BLT - Blis Technologies

[Balance]

It is sad that three companies which arrived on the scene around 2002 with so much promise Pacific Edge, Bliss Technologies and Botryzen did not thrive. Back then there was much optimism that they were potentially world class cutting edge biotech's with great potential. Alas Botyryzen went out of business years ago and both PEB and BLIS are struggling to gain traction. Why is it so hard for NZ companies to scale up and succeed. The Nordic countries and Israel can WHY CANT WE???.

Plenty of success stories, Sgt Pepper - just not in the listed space where these companies were listed to make money for the promoters, very very little to do with the viability of the companies.

Bliss was listed in a blaze of hype - the selected few who obtained stock at the IPO at 20c sold millions of shares at $2.00 and above on listing. The real money was already made at that point.

Many of the selected few were brokers. Get the picture?

PS. And PEB shows that hype works in sucking in the money even when the underlying business does not deliver - refer PEB thread.

[RGR367]

There's something about Dunedin water why we have all this hyping and failing companies down there

[Balance]

There's something about Dunedin water why we have all this hyping and failing companies down there

The Dunedin mafia, ably co-ordinated by Forsyth Barr of Feltex, Credit Sails and South Canterbury Finance fame?

[sb9]

There's something about Dunedin water why we have all this hyping and failing companies down there

With the exception of Scott Tech though they're going great guns...

[fungus pudding]

NO NO ....definitely NO

Why would anybody want to buy it anyway ...is what they have really special anyway

I've kept an eye on Blis for sometime, having a particular interest in my hometown, Dunedin, companies. I even bought a few shares - then tried the products. I quickly sold the shares because I decided the stuff was useless. That was around the time they launched the ice-cream. Several posters on this site appear very enthusiastic about Blis products, but they haven't proved popular at all in any markets - and dare I say it, they never will.

[Brain]

I have kept an eye on this company too. I use their products and find them very effective. I have owned the shares which I sold at a small loss after I came to the conclusion that these guys are probably scientists without the necessary business skills to commercialise this product. Shame really - great product bad marketing.

[bullfrog]

After noticing probiotics has been added to my supermarket juice (and I can vouch that it quenched my thirst, gave me energy and made me feel good), I started to see probiotics everywhere. With that in mind, I looked for a low value small company selling probiotics that could tap this growth market. Growth market? Well I found this graph on https://nccih.nih.gov/research/stati...roducts/trends
but it stops at 2012. Only fish oil is growing faster.
Interested to see more up to date results, but I believe probiotics is the new Manuka, and this small company that’s survived so long is therefore worth a punt.
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[Grimy]

I was a holder for a while a few years back. Sold for a little profit, but got tired of waiting for the good news to turn to dollars.
I used to use their products too. They did appear to work somewhat for me, but not enough to justify the outlay.
I continue to watch their progress and hope for the sake of long-time holders that things do finally turn the corner. One day. Soon..........

[Balance]

PEB, SeaDragon, PIL, Bliss - wealth destroyers who seem to be able to con the market to keep funding them with many millions of dollars on the promise of 'it's just around the corner'.

[simla]

A really interesting article from Brian Gaynor yesterday about Fletchers. He basically opines that it would have gone better if they had a board of people with strong backgrounds in construction instead of broad business backgrounds. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/n...ectid=11937669

I think Blis was particularly lucky with Barry who spent decades in manufacturing in the dairy industry. He seemed to know how to handle the finance questions, the research questions, the legal questions, the manufacturing questions and yet still how to spend a whole lot of time with your clients finding out what their secret reservations were and meeting them. All, presumably, because he had lived through all this before.

In NZ we have spend some decades telling people to go to university instead of polytech. Even those who "should" go to polytech are told it is so they can build more houses for more mortgages. But big old industries were all built up by people who started as apprentices and learnt the whole industry over the years. They didn't get business degrees and then take up management positions, instead they built up very hard knowledge of their industries.

It may be that this explains why NZ has difficulty getting some of these businesses off the ground. How many people like that do we have now, and do people with business degrees get chosen ahead of them anyway maybe? Brian Gaynor is a clever fellow and maybe he is on to something with this thought. Don't know how that would apply to BLT in particular though, as it pretty hard to know just what is going on inside the company from our viewpoint.

Discl: After expressing ongoing reservations here over the last year I have now finally ceased being a shareholder. I have previously posted that I have been selling down over the year, and last week I added the little I had left to the big throughput of the day. I dare say the company has a future but I feel I've done my bit now.