ATM - A2 Milk Corporation Limited

[bull....]

nice downtrend channel it is in hitting the top now with a bottom at 45c , bollingers have 54 weekly 50 monthly

[airedale]

I realise that ATM have patents and intellectual property for their product, but is there anything which would prevent another milk company, or farm company, from breeding from their own A2 cows and selling that milk.

[MAC]

I realise that ATM have patents and intellectual property for their product, but is there anything which would prevent another milk company, or farm company, from breeding from their own A2 cows and selling that milk.

The answer is no, Fresha do exactly that, but only by agreement and they must pay royalties to ATM.

[BFG]

Looks like a bollinger band squeeze with another leg lower. Blue horseshoe definitely does not love ATM.

[NT001]

I realise that ATM have patents and intellectual property for their product, but is there anything which would prevent another milk company, or farm company, from breeding from their own A2 cows and selling that milk.

It probably can't be stopped entirely but there are difficulties. A2MC's IP includes exclusive trademark rights to use the label "A2" in marketing milk in quite a few countries. It also owns exclusive rights to the technology whereby one candetermine that a cow is pure A2. There's no point in a rival saying "we've got cows that we are pretty sure are all A2" because you only need to have one cow in the herd that is half-half A1-A2 (which could be easily detected by testing a bottle of its milk) and you'd be exposed for selling A1-contaminated milk. Simply breeding-on from cows that have been tested as A2 would be pretty risky. You really need to have every new cow in the herd tested, which is not exactly cheap - in fact that's one of the reasons A2 milk is expensive..

As regards the trademark limitation, if you had your cows tested and they were all pure A2 you might be able to market the milk as "A1-free" but then you'd have to conduct a marketing campaign explaining what that means, and you'd run into REAL problems with mainstream dairy of a kind that A2MC has so far pretty much managed to avoid.

[klid]

Wow the share price keeps on falling. I was liking it at 60c, when is this trend going to end?

What I don't understand is why they don't focus more on marketing. Broadcast. Television and internet advertisements about it.

Personally, I like milk, but know of a lot of people that don't drink it because it upsets their stomachs or whatever. Well, I only know of this milk because they trade on the NZX. If I were a person that has issues with milk, i.e. their target customer, and didn't have knowledge of the company through the NZX, then I wouldn't know about this milk at all, and I think therein lies the problem, mostly problematic with the UK market.

Probably this has been seen linked to etc but I was just reading it:
http://www.dairyreporter.com/Markets...icture-in-Asia

[ratkin]

Wow the share price keeps on falling. I was liking it at 60c, when is this trend going to end?

What I don't understand is why they don't focus more on marketing. Broadcast. Television and internet advertisements about it.

Personally, I like milk, but know of a lot of people that don't drink it because it upsets their stomachs or whatever. Well, I only know of this milk because they trade on the NZX. If I were a person that has issues with milk, i.e. their target customer, and didn't have knowledge of the company through the NZX, then I wouldn't know about this milk at all, and I think therein lies the problem, mostly problematic with the UK market.

Probably this has been seen linked to etc but I was just reading it:
http://www.dairyreporter.com/Markets...icture-in-Asia

When i was in the UK saw plenty of adverts with Danni Minogue jumping around on a trampoline, but when i went in the shops found nothing. Apparently i was in the wrong part of the country and it wasnt stocked.
There so many milk alternatives around now that for most people its easier to just drink one of them. Personally converted to soy years ago

[NT001]

(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).

I wonder what Milford are telling their investor and custodial clients at the moment. I take some comfort from their presence with 14.83% of ATM, and when you put them alongside Freedom Foods with 18.6% and Mountain Road with 9% you've got a fairly solid identifiable core of 42%.

Presumably Milford's stakes are mainly held custodially by NZ Central Securities Depository Ltd (operated by the Reserve Bank) which has custody of 48% of ATM shares. We don't know much about the other 33% held in the same custody, but I expect some would be A2CM executives etc who would have sizeable holdings. There've been some sales out of NZCSD lately, although not huge - its total holding has only gone down 5m shares (less than 1% of ATM) since mid-August.

To my mind which is a bit untrained in these things, this leaves some interesting questions about where the recent selling has been coming from, and whether there has indeed been some circular trading going on.

[airedale]

It looked like the bottom was forming around 60 cents, today's action reinforces KW's oft repeated advice.

[Harrie]

Clarification on my previous post. Milford will not go past committing 7% of FUM to any one listed company on the NZX unles they thourily vet it through the risk and compliance committee. They will also not go above an exposure of any more than 19.90% of a companies share capital. They are close to that with Tourism holdings (18%) and restuarant brands (15%) and ATM (14.83%)