The container & packaging industry got some recent publicity from The Wall Street Transcript.
twst.com
Simon K. Hodson, EarthShell Corporation's CEO was interviewed by TWST.
"TWST: Over the next two or three years, what kind of revenue growth can you
generate?
Mr. Hodson: If you just look at the marketplace, and obviously we are not
allowed to project specifics, but I can certainly give you an idea. If this is a
$25 billion market worldwide, with customers that are well known, with pricing
that's well established, with distribution that's well in place, and we have a
material that the consumers prefer because of its environmental profile and its
performance, and we can provide it at a competitive price for anyone to say that
we could get 5% to 10% to 15% or so of that market over the next three to five
years, would not be a stretch. If our target has been to make sure that we are
able to manufacture this product in such a way that it returns about 20% of
gross sales to Earthshell (Nasdaq:ERTH) in the form of royalties or other profit
distributions, that's our target. And if you take any one of those numbers, 5%,
that doesn't have the cost of sales and distribution but of 10% or 20% and you
take a 20% amount of that as a revenue stream to our company that doesn't have
the cost of manufacturing - essentially we are a licensing company with a very
low overhead - you can quickly see that there is a huge growth opportunity here
and an enormous profit opportunity for the company.
TWST: How do you feel about the value the market is currently putting on your
company?
Mr. Hodson: We haven't been out there talking to the marketplace at all because
we told them months ago, and we have reported to them regularly that until we
pass what we felt was a gating event with this first sandwich container for the
Big Mac, we really could not push in any other areas. We were basically on hold
in all the other market development areas, with some very minor exceptions. Now
that we've done that, we started to release news yesterday.
TWST: If you were sitting down with some potential investors, what two or three
summary reasons would you give them to take a look at your company today?
Mr. Hodson: I think I've done that already but if I can just recap. You've got a
new technology that is capable of being a substitute product into a $25 billion
global market at an increased profit margin. That's number one. Number two: the
business model, the market development model is to work through the existing
manufacturing converting, sales and distribution system that's in place. So
our time to build a market share is much reduced over trying to do it ourselves.
The third area would be: this product is the most wonderful environmental news
to come into the hands of the consumer in a long time. We all are distressed by
the litter, by the garbage, by the enormous amount of impact that food service
disposables have on our society that we all use and we all throw away and we all
feel guilty about it. So we've got broad base support from the environmental
community, from the green groups that want to see this happening. As soon as we
notify the marketplace that we are ready to roll this out, we think that this
will become the material of choice for the consumer, the product of choice for
the consumer because it is better for the environment, and each of us can do our
part in cleaning up some of the trash."
This interview is a small excerpt from a comprehensive interview published in
The Wall Street Transcript on 04/16/01. |
