Could be or other uses than just sales people.
- (Prepaid) deposits by AMRN to an API supplier = credit AMRN's cash account/debit prepaid expenses: could be to expand capacity by upgrading some production lines with certain API suppliers (would show as a liability for the API supplier until delivery met).
New amendments or an addendum to annual supply agreement as higher tonnage thresholds get hit if they go over what's already in their annual schedule. You have to do this many months in advance to keep ahead of the pulls especially as the rate accelerates. Planning for first half of 2020 possibly into Sept, should have already begun. You don't wait for Q1 2020 to figure out Q2. That's way too late.
- Need to remember that credit insurance (or loan covenant) requirements for their smaller API suppliers could keep them restricted to booking sales within Net 90 days...if they go out to 120 days and depending on the delivery terms, ie FOB point, then title & risk of loss into a following quarter means the supplier can't recognize revenue in that quarter (again, depending on INCOTERMS).
- (Prepaid) Deposits to marketing agencies to create new ad campaigns. Contracts with broadcasters. Etc.
Also, I know that you vigilantly follow a lot of pharmaceuticals and DS from the different ones you take and that it sounds like you've kept on top of "cross-contamination" issues and recalls. However, from one of your earlier posts, I would not characterize DHA in an AMRN run of EPA-EE as "cross-contamination." It's a bit of an overly broad usage of the term. The FDA tends to mostly focus on, are consumers being harmed. So, from a cross-contamination perspective, I tend to view it as for example, pathogens (microbials), foreign materials, harmful by-products from reactions in the refining process that are allowed to accumulate unchecked.
DHA beyond say 5%, I would think of it more as being "out-of-spec," an "exception" or "non-conforming" API. It's something to be worked out directly between AMRN and say, BASF. If their supplier didn't catch the out-of-spec material first and shipped it out, then it would be flagged and sent back to be re-worked, at the supplier's expense.
A true cross-contamination issue, say like industrial lubricant leaked from a pipe fitting would likely be destroyed as not fit for human consumption.
A supplier would clean before different campaigns anyway - it would be in their cGMP.