Member Info for Letitrun

Skid im not patting on the back just being realistic based on facts when you make it sound so simple to build a profitable business from the ground up. The current CEO came back in from PBX after the new CEO halved sales and has steadied a declining business back to growth. Before the new CEO was hired PBX & OPTI sales were both at £1.1m in each business and EBITDA profitable. I agree clearly the larger partners here are not performing to expectations however if they are winning the business which is the hardest thing then all management can do is support current partners and continue building new ones. That is business, some will work out and others will not. The CEO has always stated that partners tend to be optimistic and some will perform above, to, or below expectations.

From memory the run rate figures you mention were to to give an idea on what each agreement should reasonably be worth, whilst also stating its difficult to predict how they will perform and why they do not offer forecasts. As for Elrico, how many AxisBiotix products at SBTX did he adamantly say they were going to sell again from launch? So far SBTX have had to buy their growth which is of course another strategy but costs heavy dilution.

Don't forget some of these partners would have been in relation to PBX partners i.e Seed which has exceeded £1m. One of the reasons Opti stated they have invested in E-commerce was so that they do not have to rely solely on partner performance for growth which resulted in substantial chunk of last years sales.

Skid not sure i agree there as the CEO here is the one who has built some of the strongest relationships with customers negotiating several of the long term milestone agreements for both PBX on LPLDL and SweetBiotix for Opti. From what we know the CEO was also the key person who managed the acquisition and build of relationship with PBX's largest and most important customer Seed health which is the key customer currently behind that company reaching profitability shortly.

Take also the example of the most recent RNS for the low six figure order (i.e anywhere between £100k to £250k which is very large first order for a company that only turned over £800k last year). If you look at the initial RNS 20th august i assume it was him who put in a 3 month timeline in the agreement to place the first order and therefore putting pressure on the key decision maker to get it over the line.

They just need to do everything they can now to get SweetBiotix out there asap. Industry and consumers are in huge demand for something like it and could easily be a technology used in every household cupboard should the taste profile be anywhere near sugar. I think once they have confirmation they can make it a high levels and with the recent RNS suggest we're now back on that path, this should rerate massively. Once the tech is proven it can be made at scale it would be worth many multiples of the current market cap.

Aqua, it doesnt. Lets add it in "with the aim of seeing SweetBiotix® in an increasing number of products in 2024 and beyond". This was the aim (and still is the aim) but we now know why 'the aim' did not happen in 2024. The wording of 'aim' is important as whilst it was the plan based on the knowledge they had at the time theres always the risk of something like this happening until its finalised commercial scale up consistently. This would be why 'imminent' is nowhere to be seen and completely changes the context of what was said. The RNS section you copied still therefore rings true and active but delayed. I imagine they tried for numerous months trying to tweak details and understanding what was causing the issue.

Should they have updated the market to say 'the aim' of 2024 launch was not going to happen? Maybe. To do so however would have created far more questions than answers that they simply would not have known due to the complexities of the technology. By not delivering on a launch in 2024 basically told the market 'the aim' for 2024 launch of products containing sweetbiotix had been delayed and therefore something wasn't going to plan. At which point as an investor focussed on sweetbiotix you take the decision to stick and wait or move on.

Aqua your copy of the RNS only proves the point. Words such as "We are progressing incrementally" "With a view for an upcoming launch" "with the aim". This is drastically different to "imminently" and totally changes the tone. At the point this RNS was put out scale up appeared to be going to plan until they had technical issues with the consistency of the yields, which we now know scuppered any plans for a commercially viable launch. The recent RNS explained this but also that they've made a major breakthrough in sorting this out.

Skid I think they have over promised on the 2nd gen and totally undelivered to date however i do appreciate the complexities of creating something ground-breaking. I think the CEO here whilst being optimistic on sales has always made clear its difficult to see how each partner will perform and why they never put out forecasts. I believe theyve only put one forecast which they hit in 2021. The CEO here then led the PBX growth whilst a new CEO took over at Opti which resulted in the sales collapsing by 50% the following year. Since that point the CEO came back from PBX and has basically been recovering the business. Whilst not explosive growth has steadied the ship and returned the business to consecutive years of growth. They need to continue this and increase the growth rate whilst putting the burners on SweetBiotix to get it to market at a time industry and consumers are crying out for it. If you look at the strategy they set out at the start of they year they appear to be delivering on what they set out i.e move into US, India, grow eccomerce, improve margin etc.

Aqa if it supports a continued YOY growth trajectory towards profitability, which the results did show, on top of improving margin & EBITDA then yes it’s good business. Businesses need investment, one of the main reasons company’s go public. How else do you expect them to grow?

Aqua looking at the RNS that was just 1 of 4 things the money was raised for, the other three points the money can quite clearly be seen has been spent on its current commercial business as it outlined. Maybe it utilised the amount put by for second gen across those 3 other areas whilst they sorted things out.

We don’t know the details but everything could have been going swimmingly with it scaling up a few times and then suddenly not playing ball…then all bets are off until the issue is resolved. I don’t believe the word ‘imminently’ was ever used, only that a product had been planned with a partner, yet, as mentioned if they can’t make the stuff it’s not getting supplied for that product.

I think some people need to realise things can change on a dime in biotech R&D, especially something so novel that no one has ever done before.

