Byotrol Share Discussion Threads

[1gw] 29/7/2021 13:41

But they have listed bugs in the past (see para below) without mentioning Norovirus.

"The patented product meets key EN European Standards for a hand rub, specifically EN 1500, EN 13624, EN 1650, EN 13727, EN 1276 and EN 14476 against influenza A (H1N1 Swine Flu) and Rotavirus. INVIRTU Hand Foam Sanitiser is formulated to kill 99.99 per cent of common germs and viruses including MRSA and E. coli. It is effective against bacteria such as Listeria monocytogenes, Salmonella typhimurium and Streptococcus pyogenes and yeast Candida albicans."



Just goes to show how difficult it is from a consumer point of view to work out what a hand rub product is supposed to protect against. Hopefully byotrol will prevail in its campaign to change the current UK rules and allow germ-specific product claims.

'Dr. Trevor Francis explains, “What the industry needs is a sensible regulatory regime to provide consumers and professionals with clarity on which germs a product has been tested against to the proper industry-standard tests and how long it takes to work. Any confusion only serves to hinder our progress in reducing the transmission of COVID-19.”'

[longago] 29/7/2021 00:37

1gw. In the FAQs on the invirtu.co.uk website it says:

"INVIRTU kills 99.99% of bacteria and viruses, including all enveloped viruses.
It is against advertising rules for any product like ours (including alcohol-based hand sanitisers) to claim they kill a specific virus or bacterium. As a responsible company we fully respect those rules.

What we can say is that we are 100% confident that INVIRTU is as effective as any other hand sanitiser on the market and we have the scientific evidence to back that up. You can read more on Why INVIRTU? or if you still have queries please contact us."

However, I very much doubt if they could say Invirtu kills 99.99% of bacteria and viruses if they didn't kill such a common bug as norovirus! In the USA, where different rules on allowed claims apply, they certainly did make a norovirus claim for Byotrol 24.

[football] 28/7/2021 20:03

1gw I'm sure you have at least one of the other four products that work

[1gw] 28/7/2021 19:41

Interesting - especially as I have a child just recovering from an unpleasant bout of (suspected) norovirus, and a family hoping the rest of us don't catch it. Since byotrol don't mention invirtu, presumably that isn't effective against norovirus.

[football] 28/7/2021 18:57

BYOTROL PLC
07/28/2021 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 07/28/2021 07:30

Say No To Norovirus
Public Health England (PHE) recently warned the public and public sectors to take action to slow the spread of norovirus. Routine surveillance of enteric virus outbreaks has shown a significant out-of-season rise. In the last 5 weeks, 154 outbreaks have been reported which is almost 3 times high than outbreaks identified over the previous 5 years.

What is norovirus and why is it a problem?

Some people refer to norovirus as the 'perfect pathogen'. It is a non-enveloped virus also known as the 'winter vomiting bug' because of its seasonal peaks. The virus is extremely infectious with only a very small amount of virus required to start an infection. Often an infected person can shed billions of virus particles while symptomatic.

A rather unique aspect of norovirus is that a person does not form long-term immunity to the virus which allows for reinfection throughout a person's life. Typically, an individual will experience 3-8 norovirus infections within their lifetime due to the short-lived immunity. Moreover, there is no vaccine or antiviral treatment available which allows the virus to spread throughout the globe leading to around 200,000 deaths annually worldwide.

How can I protect my organisation?

In the absence of effective vaccines and antivirals, the best form of protection is effective infection prevention and control. Areas that may have been exposed to norovirus should be frequently decontaminated with products with proven efficacy against norovirus and attention paid to the correct contact times required to achieve proper decontamination.

If you experience norovirus symptoms you should stay home until 48 hours after the symptoms have passed. Additionally, any furnishing, bedding, or clothing potentially contaminated with norovirus should be washed at 60°c and handled with disposable gloves.

Byotrol provides a variety of products with proven efficacy against norovirus for a range of different environments, such as Byotrol Quat-free Surface Sanitiser for restaurants and catering facilities,Byotrol 4 in 1 for facilities management and public spaces, CHEMGENE for human health environments, and ANIGENE for animal health establishments.

Remember alcohol-based hand sanitiser has no effect against norovirus, washing your hands frequently with soap and water is the best way to limit its spread.

