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Kitchen, Zenakine is just one product within Croda Beauty Actives, which is one of 4 business lines within Croda Consumer Care, which is one of 3 divisions within Croda (the others being Life Sciences and Industrial Specialties).

I would argue therefore there is virtually ZERO correlation between the performance of Zenakine and the wider performance of the Croda group (i.e. the Croda business is massive and if all the other parts of it were tanking and Zenakine were booming, the Group results would still be terrible). So it is a total waste of time following the Croda share price in the hope of some read-across (positive or negative) to SBTX.

By all means research the history of Sederma (and their marketing successes) and the chemical manufacturing capabilities of Croda (and in my past experience they come out well). But that is about it in terms of relevance to SBTX.

Aquae, I think the House Broker take their cue from SBTX and would not credit them with any better understanding of the right way to market Axis-Biotix than SBTX.

Where is their analysis of the manufacturing lead times and minimum quantities which will be a drag on distribution efficiency and margin? Where is their analysis of the viability of selling Axis-Biotix via retail stores and the challenges of promoting a niche product in this environment where the Axis-Biotix name has virtually no brand recognition whatsoever? In reality you cannot expect this from a House Broker (as it would come across as negative). Unfortunately in small caps there is no other analyst coverage so as an investor you need to do your own analysis and hope it is right 😂.

I am therefore taking Singer's projections with a large dose of salt.

Based on this bulletin board, it seems to me that:

For Axibiotix, some investors are OVERESTIMATING the potential for the product and the marketing capability of SBTX to deliver the desired outcome.

For Zenakine, some investors are UNDERESTIMATING the respect, global reach and power of Sederma in the worldwide market for Cosmetic intermediate products.

If the next update for Axis-Biotix is disappointing, please don't do a Dustbin by selling your shares as a knee-jerk reaction (although MD may well thank you for doing so 🤣). Look carefully at the overall investment case - if it is still not for you, so be it (no intention of ramping here).

Yes Bubs, Axis-Biotix in retail stores would require promotion so agree with you.

In addition, as I have said before, Axis-Biotix was not the right product to launch in retail stores. The total addressable market (TAM) is so much smaller than the Dermatonics skin care products already distributed in Boots and Superdrug (for which there was significant advertising and promotion done - this was a few years prior to SBTX acquiring the company). The right product would be a brand extension to the Dermatonics range (e.g. day and night creams containing Zenakine). The TAM is far greater, there are existing customers buying the Dermatonics range in Superdrug and Boots so the ad/promotion needed would be less and easier and cheaper (you would have your "new" product on the shelf next to your existing Deramtonics skin creams). Trying to promote Axis-Biotix in retail would mean say 80% of your ad/promotional spend is wasted on members of the public who would never buy/never need to buy Axis-Biotix products. The old adage is 50% minimum ad/promotion should reach the right audience (but now in the days of mass data collection and AI you should be able to target the right audience online more precisely than this).

So I think SBTX are disappearing down a hole on this one and I hope they will stop digging sooner rather than later. The Axis-Biotix range is best suited to online selling (with the appropriate online marketing). SBTX do a little of this for their online sales of Axis-Biotix but nowhere near enough (even OPTI do a better online ad/promotion job for their products and that really is scraping the barrel!). Of course a lot of promotion can be done online free or at very low cost....and SBTX aren't doing anywhere near enough.

As noted before, I do however remain optimistic about the prospects for SBTX. I think the acquisitions are ok (but not being developed enough). I also take comfort from the fact that Zenakine is marketed by Sederma (Croda subsidiary) and not SBTX. Other posters have been critical of Croda but I question how well they know this large business. Croda in UK is just doing manufacture (and in my past experience they are ok at that). Sedrma in Paris do the marketing (and again, from my past experience, they are well respected worldwide in the industry and have in the past achieved notable successes).

There is chatter that those with Bitcoin leveraged bets are selling their (paper) precious metal holdings to meet margin calls on Bitcoin bets. If this is a crisis I know which "asset" I would rather hold (and it isn't Crypto).

And it has to be the physical precious metal or shares in miners holding the physical stuff in the ground, not a paper "IOU" Otherwise it is no safe haven..

Hi Pharmhall

The way I see it the the Defence Sector will experience significant growth in the next 5 years (hence MSI et al) and the Space sector even more so. FTC's capabilities will be highly sought after in BOTH these 2 sectors so it is being valued as a super growth stock. This is justifiable on a 5-year view but does of course run the risk of a pullback at some point if there are any bumps in the road (in which case you might get your wish!). Either way, good returns may still be had but the exceptional returns have been made on the stock and I don't think we'll see that again from the current share price.

Recent volatility in the MSI share price perhaps reflects the same sort of investor attitude to stocks exposed to growth sectors of the economy. The difference perhaps is that MSI is only exposed to Defence as a growth sector and either has a limited number of booked orders (and so limited visibility) or has booked orders but can't/won't tell us anything unless they have to 🤣. There would need to be significant sales booked (and announced) on the Defence side for MSI to push higher (I'm not sure even a sale of the other businesses will move the share price much).

For these reasons my view is "hold" (neither buy nor sell) for both shares.

Traders come and go but this is a multi-year Precious Metals bull market so sitting tight is not necessarily a bad option.

There are new large buyers for gold beyond the Central Banks, like Tether

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

For silver there is increasing industrial demand, including potentially for solid-state batteries (if not copper, which is worth having exposure to as well):

https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2026/01/solid-electrolyte-advance-lithium-metal-batteries-research

P.s. Apologies, the link I included won't work as I added brackets but this one should:

https://www.londonstockexchange.com/news-article/SSIT/iceye-and-rheinmetall-sign-eu1-7-billion-contract/17381606

Continental Europeans are understandably worried about drones (and most particularly coming from Russia). They are already investing in equipment to identify drone launches in advance and real time, see for example private Finnish firm ICEYE which has contracts with Polish military and German military, the latter via joint venture with Rheinmetall (https://www.londonstockexchange.com/news-article/SSIT/iceye-and-rheinmetall-sign-eu1-7-billion-contract/17381606).

