viewing Oslo's share of that IP at 80k at yesterdays's share price could be good or bad. Good because it means next to no dilution to settle it, but bad because, well 80k isn't very much and doesn't exactly value that IP very much I'd caveat that by saying, firstly, I don't know what percentage split of the IP that 80k applies to, and also by saying that if Oslo hang onto those shares and the sp rises, then their return obviously rises too, but there's no way of knowing if they'll do that.

The COVID statement ( excluding the bit about supply issues ) is suitably vague and could mean anything between nothing and a massive opportunity.

With less than seven weeks to go to the publication of the Annual Report, mention of a further trading update is just weird. If there's price sensitive info to be released, then why not release it today ? If it's not price sensitive info then why not wait until you put the report out and include it in a post reporting period section ? Again, it could be anything ranging from positive news on the Bi-Health front to a fund raising, neither of which seem desperately likely in the next six or seven weeks, but wtfdIk.

Plainly we'll find out more by the end of September at the latest.

BB

I've been in here since it was something like £3.00 or £3.50 pre-consolidation, so the equivalent of 30 to 35p now, and have, while always keeping the majority of my holding, taken profits and added every so often, sometimes successfully, sometimes not.

fwiw - If the sp rises to something in the region of £5.25 to £5.50 ( so a fair amount above the warrants exercise price ) - I'll likely take some more profits, but as Davey found out when he sold up many years ago ( prior to him buying back quite a few years back ) it's nigh on impossible to know the right time to buy/sell.

BB

I think I've mentioned it before on here, but a lot of the RNS's Chimed issue are just RNS Reach's, and today's was another one.

For those that don't know ... an RNS Reach is basically information which should be viewed more as a Press Release than something which is deemed to be price sensitive. See https://www.lseg.com/areas-expertise/market-information/regulatory-news-service/rns-reach for more details.

If you just rely on this site ( lse ) to view RNS announcements, then there's nothing in the news section which makes it obvious if the news item is a regulatory requirement, or a Reach announcement. I've no idea why, it really wouldn't be that hard for them to do so.

If you want to know if it's a full RNS or just a Reach, then you need to go to a grown up site and look at something like https://www.londonstockexchange.com/stock/HCM/hutchison-china-meditech-limited/analysis where they make it obvious if it's a Reach.

Bottom line - if a Reach RNS is issued, then don't expect the sp to move because of it. Most of the grown ups will read it for what it is and pretty much ignore it. The sp might move up on a positive Reach RNS, so there could be a correlation there, but that doesn't necessarily link to cause

BB

there = their ffs !

Alf

What on earth is a "genuine holder", how do you measure it and why is it only there sells which count ? As far as i'm concerned the terms "genuine holder" and "long termers" are labels used by PIs to make themselves feel better about the fact that we're trying to get make money by doing nothing very much.

People buy and sell all the time, some buy for the long term, others are looking for a return in days rather than months. I don't doubt there'll be a lot of shares held by people who've had them for years, but equally there'll be others who've sold in the last few months who have turned a profit in the last few months and banked it.

If you think the MM's are making up 311 million shares bought or sold this year as part of some conspiracy by someone to get the company on the cheap, then, though that is a remote possibility, it's more likely that you're 'kin mad !!

Anyway, so basically the market is crooked and all the numbers are made up, and some people here think Stuart Lucas is manipulating the market to build up his holding. If true, it'll make a great TV programme, but I ain't holding my breath :)

BB

Alf

Re "who freed up all those shares for Mr L to buy? Or did MM's sell shares they didn't have, and then got active on the boards to try to drive down the sp ?"

Well, according to https://www.londonstockexchange.com/stock/PXS/provexis-plc/trade-recap just under 140 million shares were traded in June and July. On the assumption that pretty much half that volume were sales, that gives 70 million.

Lucas bought just over 20 million shares between the end of May and early August, which still leaves 50 million to spare, so, as conspiracy theories go, you're on a par with Wellsite !

Anyway, we'll see how the company was doing in the last FY sometime in the next 53 days ...

BB

Wellsite

Re a" seat on the board "- it's a possibility, he's a NED, or has been in the past at Daniel Stewart.

Re "he probably had a bit of help........" -Wow ! It almost sounds iike you're implying he's had people trying to drive the price down for him ? Nothing wrong with a bit of paranoia like, but that does sound a bit far fetched.

BB

No-one really knows when we'll be profitable. However, Edison in their research note are forecasting sustained profitability in 2024.

https://www.edisongroup.com/publication/eye-of-the-tiger/27214/