[stevesham] 28/7/2021 12:29

Thanks, I saw that, expected to be in excess of £11m made me think, "expected" was the word I saw, been caught before, and it would be interesting to check any mention of cash retention as they were debt free and margins once the RNS is out

Cheers

Steve

[1gw] 28/7/2021 12:22

Headline results (guidance on revenue and adj ebitda) were given in the 22nd April (post period end) TU.

[stevesham] 28/7/2021 12:15

1gw thanks again all helpful points, I am sure others will benefit too

I think I am going to wait until after the results on the 19th August and see if there are any investor presentations to watch/attend and take it from there, I may be a little late to the party, but we shall see, I would imagine the result should be excellent due to the pandemic, and need to take that into account, and I think anything less would be a bit of a red flag, because if you can't make a serious amount in this space during a pandemic something needs looking at

Overall though Byotrol are at the top of my watchlist with funds ready to build a position.

Thanks again

[1gw] 28/7/2021 11:50

In terms of sales strategy, I would imagine that is under active development for byotrol as a whole (Medimark will have had its own strategy). At the high level I think they try to differentiate between core markets and core technologies where they have the capacity to get to profitability and build some scale as byotrol and other markets (e.g. the Americas, the Middle East, Africa, UK hospitals) and technologies where they look to out-license to companies better-placed to commercialise than byotrol could.

Until they bought Medimark they didn't really have much of a sales team at all - they were very much an R&D operation (18 staff average in FY18 with 8 R&D, 3 sales) focused on getting the EU and US product and label authorisations. Medimark (bought August 2018 but with 2 year earn-out which meant they had to keep operations relatively distinct) brought them a sales team; they ended the earn-out early (30th January 2020 announcement) but then they got hit by pandemic-related demand through the roof and lock-down.

In their interims (7th Dec 2020) they said "we...have now started investing in marketing, advertising and promotion, PR and product proposition development research. We will report more on those initiatives at the year end." So I would hope they are nearing the point where they will be able to communicate more meaningfully on sales and marketing strategy.

Just on margins - obviously the licensing deals (but not the supply deals) are effectively 100% margin - so if any of them take off that is a very profitable income stream on top of the organic product sales operation.

[stevesham] 28/7/2021 10:58

1gw that is awesome, thank you so much for your detailed information, that certainly gives me lots to think about

I believe growth areas are in hygiene as this sector is massive, not just cleaning buildings, sanitising hands etc, but also for food preparation, whether it be for restaurants and hotels from fast food to fine dining, add to that a massive area of growth being food factories/farms where hygiene is paramount, no food producer needs/wants a food recall because of a hygiene issue, very costly in both terms of cost and reputation.

I could go further and talk about education in particular Universities where you can have over 40,000 students and staff with catering outlets, and even more if you consider contract catering for staff canteens etc

There are some big players out there, in all of the above, and I need to look further into and try to understand Byotrol's sales strategy including number of sales staff face to face if any are available as they don't have many staff from your notes, also what they are doing to target these sectors in volume, other than piggy back larger players, which is a good strategy, unless one of the larger companies sees it as a good idea and develops their own, as there have been residual sanitisers around for a while as long as the surface isn't touched, which is where Byotrol come in.

The 24 hour residual affect is a big tick in the box for me, however that said, all the catering outlets and food factories I physically go to, insist on cleaning and sanitising daily, and making solution from concentrates fresh (unless the product is ready to use made at the factory containing preservatives to ensure efficacy)

Other than all you have written, my main positive is the fact Mirius are promoting it, and I have spoken to them and waiting for more information, I do know they already have a retail product, and are launching a professional product which is where I come in.

The only benefit I see is the residual affect as all manufacturers I deal with have really good virucidal products, including just a couple below





The above have a log 5 reduction which is 99.999% compared to say Byotrol Surface Sanitiser which only has a 99.99% (log 4 reduction)

What does this mean to the professional hygiene manager





To summarise, I am nearly ready to make my first investment here, but my final missing pieces are 1. Sales Strategy and Growth Targets, 2. Price Point against the competition, 3. Margins on the products, 4. How big is their moat.

I have more to do, but once again 1GW thank you very much, it is becoming much clearer due to your input, and if there are any pointers to my outstanding points that would also be helpful as at the end of the day, the products may be fantastic, but if the market doesn't recognise it, or there is no strong sales plan, I would have to move on, but currently I am very encouraged

Steve

[football] 28/7/2021 10:19

1gw seems the professor at Liverpool university is now looking into a antiviral effects of seaweed on the flu

[1gw] 28/7/2021 10:15

Stevesham - always good to have new interest.