European military forces clearly have (expensive) equipment capable of shooting down drones but not cost-effectively as far as I know (an expensive missile to shoot down one inexpensive drone is recipe for bankruptcy given thousands of drones can be launched at low cost). We know MSI's land-based product has been tried in Ukraine. Anyone have views/intelligence on what the prospects are for MSI to gain any business from European military?

Hi Toyin, this is a familiar playbook for MD. For example, Mr & Mrs MD invested in Filtronic and at peak in July 2022 they held 26% of the company after starting buying at around 10p (so MD may keep buying for a bit longer here at SBTX). As institutions started buying, MD started selling tranches of his holding. By 2024 Schroders invested in Filtronic from memory at about 50p once there was a clear runway of improving profitability with a deal with Spacex and MD started selling more as more institutions started buying. So MD's approach so far in building a large position in SBTX is not much different from a previous investment and I am hopeful he will follow the same approach going forward as and when he stops buying and eventually considers selling (the first sale of Filtronic was 2023 so some years after he first started buying and the year following his peak level of shareholding). I think Mr & Mrs MD now hold around 7% of Filtronic so they remain a significant shareholder quite a few years after having first invested.

No guarantee of course that it will all work out just as well 🤣 but it is reasonable to assume MD invests with conviction and, when he sells, it is done in a measured way when willing buyers are readily available. I am hopeful he will seek to take the same approach as he has in the past which should be positive for the company and other shareholders (unlike the position with OPTI which has been frustrating for long term shareholders).

Beluga, yes I am agreeing. Sales will be in tranches but not on the open market - MD will need to wait until there is enough interest from large institutions to take the tranches. In some ways I see this as a positive because he followed this playbook with Filtronic so I don't see him selling quickly and when he does it will be managed so not tanking the share price. In contrast, despite what OPTI say, there is no doubt that their selling has depressed the share price (to the frustration of many long term holders).

Beluga

MD can't sell much if any just now without crashing the share price (even if it rose substantially, indeed even if it rose to £1, because as soon as he started selling, the share price would crash so he would be sabotaging his own investment, which is arguably what OPTI has been doing 🤣, but of course OPTI were desperate and MD isn't). MD has to wait until Institutions start buying in so he can sell a large chunk off market. He knows this as it is how he sold down his Filtronic stake - he started roughly around the time Schroders started buying in. For Institutions to buy in significant amounts (rather than smaller VC funds) SBTX needs a track record of profitability with management meeting or exceeding targets (which is why the SBTX management has been advised to change course on forecasts to make as sure as they can that they meet or exceed them consistently).

Hi Pharmhall, I thought TKO was almost exclusively a Copper producer rather than Gold?

I still think there is a lot of potential for significantly higher prices for Copper. It's, say, around 50% higher in price than 5 years ago but demand is only going one way, new mines are few and far between and they take a long time to develop. I'm sticking with my copper exposure (albeit I didn't own TKO - my favourite has been ATYM since the AIM days).

Aquae, Dematonics don't just make heel balm. They have skin creams with olive, papaya, manuka etc. So as Cliostock notes extending to a day cream and a night cream with Zenakine is not a big leap by any means. As I have said previously, I think you will be waiting a long time to find "Zenakine" as a brand on a skin cream from a major cosmetic provider. It is not that they are not using Zenakine, but they already have THEIR brand for THEIR skin creams (for which they can change or "improve" the formulation by adding Zenakine whenever they wish, and make the extra health claims). Why would they bother adding a brand on their ingredients list which relates to an intermediate product and which has little recognition amongst the general public? They can just list the base ingredients which make up this intermediate.

Wish we had a Dermatonics Moisturising Night Cream (with Zenakine) distributed online and via Boots and Superdrug...(here's hoping SA reads this Board!).

Net, there's plenty of scope to invest in the existing acquisitions to grow revenue and profits. No point buying companies including paying for goodwill if you don't then invest in organic growth which is how you justify paying the goodwill cost of the acquisition. The SBTX management needs to knuckle down and go the hard yards to make the existing acquisitions achieve their true potential before getting distracted by further acquisitions, especially given that they just don't have the management resource and expertise to manage more companies just now.

Hi mol, ref. Trustpilot reviews, Dermatonics receives an even higher rating than Axis-Biotix. It would be nice to see some of that £4m spent on product extensions for Dermatonics which has a much higher Total Addressable Market than the Axis-Biotix TAM, higher established revenue, higher margins, distribution deals with Superdrug AND Boots and products that are already capable of being manufactured in-house with shorter production runs which reduces the working capital cost and the risk of being left with surplus stock which can go out of date. Are we making the most of this business having spent money acquiring the goodwill?

https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/dermatonics.co.uk

Keep going net, you are on to a winner with cosmetic companies, face creams and Zenakine...

Just catching up here and can't see any post about coverage in last weekend's FT. It had "BUY" rating and article headed "Revenue worry should be short term". They concluded "at 16x trailing earnings compared with 31 times for peer Chemring, we think this represents real value".

A bit strange the share drifted down earlier in the week and takes till Thursday to pop upwards. But then AIM shares are notoriously volatile so I'm trying to trust my analysis and keep the emotion out of it. No day trading for me.

Aquae, yes I think you are edging towards what we might expect - Sederma will not disappoint, the acquisitions will do ok, but the Axis-Biotix sales will disappoint. I guess 2 out of 3 ain't bad but the ride need not have been so bumpy.