6.6m would've been cleaned up in a matter of days so I think we can assume that's not the case
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Yes, I personally think this is looking like the most likely option.
That raises the question; if they are creating all this artificial sell volume then surely when they eventually give it up then it should return to its fair value (whatever that may be). And if they choose not to give it up, then they risk getting stung big time when the good news starts flowing or if their bluff gets called by someone with a bit of cash behind them.
Morality, not sure I’d go as far as to make it such an issue Black Knat, very many products out there in the world are sold without clinical trials having ever been performed on a comparative basis. I’ve never seen a scientific study suggesting vegemite is any better than marmite.
The Australian chief executive Peter Nathan quite clearly says that ATM are "definitely not making a health claim", "We are simply saying that this is a milk which many people have reported enables them to enjoy the benefit of dairy without the discomfort."
What I would say though is that the a2 milk company truly have an exceptional marketing team, but, at the end of the day, if customers have trialled the product for themselves, have assessed the benefits at home with their family, and have voted at the supermarket checkout, who are you or I to say they are wrong.
These are the rules from the Financial markets conduct act Sept 2013
Thresholds
The thresholds for disclosure are when a person's relevant interest in voting securities reaches, exceeds or falls below 5% or more of a class of voting securities and where there is an increase or decrease of 1% above that. A disclosure is also required for any change in the nature of any relevant interest.
Also:
Deadline
Notify a change in holdings as soon as the disclosable event has occurred.
This appears to me to be that once the 5% of voting shares has been attained, securities bought or sold representing 1% of total shares must be disclosed within a reasonable time frame.
I think we can safely say that neither Milfords nor any other substantial shareholders position has changed by more or less than 6.6 million shares in the last couple of months.
Based on the number od shares NBT has indicated have been traded, and assuming there is no "borrowing" going on, its also possible that there is a whole heap of shareholders out there jumping out because the wholesale milk market has been kicked to touch, shareholders who have less than 5% of the companies shares could easily trade 33 million shares over a few months.
The same shareholders are likely to come back into the market when there is better news coming out of China, UK and USA.
I'm not sure that I subscribe to the theory that anyone would be stupid enough to play the borrow and buy back game on such a thin market...bloody suicide
I think it must remain a matter of engineered pragmatism Harrie.
Too many hard health facts and certainties released too soon risks raising the A1 companies ire before the a2 milk company has grown big enough to fend them off.
If ATM were to be taken over by one of the big multinationals, then boom, watch them take on the A1 bunch head on with trials galore and all that financial backing, but not yet as a small antipodean milk company.
Too much market share and similarly the knives will proportionally come out, we have started to see a bit of that in Australia already. My view is that the market share should be capped at around 15% in Australia, controlled from that point forward by retail price setting.
Could not agree more MAC. The science may never "prove" a correlation between A1 and health issues, so if consumers rely totally on absolute undisputable scientific evidence to prove that A1 has health downsides they will be waiting a long time. In the meantime more and more anecdotal testimonials continue to pour in favouring a switch to A2 for a variety of reasons. That is a lot more powerful than the science.
I thought I was going to try my first A2 today. I phoned Fresh Choice in Queenstown yesterday and the chap I spoke to said they were getting in 10 units. Well I went there this morning and not a sausage. The lady I spoke to said they had some in for an Australian customer request but dumped it due to not being popular and hard to get. The A2 label was on the shelf $4.99.
New World in Frankton do not stock. Sorry for getting NTs hopes up.
I think a bit too much can be read into a reported comment by Peter Nathan (CEO of A2MC Australia) that "we are definitely not making a health claim" in relation to the Curtin University trial. He was just making the point that by publicising the Curtin results, A2MC was not infringing the law against "health claims". He was certainly not playing down the Curtin findings, nor was he denying the central theme of the company's sales campaign, that drinking A2 milk can bring health benefits.
It comes down to a technicallegal issue. A2MC's rivals would love to see the company prosecuted and tied up in legal proceedings for allegedly transgressing the strict laws barring the making of "health claims" for food products, and Mr Nathan is not about to walk into that trap.
The company's policy is to mainly let scientists and medical professionals do the talking. The lead scientist in the Curtin trial has been speaking widely on its findings and getting great publicity, especially in UK media.
The Curtin trial's conclusion that people drinking A1 milk tended to suffer digestive problems not experienced by those drinking A1 was not a "health claim", it was a scientific finding. And it is prominently publicised on A2MC's websites.
NT. I'm delighted to hear that Curtins scientific anaysis is getting some traction in the UK. Its all "griss to the mill" along with anecdotal evidence. The study however is centred around digestive discomfort and I'm not sure that this alone will encourage increased sales for A2. For me the biggest impact would be if evidence could show that in a large number of cases, "deemed" lactose intolerance is more to do with A1 beta casein than the lactose in the milk which is also found in A2, so A2 is not going to work for those who are actually lactose intolerent. If a study could show that, especially in the UK, where 20% of the market are supposedly lactose intolerent, then A2's future would look pretty bright, because it could lead on to other "perceived" health benefits. Apart from that study, the science would need to prove correlations with type 2 diabetes to get traction, IMO and that is a much longer process to prove.
Oh well, each to their own you know, to be fair though there are over a 100 scientific papers in support of a2 benefits that cannot be totally ignored, probably many papers that don't support it too.
Science in the lab is just that but if that is enough for some folk to believe, then there’s nothing wrong with that Black Knat, that's fine and harmless.
It is only clinical trials on humans though that would provide any definitive proof, the science alone can’t do that, and I don’t think ATM should feel a need to do any trials to be honest.
