Member Info for dougerboy

Thanks for this AJP but if I read that link you posted correctly Chemtan received 4 shipments - 3 in Feb 24 1 in March, meaning 160T so far for this year. It looks like leather treatment is indeed becoming a big deal. And hopefully at juicy Gross Margins.

Fair point WD. And there have been many others fair points made by the various bystanders to this decision, including Smart Investment, Elsol et al. There is validity in much of them, if not all. BUT on the capacity point, it must be remembered, that JS has always said CURRENT plant capacity can handle up to $15M in revenue. So, the idea that capacity shortfall is a reason for the recent termination of the major customer negotiation (leading to the $3M+ rev „loss“) cannot be correct.

UNLESS waiting in the wings of the coming months are the beginnings of new higher margin contracts with potential revenue pipelines that would eat up the now „released“ capacity, equivalent to some $8M and more.

Other metrics such as Ops Hires and Raw Material imports are for this reason worth continued monitoring.

Not surprise

Too bad Smart. I understand the frustration. I recall when I took up a SME MD job, one f the first things I did - as profitability wasn’t good - was look at profitability by customer. Busy fools was an apt descriptor and for those clients, their refusal to accept price increases was GOOD for us. We said cheerio and focussed on stuff that made money. Non profitable growth is a recipe for disaster - glad we’re not doing that, it would seem. I suspect this client has kept their previous formulations on the back burner, but it would surprise me if they returned to the negotiating table. JS, however, really might not be bothered given that his factory, logistics, admin, customer services, sales, finance can focus on the other higher margin (hopefully) stuff coming down the line.

I pulled this info from the “Market Drivers” slide from an Itaconix 2017 presentation. Still seems pretty valid. Though the BAYER share price is down the pan! They could do worse than look at us.

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MARKET DRIVERS

Increasing consumer expectations, regulatory changes and environmental best practice driving major consumer brands to seek sustainable raw materials

P&G – Goal of using 100% renewable or recycled materials for all products

L’Oreal – By 2020, 100% of products to have an environmental or societal benefit Croda - >60% of raw materials currently derived from natural or renewable resources

‘Together for sustainability ’

Major Chemical Companies join initiative

AkzoNobel, Arkema, BASF, Bayer Clariant, DSM, DuPont, Evonik, Henkel, IFF, Lanxess, Solvay, Wacker

Developing sustainable supply chains

Well aligned with global trend and ideally positioned to play a significant role in the redesign of many supply chains to improve sustainability and performance

******************************************************

You are probably right Elsol. Either way I’ll be hanging on. 18M net profit on a 100M sales would be very nice. With a 40% dividend payout on that amount would be 7.2M would be ca. 0.50 per share, assuming no further share dilution. It’s a waiting game for sure.

P&G had a net margin of 18% in 2023.

The CEO John Shaw, I think in his last interview, stated a goal/ambition a few years from now (let’s call it 10) was to be a $100M company. I really hope that happens - he sounded quite bullish. If it does, I think we can at that point be considered to be a quite mature chemical ingredients business. I wonder what PBT & PAT margins might look like then?

Thanks AJP, very interesting & another fascinating field for maybe 20. years down the line, once cosmetics, odour, paints, absorbents, et al are maxed out :-)

Maybe a liability too far then BD!

There certainly is s Elsol - and just found this piece of recent research (2022) where an acknowledgment to ITACONIX for their financial support is given. The essence of this research is this - if I’ve understood correctly - it is possible/would be the intention to use Itaconix manufactured polymers which can be made to be highly pH sensitive to deliver drugs into the body to locally attack low pH (acidic) environments - such as cancers. This is probably a long long way off on the ITX product roadmap, but given that it has been an active area of recent research, it sounds like it’s worth a question to John at the next Q&A. I wonder we are in discussion with any of the drug majors?

https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlepdf/2022/na/d2na00399f

I’ll take your word on that Elsol - in my next life I think I’m going to study chemistry!

Found it! And well worth a watch:

https://youtu.be/9ksKyvrPQU4?si=ZnHsi3al2IVew_OW

What‘s Thordon up to I wonder? Haven’t seen anything from him for a while. He’s normally pretty good on technical stuff.

Good Post AJP. And interestingly the first patent entry on the link you post https://patents.justia.com/inventor/yvon-durant has as co-inventor Jim Gordon. He is ex-Unilver. So I think the Itaconix Executive Team will know exactly what the „big boys“ Unilever, P&G, et al need.

I also recall seeing a video presentation a while back from the CTO Yvon Durant where he stressed the strategic significance of Itaconix‘ patented polymerisation production process. It was a fascinating watch.

Great find AJP! And hugely significant, because I asked my wife if she’d heard of Tresemme, and she said „of course, I use it all the time!“

I think we are really now going to move up through the gears and it would be fab if we get to hear of capex spending plans later this year to accommodate & handle future growth.

Haha great post Spindok. I have no more a periscope than you, had i had, I might have sold a whack a couple of years ago. I think I’m still glad I didn’t because I think we are finally heading towards an „Up-Periscope“ moment. I think our CEO and CTO believe the same.

I share the frustration Smart, having been there all the way up to x5 from where we are now. The auditors can’t be far away from signing off 2023 books and end of February doesn’t cause me too much concern. Thanks just hope the momentum is continuing and if so, the share price will take care of itself. Raw materials, new staff hires etc. all point in that direction plus the 10M of investment by investors who I guess are more in the know than us. Wouldn’t it be great if with results we got news of GM improvement & Capex plans to fuel burgeoning growth.

If those numbers and assumptions are right AJP, last year was 35T per qtr average. 80T so far in 2024 and the qtr isn’t over yet.

I hope the growth is accelerating, it’s been a longer time (than expected) coming.It would be really great to pass breakeven with a bang this year. Come on team Itaconix!

Wish I’d been a Long Term Amazon shareholder back in The 2000‘s. I would have been asking the same questions as now. Fazit: I‘m in for the long haul and the revenue curve is going the right way.

Fair comment Thordon. I just checked Boots & a leading men‘s brand which they stock - Bulldog Skincare - contains Sodium Polyitaconate. Interestingly, Bulldog is owned by https://edgewell.com/ a leading and global US company which also had Wilkinson Sword, Carefree, Wet Ones, among others, in its brand portfolio. The affirmations of our ingredients continue to grow it would seem. Come on share price!