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Keely Lynch:
The Calmer Co has advised that the renounceable rights issue announced on June 3rd, 2024 has closed heavily oversubscribed and raised approximately $2 million. I’m joined by the company’s managing director and CEO Anthony Noble to discuss. Welcome Anthony. Tell us about this news.
Anthony Noble:
Yeah, thank you very much for having me. We had a rights issue ongoing for the last period of time to raise just over 2 million. We got a significant oversubscription for that rights issue, about 2 million of the bids beyond what we were able to allocate. We also did upsize that using what capacity we had left to give an additional $600,000 to people who were applying for shortfall. So a really successful rights issue and a great vote of confidence in the company from our shareholders.
Keely Lynch:
Anthony, what does this news mean for The Calmer Co?
Anthony Noble:
Primarily this rights issue was about continuing to expand our sales trajectory through e-commerce and support the launch into the US market. The first activity that is going to support that is the upgrade that we’re making to our processing facility in Navua. So that will roughly double to triple the amount of Kava that we can process there on a weekly basis to around about 20 tons a week. So that’s enough to really three x our revenue or even more than that. And that’s the kind of output we are expecting to require to start to build what we’re seeing in the US market e-commerce now, reflecting the growth story that we’ve had here in the Australian market
Keely Lynch:
And you also released a new independent research note. What are the main highlights from this?
Anthony Noble:
Yeah, so East Coast Research did an independent research note for us on the company some time ago. They gave a fair valuation of about 1.4 to 1.7 cents there. They’ve increased that a little bit to around 1.9 cents. So showing that we’re still fundamentally undervalued at the current share price, which I think is a great, great endorsement of just how good value that rights issue was. We thought that was very positive news to release to the market on the back of the successful capital raising.
Keely Lynch:
And lastly, Anthony, is there any other news regarding the company that you would want to share and what can investors expect in the next coming months?
Anthony Noble:
Yeah, so I’ll just finish the June month and the trend of growth that we’ve seen in the e-commerce channels has continued. So we’ve gone up by around about another two and a half thousand dollars a day of average sales there from 16,000 to about 18,500 a day. So well over half a million dollars per month now of e-commerce revenue strongly. That’s mainly in the Australian market, still US Amazon going very well, but we are seeing for the first three or four months that we’ve been in the US Shopify market, sales are doubling month on month there. So the trend in the US does indicate we should be able to replicate what we’ve done in Australia in the US, which is the strategy for the business in the coming year. And I guess exciting stuff for us coming up soon will be the launch of our Taki Mai Kava shot in bulk formats to the e-commerce channel in Australia. We have some interesting flavors, fruit flavors that people will be able to buy and add to their Kava to make the drink a little bit more delicious for them in the coming months. And we’re about to launch some products with coconut flavored Kava in partnership with Fiji Rugby Union, so Fiji rugby branded products, which people will be able to pick up in Fiji, and then hopefully in the US as well. So great tasting new products and just continuing to stick to our strategy of e-commerce expansion in the US to replicate what we’ve done here in Australia. Well,
Keely Lynch:
Certainly fantastic news for the company. Thank you so much for your update, Anthony Noble from The Calmer Co.
Anthony Noble:
Thank you.
