S/H Mtg By DrCrovatt
Sunday, 29 Oct 2000 at 8:03 PM EST
Just got back from a great trip to Charleston.
The camaraderie was great. I thoroughly enjoyed meeting everyone.
I felt the most important news was the Sysco contract. Sysco is now our distributor. Sysco is by far the largest distributor in the world. Sysco did not have a top of the line pork product for restaurants. The object is to establish a name for TendurPrime to pork like Black Angus is to beef. Sysco will sell this as Sysco Supreme and it will also have our TendurPrime label on it. Sysco actually needs our product. Something that makes our product very unique is its consistency. Through 20 years of selective breeding we have established a pork line that can't be matched unless they go through us to buy our genetics (semen or embryo's). Our TendurPrime has consistency in the 95% range. The average is 75%. This means when you purchase the typical pork dinner at a restaurant, you run about a 1 in 4 chance of the quality being poor even though the restaurant orders the same brand each time. With our higher consistency the restaurant can be sure of more satisfied customers. We build brand recognition as the restaurant prints TendurPrime on their menu beside the entrée like Black Angus is currently printed by the high-end beef selection on the menu. As they are unsure of demand at this time we start in one region which insures we can fill the orders. As this gets rolling we have a huge sales force (1000s of Sysco employees) selling to hundreds of thousands of restaurants.
We have alliance herds that produce nothing but hogs for TendurPrime. We are obligated to buy all their hogs. We also have other farmers who are allied with us but are not alliance herds. They use our genetics and they give us right to first refusal on hogs they have raised with our protocol. What this enables us to do is have a base of meat ready to meet demand through our alliance herds and when we can not meet demand, we have a way to also purchase meat through herds we are allied with. This allows us to meet demand without carrying excess supply. When we purchase a hog from a farmer we are allied with he gets more for it than he would by just selling to market. The ones we don't need he just sells to market. Often a farmer will be allied with us for a period of time until his current contracts expire and then will become a full-fledged alliance herd farmer. This niche market has tremendous potential to say the least.
The Gourley scope is truly impressive. Specific scope designs are used for each type animal. We rent the scope, we do not sell it. Fresh semen is only good for a few days. Frozen semen can be used indefinitely. With conventional artificial insemination, frozen semen does not work well because frozen semen has reduced motility compared to fresh and pregnancy rates are lower. With the use of the Gourley scope, frozen semen will give the same pregnancy rates as fresh. The reason it can achieve this is because of how precisely you can deliver the semen to where it needs to be.
Artificial insemination of other animals should be big. Apparently there is a big demand on deer ranges. These are areas where hunters pay to hunt deer. They want to breed the deer for large antlers. Some deer are worth 10s of thousands of dollars. Sheep is a big field for use. Also going to look into using it for highbred dogs. It is a lot easier to artificially inseminate dogs that live great distances apart than shipping the dog and hoping for a successful mating. Of course this has potential for certain types of horses. Horses often injure each other mating. A great possible PR could come from using this on animals near extinction. A fellow stockholder has connections with someone from National Geographic and he will try to check into artificially inseminating Pandas in China. What a great PR that would be if it ever materializes.
International markets. Doug is going to Europe November 7. He has made many trips. Trying to set up an office in Munich. Contacts in Europe are excellent. Of particular interest is one of the very largest herds in the world, which is based out of Spain. That contract alone would take more than we can currently deliver in artificial inseminations from our boar stud facility. We would build more BSF's and since we have built one, we have learned how to do it and we can build more quickly. Dr Carlson who was at the meeting said our facility was by far the best in the world. Dr. Carlson is the second most famous swine veterinarian in the world.
There were several people from the Philippines in attendance and speaking. Dr. Gourley's trip was very successful in the Philippines. Obviously they came a long way to meet further. They must be serious. Pork is the second most consumed food in the Pacific Rim only surpassed by rice. The contacts in the Philippines have the power to get us into that area of the world.
I have seen companies run to very high levels on less than what we have here. EDIG is an example. They ran to $24 from $1.50 in about 2 weeks when it appeared they had become involved with a major company. They had very little revenue. We are now involved with Sysco. We have more revenue than EDIG did at that time so given the right series of events we could have quite a run. Doug did not mention what was going on with our large white sows. The large whites should be for supermarket type contracts. There were rumors of a large contract for this line through a large distributor. Most feel the contract has not closed as we are waiting for an all natural status for a USDA label or that Doug is waiting until we are off the pinks to release info. The SEC now considers us a fully reporting company. This does not mean we are off the pinks yet but does mean that institutions now can buy in. Hopefully they will do so. My guess is that we will be off the pinks within a month.
Everything I stated is my interpretation of things I heard at the meeting and during the weekend in Charleston. I may have misunderstood certain things but tried to summarize as accurately as possible.
Best regards
Mike
Cheers
Voluntary Disclosure: Strong Buy : Long and Short Term
Cheers
Voluntary Disclosure: Strong Buy : Long and Short Term
