Distil Share Discussion Threads

[distill] 25/3/2024 09:31

Well my shares will be worthless at this rate, my shares in this company down 79% just grateful that I am only a small invester

[skinny] 25/3/2024 09:04

I guess at least it shows a pulse.

[haggismchaggis] 25/3/2024 09:03

Is that classed as back peddling?

[petersinthemarket] 15/3/2024 11:29

DIS year end is 31 March - FY/TU is likely to be first or second week in April - final results first or second week in July - pete

[petersinthemarket] 15/3/2024 11:23

>analystium – To find previous DIS TU and Results - open website ''Distil.uk.com'' - Page down to ''Investors'' – Click on ''Learn More'' - Click on ''news'' - You will find every published DIS report for the last 10 years - pete

[gipps] 14/3/2024 21:31

Think we will hear some news in April fingers crossed it is good

[analystium] 14/3/2024 20:39

Pete; when do you expect the results?

Regarding your question, I'd send it anyway; if the nature of your question means they cant answer during a closed period then they will answer after the results...

[petersinthemarket] 14/3/2024 11:05

Do we have any legal eagles on here? I have been reading/re-reading the rules on closed periods. As we are approaching year end when closed period rules can be assumed to apply, If i wrote a note to a board member today, under the rules, would he/she be allowed to reply? pete

[freddie01] 24/2/2024 16:04

Get it promoted on TikTok. I hear all the time it's the place to be to promote sales.

[petersinthemarket] 24/2/2024 13:28

Only another 6 to 8 weeks and we will know how the final quarter and the full financial year to 31 March have gone. There were some rays of hope in the last trading update, but nothing earth shattering and any comparisons with the disasterous previous year were quite pointless. We must all be hoping that sales have moved up yet another gear.

I wonder if DG will at last announce our new scotch product. It has been in discussion for most of 2 years now.

We still need something to make the general public notice our range. Crtainly, when i ask around the pubs in sw Wales I have yet to find anyone who has even heard of us, or our product range. So much for that horribly expensive tv advert.

I would like to see much more use of the DIS travelling pop-up shops. Low cost, personal contact and sampling to introduce new buyers. I think they are said to have occured in Brighton and Cambridge earlier this year, but I haven't heard about others. Despite the new distribution plans, I still feel this company is far too London-centric. I can't buy RedLEg in sw Wales. Our Tesco branches and others seem to have given up on it and I have to get mine from Amazon.

This year we look forward to expansion of the new Ardgowan/DIS joint visitor centre. Personally, I think that project is quite exciting and I'd really like to see it for myself, but it's a heck of a slog to the west of Glasgow from sw Wales.

I get minor email updates from Ardgowan on a weekly/fortnightly basis. I do wish that DIS would be as pro-active. I suspect part of the general lack of interest in DIS is less to do with it's share price and much more to do with it's anonymity.

The DIS team have obviously had to work harder than expected over the last year, but I believe that 2024 will at last see a turn around.
Have a good weekend all.
pete

[analystium] 28/1/2024 22:43

"Inverclyde-based Ardgowan Distillery, set to unveil its £20 million ‘cathedral of whisky’ by the end of 2024, has bolstered its team with the appointment of industry veteran Paul Currie as chairman."

[www.scottishfinancialnews.com/articles/ardgowan-distillery-names-paul-currie-as-new-chairman]

[petersinthemarket] 27/1/2024 14:12

Still trying hard to get above that double top just above 0.7p but Friday 26 jan saw strong buying at 0.65p which implies that confidence is returning.

[petersinthemarket] 13/1/2024 17:12

Distil Plc (DIS) currently has only 3 directors, namely our Executive Chairman, Donald Colin Goulding, the (absent) non-exec director, Roland Andreas Grain (Austrian) and the Company Secretary/Chief Accountant, Shaun Claydon.

At Companies House, none of these men are defined as Persons with Significant Control (PSC) as that would require them to own more than 25% of Distil's shares and voting rights and also to have the right to appoint or remove other directors.

As at 3 January 2024, the closest we have to a PSC is Roland Grain, who holds 23.6% of the company. Rothschilds own 19.32%, our new face, Dr Graham Edward Cooley, owns 7.07% and an HSBC nominee holds 5.85%. This brings the total of major shareholders to 55.84% of the total 905,113,864 shares in issue. I believe Don Goulding, who is 70 years old in April this year, owns a relatively insignificant 10m shares which he bought more than a decade ago, shortly after joining DIS.

Roland Grain has a highly successful record of investing in the spirits industry. He started with a small investment in the Cotswolds Distillery and continued with investments in Manly Spirits in Sydney, Australia and the East London Liquor Company. He owns Potstill Spirits Trading in Vienna, Austria's largest whisky importer with a choice of over 1200 different labels. He is also CEO, majority investor and owner of Ardgowan Distillery Company Ltd., a private company in which DIS has a small financial stake, based in Inverkip, one hours drive from Glasgow.

The sudden appearance of 60 year old Dr Cooley as a major shareholder in a spirits company is a surprise. He is a proven entrepreneur and developer of early stage businesses with a very considerable, technology-based, business backround. He also has a stated interest in personally investing in various AIM companies, although nothing previously in the spirits industry, as far as I can tell. For over 13 years, Dr Cooley was CEO of ITM Power who manufacture electrolysers in the hydrogen industry and during his tenure he had a very successful track record of building the company, substantially raising the share price, raising large amounts of development capital and also finding overseas markets for his products.

During the last decade, Dr Cooley has variously been a chairman, director, or advisor to the board in quite a few different AIM-listed, early-stage, quoted/unquoted, renewable-energy and other sustainable businesses and last year joined the board of venture capital company Brigantia Capital. He also founded a management consultancy, Yelooc, but his only serious current commitment appears to be as chairman of the board of directors of NanoSUN Ltd., who mass-produce hydrogen refuelling stations.

