Member Info for ox123

Thanks mol, I think this sort of supports the point I am making about Zenakine being out there. You are a trusted source of information!

I'll bet MD reckons it's out there.

Scandia use the Zenakine name, but that is likely because they not only market a product line themselves, but they also do contract manufacturing for others, as per their website:

"Preparation of cosmetics or cosmetic masses to order (service or contract manufacturing of cosmetics) or manufacturing of cosmetics under own brand name".

Perhaps the AI bots need to sharpen up their ideas 😊. Who knows why some of them believe Zenakine was only launched in September 2025, what are they smoking? 🤣But then AI bots just try to answer the question they are asked - they don't diagnose the question, nor do they differentiate between fact and fake news when they scrape websites for the answers. So you can't necessarily trust the answer as being factually correct.

So there's still a place for a Chat Board used by humans! Anyone see the news about a Chat Board designed for AI bots to use? 😂

Yes speedy, I think some in the US Administration see the problem, but I'm not sure Trump gets it...

And if Tether is making money like Circle (which I suspect it is) it is going to get harder to stop them (the "Genius Act" may well go down as the dumbest piece of US Legislation ever). Not enough supervision over what they are doing, no control on cross-border crime or compensation for victims. It may well end in tears and rock the whole financial system.

All the more reason to hold gold...

Some of them think Zenakine was launched in September 2025. Others have it as April 2025. That's more accurate for the "official" launch, but not really accurate. The commercialisation started as soon as the commercial agreement between Croda and SBTX was finalised in November 2024. The SBTX Final Results on 4th December 2024 states: "Now moving into commercialisation phase with official industry launch in April 2025".

So Sederma were in full commercialisation phase by December 2024 and they were talking to key likely early adopters (I think SA told us as much on an IMC but don't ask me to plough through them again!). The trouble with AI bots is you have to tell them exactly what you want them to do (you can't leave anything for their discretion or they just "hallucinate" - don't let Silicon Valley tell you otherwise - no AGI yet!).

Try telling your AI bot to recalculate based on a start date of December 2024.

Thanks Element - it's a very active Board so I kind of thought it would be there somewhere I just hadn't looked hard enough! Apologies for not giving credit where it is due.

I am not a crypto fan (or perhaps especially not a bitcoin fan). But the emergence of the "stablecoin" concept does seem to be profitable for the companies promoting it and it may well have uses for payments where bitcoin doesn't - ironic indeed that even stablecoin promoters realise it needs backing with something "solid"...(and the US dollar is no longer something "solid"). I'm not sure where this will end. I don't think the powers that be are entirely sure stablecoin is not a threat but Trump has kind of given it a green light if providers hold US dollar assets. But, of course, they are already diversifying 🤣and that is to the benefit of gold.

Hi pv

There is a big dispersion of views from "experts" about what the headline figure in USA will look like in 6-9 months (from deflation to rampant inflation). My take is the price of consumer staples will be rising quite fast but wages won't be going up much (cautious companies and AI displacing some jobs). So headline rate will depend on which of these different sources of inflation is more highly weighted. Either way it won't make for a happy voter so Trump will be looking for someone to blame!

For Gold specifically, barring a crisis, I'm not so sure it will be the most important factor over this year (but longer term it may well be).

I haven't seen on this Board anyone mention that Tether was the second largest purchaser of gold last year (but maybe they have) and reports suggest they will keep on buying:

https://cointelegraph.com/news/why-tether-is-buying-more-gold-than-many-central-banks-and-what-it-signals

The idea being that stablecoins will be attractive to some countries wishing to diversify away from transacting exclusively in dollars (for all the reasons of fiat currencies given on this Board and because the USA has "weaponised" the dollar). Those countries can't exactly pay in gold🤣 so "stablecoins" may appeal to them. Tether are using surplus on their balance sheet to buy gold to enhance their appeal to these countries as they can say, "look, we don't just hold US Treasuries/Commercial Paper (which they have to) we also have gold on our balance sheet so our product is a safe alternative to the dollar"

I suspect the emergence of a new buyer at the margin has been significant for the price of gold and will continue to be so this year.

Disco

Even Aquae's AI answer says 6-12 months "no big PR" from the cosmetic brands...

We have been able to establish that SBTX received in excess of £750k royalties to end June 2025 - it won't have been just "samples" - that product has got to be out there somewhere by now 😂

Interesting Aquae, but did your AI instruction include the fact that key clients had samples of Zenakine long before the April 2025 launch so the NDAs, lab samples and concept formulas would have been completed before the "official " launch? It's not like Sederma didn't have the time over several years to get all the plans fine-tuned to the earliest possible impact for this product - long term holders here know just how long a wait it was 🤣

If so, at the very least we would be way down the "INCI" stage...

