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Infant food provider Bubs Ltd (ASX:BUB) has won an arbitration suit against Hong Kong owned entity Alice Trading both part of Alpha Professional Holdings.
The lawsuit goes back to 2023 when Bubs, then already under pressure – it once told The Fin the company’s value had been “destroyed” since listing on the ASX in 2017 – had a distro deal with Alice Trading fall apart.
In short, online sales did not convert to offline sales in the Chinese market, as Bubs sees Alice had guaranteed, and the trading company bought way less baby formula from Bubs than agreed upon.
And that meant the latter breached a contract extant between both parties (via Bub’s subsidiary, Infant Food Co [IFC]).
In the period September 2022 to March 2023 Alice has taken delivery of volumes of Bubs supreme products falling well short of its contractual commitments,” Bubs wrote on 30 June 2023.
So, already under pressure and keen to keep shareholders assured they’d get their value one way or the other, Bubs effectively went to court. Another trading entity called Willis Trading was involved – but both itself and Alice are owned by Alpha.
Approaching the two year mark down the line, Bubs had news for shareholders on Tuesday.
“Last evening 28 April 2025, the Australian Centre for International Commercial Arbitration handed down its awards in the arbitration proceedings brought against each of Alice and Willis by IFC after the cases were commenced in July 2023 and heard in Sydney in late November/early December 2024,” Bubs wrote on Tuesday.
“Bubs and IFC are pleased to announce that they have succeeded in their debt, breach of contract and damages claims and have been awarded $22.9 million in the proceeding against Alice and $3.6 million in the proceeding against Willis (inclusive of legal costs and interest).”
So that’s all well and good.
But now the company needs to recover that cash – meaning, perhaps, the battle has only really just started.
BUB last traded at 12cps.
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