In terms of your question on patents, it's something I've never quite got to the bottom of. They have patents, of course, but I think their "barrier to entry" is really the work they have put in to getting regulatory approval for their products and labels, especially in the US and the EU (years of work). The fact that they have a stable of authorised products allows them to go to companies whose products are under regulatory threat (as the regulations on ingredients tighten) and offer them a licensing deal which avoids the customer having to invest its own time and resources in understanding the regulations and then going through the approval process in each region in which it wants to market its products. If you read back through past byotrol reports you will see that under David Traynor the company has been positioning itself for years for this (then) anticipated regulatory tightening.

The Actizone patents are a bit different, though. Here I think there probably is real competitive advantage in the patents. This was originally based on byotrol's cleaning/disinfecting molecules and Solvay's polymer which apparently worked well together to give the long duration of action that Actizone markets. Byotrol have sold the IP to Solvay but have retained a commission/royalty on Solvay sales and the right to sell Actizone products as byotrol. Solvay appears in the meantime to have invested a lot in perfecting the Actizone formulations, developing the Actizone range of products and now is moving into marketing to its customers, apparently worldwide with global supply chains (single product in multiple markets). What we don't yet know is the scale of commission revenue (or even the %) that byotrol is entitled to from Solvay sales, but finnCap the broker have suggested it could be material in terms of byotrol's earnings.

A new area where byotrol have secured patents is seaweed, where byotrol is continuing to do research on understanding the anti-viral properties and mechanism of action. Too early to say how big this is going to be (they have a research grant for work which is still ongoing), and originally they appeared to be thinking about out-licensing the technology (i.e. finding someone else to take the investment risk on getting it to market), although more recently I get the impression that they see it as a possible new core set of products. They have talked about this having application in animal feed, as well as in byotrol's traditional areas of operation.

Going back to your Mirius link, a challenge byotrol has faced with its long-duration-of-action surface sanitisation products is lack of consumer awareness of this as a desirable feature. This is in part due to vested interests from the large fmcg companies in maintaining the market share of their existing (instant action, instant end to action) products. This started to change when P&G introduced their microban24 product. byotrol can't by itself justify large marketing spend on the benefits of its products, but is likely to benefit if other companies do start advertising 24-hour claims and prep the consumer market. So byotrol outlicensing its products to Turtle Wax (automotive sector disinfection) and now Mirius is a way of building up consumer awareness of such products - especially if the licensees are big enough and committed enough to put marketing spend behind the products. It remains to be seen how successful Solvay will be in getting large fmcg companies to buy Actizone products and then market them alongside their existing (instant) brands. byotrol also supplies actizone to Tristel and again will be hoping Tristel can do some of the groundwork on preparing the hospital sanitisation market for long duration of action products.

byotrol's own hand sanitiser product Invirtu (and again I don't know to what extent there is still any meaningful patent protection) has recently faced the challenge of WHO guidance focusing on alcohol-based sanitisers for coronavirus. Again, byotrol isn't big enough to justify its own material marketing spend on the benefits of alcohol-free and long-duration-of-action hand sanitiser. It has used out-licensing (e.g. Boots own-brand in UK consumer, SC Johnson into UK hospitals) to broaden its reach and hopefully to benefit from these larger companies' greater marketing budgets.

byotrol is by far my biggest position and that is based on my hopes that it is now poised for take-off driven by:
o Royalty/commission products ramping up sales (especially Solvay actizone);
o 24-hour surface sanitisation products starting to become mainstream;
o Regulatory pressure continuing to mount as things start to get back to normal post-pandemic;
o Alcohol-free hand sanitisers getting a bigger share of the market (regulatory guidance starting to tilt towards them and legacy from pandemic use of intolerance to alcohol-based sanitisers).

In the near term it remains to be seen to what extent any drop in pandemic-related sales is offset by earnings growing through the increasing number of licensing deals. The company has guided to growing earnings this year and may make a further comment with the FY21 results on 19th August.

It is a micro-company (33 people employed on average in FY20), even following the relatively recent acquisition of Medimark, and doesn't have a very big institutional shareholding base. Investors have to be prepared for poor liquidity, relatively infrequent formal communication and apparently some process problems around reporting (difficulty getting results out).

