Elrico,
Fantastic to hear you have spoken to Stuart and sorry to hear you had covid. I had my first experience with it last month, and it was much worse than I imagined it would be and am only just over the after effects. At one point I felt so bad I checked my will to make sure everything was in order!
This may be in contraction to your arrangements with Stuart so if that’s the case ignore me - but if the only reason you don’t want to post the interview is because of your croaky voice, I think I speak for us all in saying we can forgive how you look or sound of it means we can hear the full lot. I think the interviews where we can hear the conversations are always a lot more useful than the written Q&A ones. There is always as much to be taken from the way SA reacts to a question or the tone of his answer which is totally removed in writing.
Food for thought and get well soon, all the best.
I’d say volatile would be a better word than risky Oleric. Now the placing is completed with the REX funds to come and the price at only 16p, i don’t think it’s risky. There will just be volatility depending on timings of progression updates. It will become risky in 12 /18 months if nothing has been achieved, I guess it depends if you think it will come to that. I’m not pleased with progression this year, but I’m hopeful 2023 will be much more fruitful.
Hopefully Elric can get an interview in his usual style soon. The Proactive ones are a bit soft to say the least, but any interview is better than none and it’s good Stuart hasn’t gone in to hiding as so many CEO’s seem to do when investors are piling the pressure on for answers.
Elrico, should investors have to decipher clues or put puzzles together from an RNS? If it’s there they should say it, if it’s not said it’s not there. I think most people here have had enough of supposed hidden meanings. If it’s not said explicitly then there is a reason it’s not said, and that reason is not to the advantage of the shareholders. I do believe the company still has plenty of good things going for it, but if a company with a waining SP doesn’t put a good point in a general update then I think it’s fair to say it’s probably not there.
I have read the RNS through a few times and had chance to process the releases. To save writing an essay, I can say that Aquae’s post from 20:01 sums my thoughts up perfectly. I’m very disappointed and I feel like the CEO as both underperformed and pulled the wool over our eyes. Some things don’t quite add up. Totally agree that Danielle Bekker needs to be immediately relieved of her duty, whatever that was supposed to be. I appreciate the long RNS which was obviously an increased effort to fully inform us. There are some positives here and there, such as the acquisition. But for me the company has been badly managed recently. Like many here I’m strongly weighted towards this share and now feeling exposed to my paper losses. I do take responsibility for my position, but the real cause is the difference between what Stuart implied he was going to achieve on many occasions and the reality of what is being produced. Very disappointed, time to put these shares in the bottom drawer for a while and see if he manages to provide me with at least the value invested at some point, or if the company is as much as a let down as it seems to be right now.
I second what you guys are saying and also blame the waning SP directly on the board. When the 1.2m was missed, we were promised the team would be “breaking their backs” to make it right. One update RNS in 9 months is hardly breaking a sweat, never mind a back. The update part should have come out before the results if the CFO was taking his time on the accounts. Really want to believe Stuart’s positive words when he is interviewed, but how much more frustration does he want to put us through before he delivers something relating to making money rather than spending it.
A lower bar than is standard practice for use on what though Oleric? This is a food supplement, not a medical device. If we ran the studies and obtained the proof you suggest we should have, the product would no longer be a food supplement.
Let’s look at CBD as an example, which I would suggest is one of the most common food supplements around at the moment. See this extract from Dr. Peter Grinspoon of Harvard Medical School: “Without sufficient high-quality evidence in human studies, we can’t pinpoint effective doses, and because CBD currently is typically available as an unregulated supplement, it’s hard to know exactly what you are getting.”
Fact is, you don’t NEED to go to the lengths you are suggesting to release a food supplement to help with a condition, and if most similar products don’t, I think that shows the bar of standard practice is set lower than you are suggesting.
Regarding the acne product, there is nothing material I can say to alleviate your concerns. What I would say though, is that of concerns I personally have with this company, their ability to produce an effective product to help a skin condition is certainly not one of them. Cath says it will work, Stuart says he can put it in gum. That’s all I need. Now whether they will order £400,000 worth and then try and sell it at car boot sales is more of a valid concern. Joke!
Sneering at Elric is pointless unless you care to admit you have blindly followed him without doing your own research. Now if you would have said where has Stuart been this year, I’d possibly support the sentiment.
If you were right Oleric, I would genuinely support your argument (in the discussion sense), but what Toyin is saying is accurate. We have the bright study which shows a great level of efficacy, and we know the reasons for why it was not done clinically. Dr Jonathan Sheffield is working with the company on a medically measured study, but we don’t need that to prove it works - as Toyin says, we do know it works 100%. This doesn’t allow us to make claims but that was a decision made by the company.