With a degree in physics, a PhD in materials technology, an MBA and a string of technical institute fellowships, Dr Cooley BSc (Hons), MPhil, Ph.D. is clearly a clever man, but what prompted him to take a £200,000 stake in a small spirits company?

Dr Cooley was extremely well paid at ITM (salary plus expenses between £350k-£500k pa) and can apparently well afford to take a large personal shareholding in any AIM-quoted company that takes his fancy. He tends to increase his investment, once he has got to know the company better. As an example, he took an initial 3.3% stake in AIM-listed Light Science Technologies Holdings Plc and in August 2023 increased his holding to 4.8%.

Dr Cooley's interest in us can only be in his private capacity as an astute investor in AIM companies with growth prospects but, as the placing was not open to the public, I wonder who invited him? He will now have easy access to our directors but, at the moment, he has no commitment to offer advice. Perhaps, if he likes what he sees, he might increase his stake in due course.
pete

[petersinthemarket] 12/1/2024 18:19

Some turn of the year jottings, looking back.

The Q3 TU on 10 January was, imo, a little lack-lustre, but it did at least appear to draw a firm line under eighteen months of supply disruption. There is plainly still some way to go to revive our business after the distributor changes, but there will hopefully be more good news during 2024, with the new distributorship settled down, new product launches due, new efforts going into our export markets and the opening of the new Ardgowan premises in Inverkip in Q1 of FY2024-25.

With the Q3/TU published and a major business period behind us, some may now assume that little further progress can be made before the end of the financial year, but it may be surprising to recall that Q4/FY2023 represented the best trading quarter of that financial year, both in terms of absolute revenue achieved at an estimated £450k and also on a YoY basis so, if everyone does their bit, it is still possible that the end-of-winter period may yet bring further recovery during this financial year.

There was surprisingly little damage to our business following the UK government introduction of the first national covid lockdown measures on 23 March 2020. It is interesting to note that, in fact, DIS profited from covid due to higher off-sale purchases after the closure of many commercial premises and the share price went over 2p/sh for the first time in several years. The previous best, around 5yrs ago, had been just over 3p/sh. I believe we will climb these dizzy heights again in due course.

On 6 July 2022, DIS announced the appointment of a Commercial Director, Alex Baker, and the
appointment of a new distributor, Marussia Beverages UK and it was this news that was to pre-empt our business collapse.

Marussia would be primarily responsible for servicing the DIS on-trade (hospitality) and independent sectors. Other UK (retail) customers, including the majors, would be handled directly by the Distil Plc team. The change-over period was far more difficult to handle than ever predicted, resulting in substantial inventory depletion and massive damage to our results. This confusion is now behind us and there are hopefull signs that business confidence is rebuilding. .

On the 24th November 2023 we yet again suffered major dilution when DIS conditionally raised £0.765m (gross) through a placement and subscription of 218.6m new shares at 0.35p per share. The Placing Shares and Subscription Shares represented approximately 24.1% of the Enlarged Share Capital and mostly went to Roland Grain and BERO (Rothschild). It is assumed that the cash raise will support stock-build and operations through to 2025, by which time we should be seeing profitability restored.

A new face, Dr Graham Cooley, former CEO of ITM Power, invested £200,000 for 57.1m Ordinary Shares in the Placing, which is odd as I don't quite understand his interest in the Placing last year. Donald Goulding is 70 years of age in April this year. It will be interesting to see if anything else transpires.
Have a good weekend all.
pete.

[bprofit] 11/1/2024 12:36

Good to see the limited edition Redleg was selling out. I suspect we will soon see limited edition bottles in other flavours.This next quarter I am expecting we could see a stream of positive news, with the opening of the visitor centre, the new whiskey product will hopefully be launched. We may get a small rebrand of Blackwood's to highlight and leverage it's new Scottish home. I do remember when I was in Scotland last Blackwood's was sold in many of the supermarkets up there...I am also thinking that if the above is achieved, it would position the business very well for a multi-brand launch into the US market with a Scottish whisky, Scottish Gin and a leading Rum Brand. But I would not anticipate this to happen for 6-18 months.. But if all that was achieved we would be looking at a very different business.

[fishyneck] 11/1/2024 09:45

Redleg on the shelves at my local (large) Morrisons store. Don't know if that's been the case for a while as its not somewhere I visit often. But nice to see it there!!!

[haggismchaggis] 11/1/2024 07:54

Dr Cooley bought 4,300,000. RNS out.

[analystium] 11/1/2024 07:29

Great results; seems amazing that a company with a high street brand and a number of popular on line brands has a market cap of sub £10m. And the £3m loan to the distillery that they are earning interest at 5% on.........

[thepopeofchillitown] 10/1/2024 17:32

Assuming costs will broadly be in line with last year and Q4 sales being in line with Q1 and Q2 this year, we're looking at a circa £500k loss? Growing certainly, but is it quick enough with £500k in the bank. It also appears the additional £64k on promotional spend in Q3 generated another £50k gross profit. That doesn't seem a great ROI.

[solardave] 10/1/2024 15:21

Very pleased with the results
Have been doing more spotting of RedLeg in Tesco, Morrison and Sainsburys...

[haggismchaggis] 10/1/2024 07:47

Good news, good growth, looks back on track as a recovery stock.

[thepopeofchillitown] 10/1/2024 07:37

Slow and steady is my take on that. Looking at a FY loss by my quick maths but everything heading in the right direction.

[haggismchaggis] 05/1/2024 10:19

analystium4,
.
No pre-announcement, it will just appear.

[analystium] 04/1/2024 22:46

Haggis

Thank you; will they RNS the date beforehand or does it just appear...