[football] 28/7/2021 08:58

Just listen to 3 adverts on LBC radioFirst one was a supermarket saying to wear mask for staff protection and they would have hand sanitiser stationsSecond one was a government information ad saying employers at to provide good ventilation wipe down surfaces regularly and allow people to isolate.Third one was for TfL saying to wear face mask and hand sanitiser stations would be all over the network.Followed by the CEO of easyJet talking about their roots opening up and their deep cleaning on planesWe may have had freedom day but it seems everywhere people are still carrying on with their cleaning regimes which can only be good news for bytrol in the future

[riddlerone] 27/7/2021 21:47

Have seen this Panto being played out before so will speak to you all when we get some news GLA

[sikhthetech] 27/7/2021 19:32

Not really surprising that they didn't manage to announce their results within the time they originally stated.

They have a history of delayed results..delays in contracts starting...

You would have thought they would have learnt their lesson by now.

[stevesham] 27/7/2021 19:08

Looking at taking an opening position here, but not inspired by delayed results, always rings alarm bells for me, should I be concerned, and I have read, and researched and like patented technologies

Byotrol only came to light to me in a professional capacity as they license to S C Johnson, who also own the worlds largest skincare company that used to be known as DEB



Also today, I was talking to a chemical company whose products I supply by the pallet in a professional capacity to Schools, Healthcare, Hospitality, Hygiene and Education sector and they have just launched a new product that I will also be selling and add to my range, available for both the retail market and professional market


For information Mirius is a good player in retail and professional cleaning so expecting great things for the new deal and marketing using Byotrol

My concern really is, how unique and protected are their products, I get the 24 hour protection, any negatives/warning signs most welcome along with any other positives as I am new to this company although have known about them for a few years and never been convinced enough to take a position until now.

DYOR

[football] 27/7/2021 09:41

clost count how many time i've email DT & BYOT saying the same thing"

let's hope DT is listen this time




"These repeated failures undermine the company's credibility with investors - it makes them look extremely amateurish. This has direct implications for the share price.

All shareholders should care about this."

[effortless cool] 27/7/2021 09:14

It is not minor. The CFO's key task is to deliver results statements correct and on time. The BYOT CFO persistently fails in this regard. That would get you fired in most quoted companies.

These repeated failures undermine the company's credibility with investors - it makes them look extremely amateurish. This has direct implications for the share price.

All shareholders should care about this.

[1gw] 27/7/2021 09:11

I agree EC. In 2019 of course they gave 2 notices of audited results and missed them both, leading to suspension. [Edit] Last year they gave guidance in August of results (without specifying final/audited) in mid-September and put out prelims on 24th September, with finals in October.

This year they gave guidance of July for final results which at the time felt a little ambitious perhaps, given the previous 2 years, and so it has proved. With hindsight, another own goal rather like when they suggested they would close a number of deals by a certain point and then apparently failed to do so.

On the other hand I wouldn't want them to go to the other extreme of sandbagging guidance unduly - if they are going to put out guidance I would prefer it to be on the slightly conservative side of realistic, which does mean there is a chance of missing it. And I would rather be invested in a company that is performing well but is lousy at reporting on time (and a bit optimistic on deal closure timing) than the other way round, but it is still frustrating when they miss their own guidance.

[riddlerone] 27/7/2021 09:10

Dont you mean the "Expected in July" statement...come on why make such a big deal out of something so minor we already have enough of our resident one of those with his pals.

[effortless cool] 27/7/2021 08:57

They are giving notice of results because they missed by miles the "in July" date they gave in the last trading statement. Under those circumstances, they had no real choice.

[loafofbread] 27/7/2021 08:52

Should give Byotrol time to book in a decent analyst meeting, investor meet, IG and anything else they can think of.

Always prefer a company that gives a notice of results as they usually have something decent to say.

[football] 27/7/2021 08:16

Yes Ghost let's hope DT reads that "I’d expect better to be honest" and so wouls II's i feel

[the ghost who walks] 27/7/2021 08:11

For a company whose shares were suspended in the past for late reporting, I'd expect better to be honest

[riddlerone] 27/7/2021 07:41

A few weeks later than their own timescale is hardly the end of the world.They would also have been directed by Auditors to commit on timings and Crowe are one of the worst for last minute hiccups.All over to you now DT,you have 4 months figures for this year,know a lot more about the seaweed viability and as we know have new licences and partners so lets have a brilliant update