Many years away may a conclusive outcome be, it makes for much better marketing for mum’s on the internet to discover a new feel good product, than it does poking an a1 juggernaut in the eye with clinical trials.
In previous posts, I had mentioned that fund managers operate under an investment mandate to the effect that there is usually self imposed limits on exposure to any one listed security on the NZX. With Milford funds management having the highest exposure to ATM as a funds management group I searched their website to see if there was anything in their investment statements to that effect and could not find anything. I emailed them to find out and got this response:
"We do have a limit of a maximum of 7% in any one NZX listed company, however, this is not a hard and fast rule.
If we felt that a company held excellent growth opportunities that we wanted to take advantage of we could hold more than this, however, any such decision would be carefully considered and investigated by both our Investment Committee and our Risk and Compliance department."
In view of the fact, that in the absence of any disclosure representing a change of 1% of the company shares over the last few months, they hold over twice their own maximums, they would have to have shown significant confidence in ATM's growth path to both their investment and compliance committees to maitain their 15% exposure.
It was for this reason I suspected that Milford could have been a seller, and hence comment around timliness of disclosure under the relevant act.
I can immagine that given the above investment mandate, the risk committee have got their work cut out to sanction maintaing that exposure!
Science is crucial to this whole debate. Otherwise the critics, doubters, commercial competitors and mainstream dairy industry will simply keep on saying there's no scientific proof, and anecdotal reports are just emotional garbage.
Consumers usually read the media before buying something new and controversial, and if the science doesn't support the product they're much less likely to try it - and if they don't try it they won't experience its benefits.
Some science can only be done in the lab, and should not be dismissed as merely "fine and hamless" for those who like to believe that kind of stuff. Lab science adds vitally to the overall understanding of the A1-A2 issue.
For example, when the European Food Safety Authority concluded there was no health benefit in A2 milk a primary reason it gave was that although BCM7 was dangerous it could not get into the human bloodstream and be carried to the brain where it could wreak havoc. This has since been disproved by lab tests of blood taken from human subjects. Without those lab tests, the EFSA's findings would stand intact, whereas they were fundamentally flawed.
Based on those lab tests, it is now possible to explain how BCM7 can be linked with conditions such as autism. No one is saying BCM7 is the sole cause of autism, but this knowledge helps inform health professionals why they are finding that some patients on the autistitic spectrum show remarkable improvement when they switch to A2. These professionals now have a scientific explanation, which is what they want, as to why this may occur.
Clinical trials on humans are also important because for years the critics have been saying "the only evidence you have is based on mice and rabbits - what about humans?" The Curtin trial was the first of its kind involving humans, and it has caused quite a shift in that aspect of the debate. It is no longer possible to say "there's no evidence that people drinking A2 have better outcomes than those who drink A1."
As regards the number of scientific papers for and against A2, a lot of the scientific papers on milk protein research don't actually analyse the health benefits of A2. What they analyse is the health dangers of A1 - that's where the big scientific interest lies. No one is saying if you drink A2 you won't get autism or diabetes or schizophrenia or tummyache. It's like the old smoking debate - no one claimed that if you didn't smoke you wouldn't get lung cancer.
Regarding papers not supporting the benefits of A2, let's put it this way: there has only been one peer-reviewed paper that concluded there was essentially no difference between drinking A1 and A2, and that paper has since been comprehensively shot down. It was based on a rodent trial that was subsequently admitted by Fonterra's chief scientist to have been a total cockup.
Harrie, I suspect you have misinterpreted Milford's e-mail response to your question.
A fund manager limits risk by balancing the size of each investment in their total portfolio. A 7% limit would mean no particular investment of Milford's portfolio would be allowed to exceed 7% of the value of Milford's total investment in that fund. So if a company was relatively small (like ATM), Milford could easily hold a much bigger stake than 7% of the shares on issue in that company (in ATM for example), without going over the 7% ceiling of total value for one company in the underlying Milford fund.
SNOOPY
I’ve only read a small amount of research NT, it all seems well presented and reasoned at face value to me but I’m not a biochemist, I do have one in the family though who gives a2 milk a ‘why not’ endorsement and has her tea with a2.
http://www.betacasein.org/index.php?p=science-overview
For the lay public though, it’s try at home and word of mouth from there that does the real biso though wouldn’t you say. Who’s really to say why more prefer vegemite to marmite ?
I don’t drink a lot of milk, so I’m undecided if it’s giving me all the benefits, but what I do know is that it makes a dam fine cup of coffee, whether that’s the a2 protein or the jersey cows I don’t know, but it’s a good enough reason for me.
(a) total number held in class: 97,877,776
(b) total in class: 660,066,979
(c) total percentage held in class: 14.83% (note, relevant interests held by the manager as follows):
Milford Active Growth Wholesale Fund (3.32%), (Custodian - TEA Custodians),
Milford Dynamic Wholesale Fund (2.51%), (Custodian - TEA Custodians),
NZ Equities Wholesale Fund (3.83%), (Custodian - TEA Custodians),
Waikato Community Trust (0.33%), (Custodian - TEA Custodians),
New Zealand Superannuation Fund (3.45%), (Custodian - New Zealand Superannuation Fund Nominees Limited)
Mercer Trans-Tasman Shares Trust (1.39%), (Custodian – BNP Paribas Securities Limited).
Thanks MAC. I'm not a biochemist either but the abstracts of a lot of papers give the guts - and Keith Woodford's book is my bible. I'm glad the biochemist in your family uses A2.
I totally agree with you that word of mouth and try-at-home are hugely important, but if the media are saying A2 is a dud and is unsupported by science, far fewer people will try it or recommend it, and fewer shops will stock it. Cheers
Depth is currently looking terrible! Any lower and I might launch a takeover myself :)