Key pull quote and thoughts from today's PR:
"...The Company has decided to keep the shrimp alive in the tank for additional system testing. They will continue to harvest for special events and for key clients. This will allow further refinement of the design for the existing pilot plant and the next future production facility that will serve as the model for worldwide deployment..."
This is IMHO actually a net negative, at least near term. Not only did they not harvest mid December at 24 weeks as initially planned for the trial, but here it is late February, more than two months later, and they now confirm they will not be doing a complete harvest, just further refinements and innovations and sporadic partial harvests for special events as needed, like this one now.
And though many here understood that this recent 3rd, full scale trial would be the model for the anticipated larger roll-out, the company is now effectively confirming that it won't be this trial, but the anticipated next big production facility not yet built that either will or may be the model for said hoped for larger expansion. This is a big change, and though they couched it carefully here, this appears to me to be what it says, and that is not good.
This tells me they are likely not getting the positive response from the investor community, or more importantly the potential industry joint venture or licensing community that they had hoped. It seems clear to me that these other parties need to see proof, not promises or hopes, as to what the anticipated refinements to the process will accomplish, and this will take time. It seems likely the continued issue is that because of the positive result of very low mortality, they shrimp didn't grow nearly as large and as fast en masse as expected, and the hope or plan is that refinements to the feed and filtration and whatever need to be done over time and proven to see if they can get the shrimp size up to where they want it anywhere close to the original 24 week time frame. It also appears likely, though this is a guess, that these extra 2 months of growing, with the refinements already made, have not sufficiently demonstrated that said refinements will work or will work to regain the 24 week timeframe. The industry and investors need proof, and it seems what adjustments/refinements have been made the last two months are insufficient. This is a problem! This explains the lower technical high recently, below the midpoint, and this morning's continued weakness even with today's news that many here had expected to be much more profound and positive. More delays, it seems
Doesn't mean this can't be a big winner longer term, but it may well mean that the investors and industry players need another full harvest cycle, whether it's called the first full production run or a 4th trial is just semantics. This also means that there is no way to know if the best buy or add point for the longer term play will be here in the $.30 range, or back down below, possibly well below, the $.10 or lower single digit penny range. There's been a lot of promises and spin here about the disruptive potential, but so far, the age old challenges of dry land shrimp harvesting appear to continue to be in play. Hope still with this, but continues delays and doubts too.
