Member Info for Cliostock

Bigpunt, I had considered the option that you simply didn’t trust the Nomads or the system, but I couldn’t understand why you would take the chance of investing in any shares at all with those beliefs. Each to their own, I suppose, and as much as I don’t agree with the foundations of your point I can understand where it comes from, but I do know if I had a similar opinion I wouldn’t take the risk of investing at all.

In my opinion Bigpunt, respectfully, your post is a load of rubbish.

There is a nomad for a reason. The board cannot just make up an acquisition prospect in an RNS. There are strict market rules to ensure this doesn’t happen. Your post is an attempt to spread what is nothing more than a conspiracy theory.

On the topic of assurance for existing employee contracts, this is normally fairly straightforward as the TUPE requirements are usually a satisfactory guideline for all involved. But I do take your point about the possibility of SBTX actually wanting to try our technologies in the existing products before purchase, I imagine that could take some time. At least any time spent there is saved back after the purchase. I just hope a reasonable timeframe unfolds, for Stuart’s credibility as much as anything. He is out of control of the Croda timing and investors acknowledge this. The acquisition, the acne, the oral etc are all within Stuart’s realm of influence and I hope he uses them as a conduit to prove to the doubters what he is capable of!

I think by this point the deal should have been negotiated to a point where the boards of both companies have an agreed set of Heads of Terms. I would sincerely hope we are at the stage of due diligence and legal work with our representatives ensuring the acquisition is accretive, as opposed to the target’s owners telling us it is. From my experience of these types of deals Stuart may not know when the actual date of completion is until one or two days before the contracts are signed. Stuart may be asking the lawyers for updates on the Monday and the deal could be done and announced by the Friday.

It would be incredible if the acquisition RNS confirmed, as has been indicated, that SBTX as a group would become profitable because of the targets profits.

Well put Aquae. Although it’s frustrating that we investors don’t currently know the status of the aforementioned points, we must trust that SA has the progress of these in hand. He will be well aware of the laws of diminishing returns as companies like Optibac increase their own market share in a similar sector. Although I believe our specialism in skin will help differentiate our company as we gain traction. Any day we could hear about Croda, Acne or the acquisition but it doesn’t mean it will be tomorrow. But we will hear and if just one of those three opportunities is a great success we have the potential for a 50p plus SP. For such a great potential gain, I think the risks here are as minimal as they could be due to our funded status and the fact that it seems most of the groundwork is done on at least two of our five pillars. Patience really is a virtue here which doesn’t suit those with a racing mind but investors with an outlook of 3 months plus could do really well from a buy at this level. I do hope Stuart finds some time to propose the same to a few institutional buyers.

Big relief to see there are no disasters waiting in the wings after that period of slow news flow.

Of course the SP drop is a punch in the stomach but as I said the other night, it will come back, as the information in the RNS was priced in. Blunt communication was all I ever wanted as an investor, and for us to be pointed in the right direction as a business.

Our board is not necessarily in control of the timing of the acquisition and is not in control of Croda’s schedule. As much as it would be lovely if the board pulled these things forward due to the impatience of folks like me who check a BB every day, it’s not how these big deals work. The problem is the person checking the BB every day, not the company. “A watched kettle never boils” is not a term meant to be taken literally.

I’ll check in again in a month when all todays nonsense has died down, and if we don’t have Croda or acquisition news, I’ll go away again for another month.

In the meantime it would be nice if SA did what he could to convince an ii or two that now is a good time to buy for the long term, we know the RNS will have been fact checked by the NOMAD and we may be in the doldrums a bit, but despite the fact the acquisition may be a 50/50 the Croda is nailed on and agreed, which for me is the pillar with the largest potential.

Take care all.

If the update is bad the SP will fall as people sell, but it will recover. There is plenty of uncertainty priced in and knowing where we stand will be a positive for investors that are looking further forward than this week.

It’s peculiar to see you poke at rampers when you are clearly deramping.

Luckily Belgrano will not take your advice to sell all his stock, he’ll see the ulterior motive given your last post was taking the mick out of him. Friendly when it suits your agenda, eh?

Secondly, I really hope you are right regarding the anticipation of some insight into the potential revenue streams.

There were no contracts or revenue when the share price was running away in the lead up to the bright study results. I’ll meet you somewhere in the middle and say ‘hope’ is an important factor in an RNS over plain bad news communications, but that’s situational, it has to be there to be there. I acknowledge bad communications won’t help the SP but I don’t think they could be any worse than no communication. Hence 16p from 75p. At least keeping share holders fully informed about any poor business updates would give the company a chance to fully communicate the details preventing wild imaginations, and also giving the company a chance to explain its next steps and build trust from shareholders that it can correct its position. Silence just gives the impression of heads in sand.

Let’s just all settle down and hope for a thorough and detailed update by the end of this month to mirror the timing of the trading update last year. Let’s hope it provides detailed updates on each of the carrots that have been dangled over the past 2/3 years, or where there is no update the topics are at least mentioned and summarised. No hints, no clues, no need to read between the lines. I’m sure most have seen Croda’s last shareholder update, it was a good 30 minutes to read it, let alone understand and digest it. If we were to be blessed with something similar maybe we could discuss facts rather than opinions. Opinions can be argued and challenged, complete facts given clearly can not. It’s also important for sentiment. The company is so much further down the road to profitability now than it was when it was at a 100m valuation. That is the importance of sentiment and the fuel of sentiment is communication. No investor can expect blockbusters every RNS, but prolonged periods of silence are bad, and anyone who says otherwise is kidding themselves. GLA LTH.