Hi Disco, be reassured Zenakine is out there "in the wild", you just can't see it in most of the retail end products without drilling down to a list of the underlying ingredients that make up Zenakine (see posts from 6 months plus back and "Holy Grail"). So far our intrepid chat board members have identified one Polish supplier using the brand name "Zenakine" on their packaging but note that this company is also a reseller of "Zenakine" to other cosmetic companies. As things stand Zenakine is a B2B brand and has no brand recognition amongst the general public (and can be massively successful without ever being a brand recognised by the general public).

Cosmetics companies regularly reformulate their existing brand (and by adding Zenakine they can claim new product benefits). They don't change the brand name they have spent millions building and they don't put the brand name of an ingredient supplier - why would they? It's not their brand - if every cosmetic company using Zenakine put "Zenakine" as an ingredient on their packaging some customers would just buy the cheapest one containing "Zenakine" (and they would probably be making a smart decision 🤣). Of course if Zenakine ever became a household name the cosmetic companies might have to change their approach, but I suspect Sederma are going to wait and think long and hard before risking such a marketing strategy. - it could backfire.

Let's focus on sales going forward.

Sederma have been busy doing what they do best - getting round the clients worldwide, explaining the benefits of Zenakine and booking sales. I do often wonder how precisely this deal came about and where the credit should go. Perhaps it was all just luck? I'm not too cynical so happy to give the management some credit for this deal (but equally urge them to seek out another one!).

The two acquisitions are plodding along ok. Whilst management forecasts may be a disaster 😒the businesses appear solid enough so as not to cause any significant financial damage (that doesn't mean SBTX should buy more - they don't even have the management capacity to make the most of what they have already bought!).

Axis-Biotix - oh dear, we are not going to cover ourselves in glory with this (even though it is a commendable product for those in need).

Overall though it is a positive picture and the significant potential in this share remains intact.

I guess the news below is positive in a general sense:

https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/eu-commission-take-steps-improve-drone-detection-capabilities-2026-02-11/

But this is the EU so I don't expect to see this convert into action any time soon🤣

Thanks RM for information on possible MSI anti-drone business in Europe.

It does seem incredibly difficult to know what business MSI has now (let alone pipeline) as they often seem to be a long way down from the prime contractor. It doesn't help that the management's default approach is to say as little as possible, whether or not this is necessary for security reasons! It seems to me that unless their involvement is in the public domain (as with US Navy contract) they simply aren't going to tell us.

So we are left to parse the cryptic comments from Michael Bell in the Half Year report:

"prospects better than at any time in Company's history" "opening up opportunities in the much larger market for our 'Land Systems'".

In general I prefer "underpromise and overdeliver" to the alternative approach 🤣but MSI do seem to take this to the extreme of simply saying almost nothing...I would invest more but not without something a bit more concrete.

Shychap, you are spot on here. The £750,000 was not just for 3 months, it also included product made and sold in the period pre official launch.

This doesn't mean kitchentowel will necessarily be wrong in his guess of what the royalty income will be - the product is being sold all over the world and will be in cosmetics on shelves and online all over the world, just not with "Zenakine" on the label.

Hi kitchen

The broker figures you quote are close to the figures I put in my last post. They are very significant in the context of a minnow like SBTX.

However, for an elephant like Croda, £30m of sales per annum is less than 2% of Croda's annual sales. So focus on the SBTX share price and forget about Croda share price. Even if Sederma got to the level of Matrixyl sales, it would still be well less than 10% of Croda's annual sales. And, for Croda, that would mean some sales would be replacing sales they already achieve through Matrixyl so the benefit to the bottom line for Croda is nothing like the benefit to the bottom line for SBTX. I think it will take some time for Sederma to get Zenakine sales to that level but it is certainly possible and so, by definition, a £1 share price for SBTX is possible at some point (just don't ask when! 🤣). And, yes, Zenakine could well exceed Matrixyl's peak sales at some point, who knows? We just need to keep the analysis on Zenakine and SBTX - Croda's share price is a different beast affected by a whole host of factors beyond Zenakine.

Just to emphasise that I remain positive on SBTX, appreciate the contributions of others, and am hoping that other contributors are not tempted to make decisions to buy or sell based on possible misconceptions.

Remember that Croda is an elephant, and SBTX is a flea 😊

Kitchen, thanks for your posts (and especially one without any dots 🤣).

Looking at the link you provided to Croda Powerpoint from May 2025 (and especially page 6), Beauty Actives is 20% of Consumer Care sales.

