Member Info for FriedmanSowell

Bizarre response from the market but nothing too surprising, if the market was always rational there wouldn’t be many opportunities for us to find value.

Only negative was the upcoming drop in royalties but that was already a known as was the (relatively) weak dollar.

Wouldn’t bother me if this fell more, it’d be a great opportunity to add more.

The New administration under Kennedy is very professional natural health solutions so Sweet should be helped not hindered by US policy.

Missed this. I know the tock to his tick had to come at some point but had hoped he’d put it off a while longer.

If you do pop in for a look Mol I hope you read this small expression of gratitude for ll the solid hard work you’ve it into keeping us well informed over the years.

For the rest of us who have been clinging on, this is a serious opportunity to pause and think, if the investor who knows as much about this stock as anyone has finally decided to bow out, what do I know that’s keeping me in?

As always, I’ll follow my own instinct/ignorance and hang around for a while but it has become just a straight up punt on the ever decreasing likelihood of Sweet ever coming to pass rather than anything rational.

Shame for those who liked the product but this has had a feeling of inevitability about it for a long while imo.

Whenever I’ve popped into a H&B to look, our products are mostly relegated to a small corner at the back. Have also found it disappointed over the years that the porridge wasn’t included in their normal porridge section but in the weight loss section. To me its a given that someone eating porridge is looking to eat a healthier diet and I often wondered how many more we might have sold had we been on the shelf competing with other porridges and mueslis rather than at the back of the shop. Not something Opti had any control over though.

I wonder if anyone has an idea on what this means to our bottom line.

Lords, I agree with the sentiment regarding complaining about a CEO taking a par cut and you’re correct that had he retained a higher salary, there would be no complaints. That being said, many of us have felt that he hasn’t been entirely candid with investors over the years and that this is another example of that. In that context, I think the complaints are understandable.

In addition, it mustn’t be lost on us that he has been paid a substantial amount of money over an extended period when he has not only failed to create value for investors, but has actually presided over our value taking a hammering. My holdings in Opti and the large red figure next to them are all the proof I need of that.

I didn’t see the post in question but it’s not good at all that threads and posts on this board have all of a sudden started to disappear regularly when they criticise Opti. I don’t remember this happening in the past. Can only think that OPTI is threatening legal action against this forum.

If it continues, This forum will become redundant and we may as well all jump over to Twitter which is probably why many stocks have a lot more active discussions there than here.

As for the reduction, claiming Opti directors took a 20% reduction would likely be read by most people as Opti benefiting from the entirety of that saving as the RNS referred to it helping Opti to reach profitability. If the saving is shared with another company, that helps Opti’s bottom line much less and so in my opinion is misleading investors by omitting the fact the salary was saved by cutting renumeration from a third party.

At least you're not a hoe

I'm not inclined to give SOH the benefit of the doubt that he was giving TW's disciples the cold shoulder, the fact is he has always ignored probing, decent, good faith questions at these events and plumped for the easy to answer (possibly) planted ones. It is one of the behaviours that has helped to harm trust.

The salary for the Amazon Account manager is an absolute disgrace. Amazon make it easy and do all the work, that's what you pay them the huge fees for. Doesn't make sense to in effect double the fees by paying someone what is a low skill job to accomplish. I'm not even sure how they have enough work to fill more than a day per week.

Thanks everyone with the responses.

I keep saying time will tell, now I'm not so sure. This could go on forever.

For years Opti have spoken about ongoing discussions regarding potential deals for Sweet. Sometimes they have been vague, sometimes more specific, sometimes with a timescale, sometimes the timescale is replaced with a call for patience from the most patient investors in the market.

I think we all appreciate that deals aren't done overnight but equally, deals don't go on in perpetuity without a decision being made. Given we were led to believe that the final taste tests had been passed quite some time ago, it is reasonable to wonder whether the discussions are actually ongoing or whether the other parties have abandoned them and Opti send the odd email hoping to rekindle them whilst also giving SOH the cover required to make his claim that discussions are ongoing.

My gut feeling is that the Sweet dreams is over and that SOH knows it but will do anything to avoid announcing that fact.

Th lack of insider buying over the years confirms this to me because I think if they genuinely thought there was a transformational deal in the pipeline (which a Sweet deals would be), you'd have to think a few of them would have piled in with some more purchases.

Apologies for the cynicism, I am always happy to be convinced that I am wrong and in this case would be very happy to be convinced I'm wrong but at some point, this question needs to be answered.

I would also ask one further question of those who disagree with me, what would you timeframe be for giving up on Sweet?

With thanks.

SF

I struggle to work out whether the failure has been to use the scientific research we’ve paid for in order to successfully commercialise our products or the scientific research we’ve paid paid for didn’t have the required rigour to successfully commercialise our products particularly where big players are concerned.

“ Once Alex realised O’Hara was more than willing for Alex to be the patsy, he, like a detective catching a villain in a lie, started looking more forensic at past events. It is perhaps this that O’Hara is allowing to cloud his judgement.”

I wonder if impartial and objective journalists, unencumbered by sponsorship and personal relationships with the CEO, might have examined the company with this sort of rigour before falling out with said CEO?

Also, fancy penning an article with the sole aim of proving how your coverage was objective all along whilst not realising that in that article you admit that you went easy on the company and failed to pick up on things that other investors on this board were picking up all the time.

As someone who’s been uneasy about SOH’s relationship with a couple of bloggers over the years, I’m happy to see him breaking away. Of course this has hit the SP while followers of those blogs sell their holdings but so be it.

In theory that's true but without wanting to stir up a hornet's nest, there's diminishing faith that Opti would benefit from any growth there because of the determination to see our stake down.

I think it may have been Aquea (apologies if wrong) a few years ago when we were in single figures who made a good case for why Opti's own products were basically free based on the value of their holdings in Skin and Pbx being worth the market cap of Opti at the time. It was a good argument, I bought at 8p and did well on the subsequent ride to 40p. I'm not sure that argument would be as convincing today.

I remember that interview and the response on here when it wasn’t brought up. SOH was very silver tongued too and subsequent events or lack of them have undermined him and what he said immensely

The problem with Instagram followers as an indicator is that you can buy them very, very cheaply.

I had the same question, either way it isn’t great. That’s the problem with complex approaches to weight loss and the appeal of simple solutions like a weekly injection or in our case, a refreshing daily drink.

That’s the way I see it going.

I am a happy customer of the injections as a kickstarter. They are very effective but as we know, there are drawbacks. The muscle loss and lethargy principle among them plus, who wants to stab themselves with chemicals for the rest of their life which is what you’re in for if you don’t find an alternative way of keeping the weight offf (and most people don’t). That’s where a once-a-day powdered drink or other product comes in. Another suggestion I’d make to partners is to look at the Protein industry. They have been incredibly innovative and I now have protein bread, protein yoghurt and delicious protein puddings in my fridge. There’s no reason Slim couldn’t find its way into a similar range of products. There’s no question the demand is there for something like this.

I liked the sound of the US product from the off, a drink once a day is very easy to manage. One of the potential difficulties of seeking Slim as something that should be consumed after every meal was that it’s hard to sell that sort of complexity in any numbers. One easily prepared and tasty drink is a much different proposition. Almost make you wonder why we didn’t try that route in the first place or earlier.

Anyway, we’re all mostly sold on our ingredients I guess which is why we’re still here, would like to see a lot more offerings of once a day products from our partners from here on in and hopefully much greater publicity.

Ha. I promise you this, in exchange for all the hard work I've read on this board over the years, I'll let you know.

The day I sell will be the day before a game-changing RNS on Sweet.