Going from a loss last year of 816k to an expected profit this year of 700k (1500k turnaround) on an increase in revenue of 2500k must have taken iron willpower on costs. That's a good sign surely.
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Going from a loss last year of 816k to an expected profit this year of 700k (1500k turnaround) on an increase in revenue of 2500k must have taken iron willpower on costs. That's a good sign surely.
Hi Simla it's a very good sign a lot better then I expected.
first quarter finished and more then 100% up on last years same period sales a great start to the year, especially when you factor in that 80% of their sales is now off shore and most of those countries are in their summer season. Wait until the northern hemisphere winter hits. My prediction $10m in sales. Something else in the pipeline with hints of other forms of shareholder funding. At least this period of the journey is more fun then it has been over the years.
looks like the good news caught up late
Traders will care what the price is today. But for long term holders this is more likely to be an inflexion point. There will be the time before the first profit, and the time after.
BLT probably faces a bit of a mathematical wall anyway presently. Long term holders have seen a pretty decent price rise, but that makes it difficult for us to significantly change our holdings now, the relative cost being quite high now. So BLT needs to attract the next generation. Turnover has been pretty steep lately so that may have started, but it is still small compared to the number of shares on offer.
And also, attracting attention with a profit and a share price rise is merely the start. The market even then needs to start trying to figure out what BLT represents. It is a very different stock, after all.
We'll see.
Or to put it another way, New Zealanders SHOULD know how to deal with biotech given the nature of our country, but the reality is that most are much happier with number 8 fencing wire and owning homes, borrowing for farms and houses. There is always much talk of "value added" in New Zealand, but actually it is usually the foreigners who are the ones coming here and creating it.
So I'll have a tiny go. Others can throw in their ideas maybe.
Biotech is just a word. It is like dairy, or forestry, or retail, or hospitality. It is just a name for an industry. All industries sell products that other people want to buy, whether it is milk or wood or legal services or probiotics in this case. Biotech just means the product has come from some sort of scientific research on biology, whether genes or bacteria or animals or plants. It tends to need patent protection, which costs money.
The reason that people are scared of biotech - or so I think anyway - is that it is a relatively new industry so there are still a whole lot of new companies that have yet to turn a profit.
This is like the dotcom bubble of the nineties, or so I think people remember anyway. But actually an awful lot of the dotcom companies were just jumping on the bandwagon selling little more than a website address and asking huge prices from backers. They went broke because nobody ever needed the web site addresses in the first place and investors were not being very savvy about that. Biotech requires an actual product to start with, on the other hand.
But while people remember dotcom as a disaster, the truth is that some very major companies have come out of it. Amazon. Google. Alibaba. Trademe. Other industries have had to adapt to dotcom, like television, movies and newspapers, to name just a few. It was not a fly-by-night industry even though some of the companies did turn out to be that. Investors who looked hard and learnt did pretty well alongside the many others who did not.
So that dotcom industry has matured and people now understand that you have to pick and choose and use your judgement. Then you have to decide what business model to follow. Trademe runs a good profit and is a stable company paying good dividends. Xero is playing the big-hit game and willing to sink money getting there in the hope of a big payoff. Etc. Which model do shareholders personally feel comfortable backing? Coming in on the startup or joining in later if it succeeds?
In the biotech industry, a few companies have succeeded. A2 Milk is surely a biotech and for a long time people had to back it getting there, but now it has paid off, selling a product that consumers accept has health benefits. Botry Zen was another startup from Dunedin protecting kiwifruit and grapes from mould. It was a listed company but shareholders did not back it enough and it went private in 2010, where it seems to be doing just fine. Pacific Edge is biotech and seems to have good products protecting people from cancer, but the market got a bit carrried away perhaps on the share price before it had much revenue to talk of, which maybe left people a bit battered, but not PEB's fault. Each company is different and needs thinking about for each investor to understand, like any investment.
BLT is a biotech, selling probiotics protecting people from infection and bad breath and tooth decay, or so I see it. The details are on the website blis.co.nz . I guess you might also see it, less threateningly, as being in the health sector, which it is.
It is just a company selling a product. It can be read about, thought about.
I never recommend anyone buy or sell or hold BLT. That is for people to think about themselves. But I do recommend that people learn more broadly about the ideas of the biotech industry. People who walked away from dotcom because they did not understand it did not actually achieve much. Dotcom was here to stay and so is biotech. It at least deserves a little thought?
When do we stop thinking? I'm a long-term somewhat sceptical observer. Surely Blis should attempt to point to any benefits (if there are any) they have compared to what seems to be a zillion other probiotic products available marketed under recognized brand names. IOW is there a unique selling point?
Yes. Blis works. Oodles of research to that effect. Also it is the only one aimed at the throat as far as I am aware.
You raise a good point because the industry is also suffering from a lack of accepted standards. The word "probiotics" is regarded as selling point without the need to substantiate a lot.
One of Blis's burdens is indeed to differentiate itself from the market in this respect, as consumers don;t really seem to have wondered about that small point on the whole. The company has remarked over the years that its business partners have signed up because they can indeed see the difference.
But every health product has this problem doesn't it? Some are proven, some are just there.
Another 2.6m share through today. At the least, it has been an interesting time for the BLT share.
Ever hear of Yakult? I was sure surprised when I saw this being sold in the supermarkets here. Growing up in Japan we used to have the Yakult ladies cycle through the neighborhood calling out "yakult, yakult", selling it from bags. It's a probiotic for the gut, developed 80 yrs ago, sold as a little bottle of sweetened fermented milk. They have science to back up their claims, but other research has poured doubt on these. Science still seems inconclusive, but millions buy the story. Heck they sell it in NZ now! Annual worldwide group sales well north of $3billion USD these days.
Now don't go claiming the Ghost is saying that Blis will ever come close to anything like that. I'm not. Does Blis work? There are some positive results coming through for sure, but I don't think anything so conclusive as to put this firmly in the 'definitely works' category. But if enough people try it and feel it works for them, well, could be an interesting future as I think you're right in pointing out that they are the only ones with a probiotic for the mouth. If they get a decent foothold in East Asia, that could be a gamechanger for them. Probiotics much bigger there than in the west, though they are gaining ground here slowly too.