Fried if they can’t manufacturer the product consistently how do you expect them to launch? It would have scuppered any plans. Luckily they’ve managed to resolve the major issue which wouldn’t have been a simple straight line process. This RNS is actually pretty transparent on what has happened.

The major players in this space will have budgets 10x the value of Optis cap on R&D and still not there on anything like this. They’re now in an even better position on it…but don’t get too excited!

Aqua i don't think they're 2 different things. From my limited understanding of this area the sucrose element will probably have something to do with the prebiotic element. I know its possible to convert sucrose to FOS so they are probably tying this into converting the Stevia glycosides / Mogrosides and creating an improved flavour profile and then making it a fibre in one swoop. Im sure it is incredibly complex. The ability to use sugar in the production process will make the whole process far cheaper, making it very appealing for mass market.

Aqua i was talking more generally about the tech, with its new ability to transform sugar, it will be worth way more now. Fried, if they've tweaked the process and used a new enzyme which does the same thing but better reaction to achieve the same end product then clearly it can be the same. I think the science is probably a little more complicated than can be qualified through pointless throw away negative comments on a bulletin board.

Looks like they did produce to manufacturing scale but I think the key word is ‘consistently’. It also says whilst they’ve changed the process & enzyme the product is exactly the same but purer & yields higher (the main issue). If this is the case, the delay has already been experienced and they can now go full steam ahead. To now be able to produce from sugar is massive for both cost and partner opportunities. The technology to transform sugar to a healthy sweet fibre would surely be worth a lot to the industry and explains why they’ve received milestone payments of £550k to date.

The same people on here are negative no matter what this company says. It’s like they’re trying to put off investors which is surely idiotic if you have a holding here.

Aquae, if you look at the recent accounts they did exactly that. They increased sales, margins and underlying profitability.

Take out the one off £486k non cash stock based option which I assume were linked to the CEO expired options that were reissued at 16p (double the initial 8p options) then they did make progress on underlying profitability at HY.

Look at it on a like for like to see true underlying performance and take out non Cash expenses (depreciation & stock option re issue) the underlying profitability of the business improved to a loss of £849k at H125 v £960k at H124.

Just over 10% improvement in underlying profitability was actually achieved. Fully agree though this needs to be chipped away at more heavily. Will be interested to see the cost reductions theyve put in this half and impact it has had on FY.

Unfortunately Veritas the same few people probably bought on his tip when this company was worth over £50m. TW Share profits isn’t a regulated service and shouldn’t be issuing any ‘buy’ or ‘sell’ side advice to paying subscribers. FCA should shut that site down, the sooner the better.

TW isn’t even a director of his own company Share profits, instead it’s his wife. Was he banned from being a director for unfit conduct and/ or misusing company assets linked to the rivington st scandal/ disaster. Or maybe he’s just hiding from any liability he’s exposed to which allows him to say anything he likes, true or not.

Yet this is the man questioning governance here when the chairman has an OBE for his exceptional services to industry and both non execs with FTSE governance experience where corporate governance levels are far higher than AIM.

Fried a six figure first order certainly isn’t paltry. Very interested to hear how 1 person secures new business internationally, manages existing accounts & coordinates internally on specific customer projects usually requiring as a basic: technical support, regulatory support, marketing/ packaging support, supply chain, R&D support, customer training & the general daily operational requirements which expertise differ across territories.

I think they have around 8 employees total here and also have an ecom business so they’re not swimming with internal teams to support them across these multiple functions (that would be required to service a single order like they’ve won on today’s RNS).

bit of a silly comment Fried, unless you have a revelation all small businesses are looking for to virtually remove all overheads. Not sure Ai is there yet….

Great news. They’ve brought on several decent customers in the last 12 months, delivered good H1 figures with better margins yet some muppets on here still think attempts at destabilising the business would produce a better outcome. I’m glad this business keeps ploughing on as I believe doubters will eventually be proven wrong here. Very cheap stock currently should bag at least.

Have to say that what a pretty dull RNS. Nothing really in there to get excited about. Nothing on the 20% QOQ target for 2025 which the earlier presentation said averaged 33%. Nothing on forecasts. Nothing on how the first quarter 2026 has gone/started which you’d hope would be well if they are ramping to USD8m for 2026. The step back by Julian also surprised me. To top it off the outlook simply said they will advance the new partnerships. Will watch to see how this goes but took some off table after that.

The recent presentation says they’ve exceeded 20% QoQ growth averaging 33% to June 30th 2025. 52% Q4 2025 QoQ growth with total USD 3M sales so in line with forecast. They’ve also massively reduced costs so seem to be commercially streamlining and building momentum which bodes well before Tempus & others kick in.

We would still see the transaction / volume traded in placing these shares though

Totally bizarre. They announced on the 29th they had 31,704,592 shares, then 3 days later including the 29th with total volume in this time at ~42m shares theyve managed to dispose their entire holding without destroying the price. Makes no sense whatsoever. They were somehow also doing this before the volumes were even in the millions before the Tempus deal. E.g on the 22nd August they TR1'd 16,712,860 share bought...on the 27th august the threshold was crossed back to 0%...The whole of August had 2.5m shares traded, July was 3.3m. They must be trading invisible shares. Not sure why the company isn't questioning this as it cant be accurate.