Bel: “ it’s lack of information from Stuart that's actually killing this share price, and the disgruntled investors are bickering amongst themselves as a result.”

Not a truer word said for weeks on here.

Regardless of if the technology works (which it does), regardless of if it could be used in BBBiont (which we don’t know) and regardless of who’s a bull or a bear or is selling or is playing games - it’s all just an outpour of frustration at a share that has the potential to be flying but is languishing in a sea of silence. It’s a shame that that’s the only fact we can probably all agree on.

Ahh, please accept my apologies, I had made a presumption you just wanted to pull it to pieces.

On your point, the other day I was reading the Strategic review in the companies house filing dated 9/1/23, which stated the Acne formulation was stable. I think during 2022 the team were quite rightly concentrating on the floundering PS product. I’m convinced it’s a working product that solves a problem but is too much like hard work to take. I think the same concept but targeting Acne and packaged as a chewing gum would be transformative.

I think the why would have been to your request for a Manchester meet link Farris. It might just be my technology but I think the recording has been taken offline. I don’t think listening to it would do any good. You would hear an enthusiastic board who know their stuff about the game they are in and have a sensible strategy to commercialise it. There were some very knowledgeable and experienced investors in the room and nobody had issue with the ‘road map’, as they called it at the time. In hindsight, I would guess it may make the board sound a bit daft and I would see the sense in its removal. After all, it would now just be a stick to beat them with.

As we know the journey has thrown up some significant diversions and furnished the board with some real world knowledge about making money in this sector, or not. That bits done now, so let’s look at the next communication from the company and see if it actually offers some proper insight into the next 18 months, rather than looking back 18 months. We know the outcome of that one already!

Ahh yes Nick I’ve found what you meant through the link on the far right of products, good spot.

It lists things you would expect to see on the Sederma stand, Revitalide, BB-Biont, Matryxl Vatiants, and ‘Coming Soon: Product revealed at the innovation zone’

They are certainly teasing something, and luckily not long until we find out what!

Nick, I see, that makes sense. As I say I don’t know what I'm doing on ADVFN.

Aquae, I’m not holding out much hope if I’m honest, but it would make a lot of sense for the companies to hold off an announcement until the event, which will take place around the same time we are expecting our trading update, so there is a chance. If they’re not ready for the event and not ready to say anything further in the TU then I don’t know what to think.

Out of interest, how do you know the guild has woken up if you are no longer a member?

No idea Nick sorry, I don’t do ADVFN and if I occasionally have a look at the board over there it seems populated by total imbeciles. I’m not sure what you mean by guild.

From a Croda email newsletter.

“Join us at in-cosmetics Global 2023 on stand J50

We look forward to welcoming you to our stand to discover our latest ingredient and formulation innovation, designed to meet evolving consumer needs…”

Could it, just could it…

Things go up and down Ody, just the nature of the beast. After the 9p IPO it had been at 28p and then down to 5p before making its way onwards to 75p. That will have been a 15 bagger for someone and someone else who sold low probably lost the 23p a share. It went to 75p on hope and tailwinds around the time of the BRIGHT study. That study is still valid, thus theoretically capable of a 75p SP with the right sentiment (minus slight adjustment for placing), plus we have experience around the difficulties of sales, the Croda clock has run down to ‘imminent’ status and we are soon to be expecting news on an Acne development which I believe if it works and is sold as a chewing gum it will be 100x as successful as the badly designed and marketed PS. Of course before launch we didn’t know it was badly designed and marketed, but now we do which makes us further down the road to meaningful revenue from it. In the background the board is working on an acquisition which will lead to another profitable revenue stream and could be packaged into a whole pillar deal turning us back into the strong IP-owning, multi-royalty collecting business most of us invested in.

That’s what there is to be hopeful about.

On the flip side of that the company’s communication to shareholders has been absolutely abysmal since a few months after the launch of Axis and for that reason concerns are germinating, including my own, and that is a risk to all shareholders.

This company is still one of the most potentially exciting on AIM currently in my opinion. For that reason it could also become one of the biggest let downs. That’s up to Mr. Ashman who has talked a lot and so far delivered little revenue, but the upcoming months will show exactly what he is or is not doing with the exciting potential. However, excitement means sentiment and that is important for SP and therefore for shareholder value.

I understand ‘it is what it is’ when dealing with Croda. I’d certainly rather be dealing with them on these slightly secretive terms than trying to manufacture and sell the lysate alone a lá Axis.

We’ve just got to hope Stuart is pushing them for information as I refuse to agree the right thing to do is to leave our own SP to languish due to Croda’s standard policy of secrecy. As TC says, all we need is an indication of revenue, nothing that destroys client confidentiality. I will be forgiving to the current stance if the situation is dealt with head on in this months trading update but to leave it unaddressed would be poor form on Stuart’s part in my opinion.