Also just to add, one product in one pillar. Granted it’s the only one generating revenue but we should have a lot coming up soon to sit alongside AxisBiotix, quantify/quality as yet unknown!
“I am a man of great experience...I would say an expert in the science” is not a statement qualified by a long post trying to preach a very extreme standpoint. Chances are some of what you say will be correct, some will not be.
Please try a bit of balanced thinking now and again. It would certainly have helped you not to buy high, sell low, TWICE. (“I am a very experienced investor”)
Recognise that with SBTX, like all companies with such high potential returns, there are high risks and high volatility and that’s not for everyone, only those that are confident in their own constitution. There is a chance that Stuart is a poor operator who is also a great actor. He might bring in Croda revenue and an Axis deal in H1 and the SP might be 60p. Don’t act like you can be so sure which way it’s going to go just because you have lost money, it makes you sound so bitter.
Yes quite possibly. As is usually the case, we won’t know until we know. One thing I’ve been thinking about recently is the form in which the multinationals will want to sell the technology. SA said in one interview that one of the interested parties wanted to put it into food, and I’m pretty sure none of them will be selling sachets via an online subscription service, they will want to deliver a product more accessible to the mass market. To me this begs the question; why can’t we sign distribution deals for Axis as we know it AND still sign another exclusive deal for one multinational to have exclusivity on doing what they wanted to do with it? SA says he will endeavour to negotiate our ability to still sell D2C in the U.K., so if the counterparty is agreeable to this I don’t see why they wouldn’t be agreeable to the product in its current form being available in other territories.
Toyin, Aquae was spot on with his reading into my comment. The initial order was placed with a certain anticipation of sales as mentioned earlier in that paragraph. SA is nice and frugal with funds, if he thought he was going to sell 4000 orders 15 months in, he would have only ordered a fraction of what he did, and wouldn’t have been paying to store the stuff. The lack of sales have been a hiccup, but he has recognised the cause of this and told us how he is going to set us back on the right path. The clock is very much ticking to make this happen whilst the stock is good, if lots of product expires, the launch can no longer be deemed a success in my opinion.
Bel I think in this instance TC refers to the US distributors that had strong links with the US Psoriasis Association. SA said when he decided to turn down the agreement for that territory we lost access to the association. Just poor communication on our company’s part making out previously like the association was very keen to help with our own D2C sales which has obviously not been the case.
Regarding the third party elastic walls distributors in Holland, I think we can use this arrangement to read between the lines that sales are a mere fraction of what was anticipated and SA calling the launch a soft launch has saved his skin. We took space in a warehouse near the manufacturer, very convenient for the one delivery we have taken from them! And as you say Bel, they delays in getting the product from Holland to the only real customer base in the U.K. has been causing issues. Luckily for us, SA has understood both these issues, directed us back to a B2B strategy and made moves to set up a distribution base here in the U.K. The clock is now ticking to show the actions behind the words.
There is one thing for sure, there are a lot of plates spinning. At first glance it’s impressive; he must be keeping track of and knowing the inside outs of the science itself, the Croda deal, driving B2C Axis sales, new Axis territory launches, the declined distribution agreements, the potential multinational deals, the oral study and following commercialisation, medibiotix & cleanbiotix which are supposedly in negotiations, new product formulations for acne and skin cream, did someone say dandruff?, and I’m sure I’ve missed others, about which hints have been dropped by SA over the years. Bearing in mind most of those points could and would be a full time job in themselves, how is Stuart keeping track and doing a good job of them all, maximising their potential returns? I’d suggest one of two answers to that. 1.) Stuart is extremely good at timekeeping and over the next year or so is going to pull some great results out of his hat as his work comes to fruition, he has after all asked for trust and patience. 2.) Stuart talks slightly too far ahead of his actions to keep us on side because we shareholders are so impatient, which is the sentiment equivalent of robbing Peter to pay Paul, time wise. I suspect a mix of the both is true, that Stuart is working extremely hard trying to produce progress wherever he can, but is sometimes getting slightly ahead of himself when encouraged by shareholders and a dropping share price. Im sure it’s for the greater good long term.
This thought is conjecture, but do we think Manprit, as a full time CFO in our little company may actually be taking on bits of work elsewhere in the business which may keep him very well occupied? We have a very limited headcount for what the company is trying to achieve, it makes sense that someone capable of taking a CFO position would be capable of lightening Stuart’s load somewhat.