Now, being generous, let's say Consumer Care is 60% of Croda Group sales. So Beauty Actives is 20% of that 60%. That means 12% of Croda Group sales is Beauty Actives. How much of that is Zenakine? We don't know. I agree it will grow and yes the margins in Beauty Actives are better than other parts of the business. But just now a reasonable assessment is that Zenakine would at best be a few percent of Croda's sales. My rough calculation is that if Zenakine were 1% of Croda's total annual sales that would be about £17m which would mean at least £1.7m annual "profit" for SBTX. If Zenakine were 2% of Croda's annual sales, that would be £34m and at least £3.4m annual "profit" for SBTX. THAT SORT OF PROFIT CAN MOVE THE SBTX SHARE PRICE. Let's say £3.4m from Zenakine is worth at least perhaps 26p per share for SBTX (who knows??? - share price today is under 20p). If Zenakine fully replaced Matrixyl over time perhaps it could be 3 or 4x that value...

So, to conclude, SBTX can do fantastically well from a product which will only represents a few percentage points of Croda's business. However high the margins on Zenakine for Croda, it can still only represent a small percentage of Croda's profits. Even at peak sales, Zenakine is unlikely on its own to move the needle on the Croda share price. So beware interpreting that a massive spike or massive fall in Croda profits or share price is influenced in any significant way by sales of Zenakine. In terms of companies, what we are dealing with here is the difference between an elephant (Croda) and a flea (SBTX). 😂

Hi jansy, you are right to point out that the Croda share price got to £100 a share in 2021. This was part of the Covid 19 mania because Croda supplied the speciality excipients and adjuvants for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. When Covid 19 ceased to be an existential threat, the share price fell back to earth.

This serves as a useful illustration that Croda's business is large and complex. Croda Beauty is only one part of the business and Zenakine is only one product within Croda Beauty. As I have said before on this board, it would be a mistake for SBTX investors to pay much attention to the Croda share price in terms of how well or otherwise Zenakine sales are progressing. Yes Croda are usually good at making speciality chemicals, and yes Sederma are usually very good at marketing them to cosmetic companies (and this is worth factoring in to an assessment of SBTX prospects). We just need to bear in mind that Croda is a big and complex business where the success or failure of other business lines can easily obscure the success or otherwise of Zenakine so we should not place much (or maybe any) focus on the Croda share price as a predictor of the benefit of Zenakine to SBTX (either positive or negative).

Thanks mol for posting a summary of what is in the Chinese newspaper. Note that ALL THREE intermediate products in mol's summary are marketed by Sederma. Worth reflecting on the credibility and marketing reach Sederma have and perhaps contrasting to the marketing efforts of SBTX which can deliver a few lines in the Sunderland Echo...

That is not to criticise the efforts of the SBTX marketing team but it should be pause for thought for the SBTX Board as to where they should be putting their time and money (i.e. in developing the IP and the negotiation of licensing deals with companies with global reach, and promoting the Dermatonics brand for which they acquired the goodwill).

Relative to these opportunities, Axis-Biotix is a sideshow which should be stripped back to an online offering.

There is speculating and there is investing. If this is a multi-year bull market for precious metals (and I think it is) just sitting tight and waiting for the speculation to work its way out is a sensible strategy for those with the patience. Noone knows what the spot price of silver will be in an hour, a day, or a week. In the long run though, noone can buck the fundamentals (but they can go bust trying!).

As others have said, the miners will still be here long after the speculators have gone...

Kitchen, I think you need to do your own research and be more precise. You mention a "billion" of sales for Beauty Actives - dollars, pound sterling, buttons?

Matrixyl annual sales are about $164m

https://www.globalinforesearch.com/reports/2750305/matrixyl

It will be some time before Zenakine replaces Matrixyl. Of course Zenakine can develop its own market beyond Matrixyl (sleep benefit etc.) and this will also grow over time. But filling this board with hype, hyperbole and lots of dots rather than proper analysis is not doing anyone any favours.

Aquae, who indeed! I have questioned before whether the SBTX management are perhaps enthralled by the first product they ever launched rather than taking a step back and looking at all the products (and potential products) they acquired with Dermatonics and how they might leverage that acquisition.

I think the fundraise which was at least apparently mostly for the Axis-Biotix launch into Superdrug has been the source of much of the investor concern - and I do have concerns myself as to whether it is the best use of funds and whether this is the right marketing solution for the Axis-Biotix range.

Thank goodness Sederma are calling the shots when it comes to marketing Zenakine - they have the experience and depth of expertise that SBTX do not possess. So based on this chat board some investors are OVERESTIMATING the abilities of the SBTX management (which is, after all, just a small business with very limited experience of launching products in this marketplace). The only part of the business with demonstrated experience is Dermatonics, but bear in mind the driver and architect of this business retired and is not there to help and advise the SBTX management. I'm just keen to ensure nobody panic sells if/when the AxisBiotix figures disappoint (p.s. I don't think you will as you are already flagging some issues here yourself).