Ann: United States XTclave Manufacturing Plans, page-31

This is not a business where you stack the shelves and customers come in and buy stuff.....it's a bespoke business that has to tailor a lot of the items to the customers requirements - different police departments need different bits of equipment and this plating has to often slot into their specific helmets or vest.

Just manufacturing 1000s of these items (a) leaves you with potential stock that never gets sold, and (b) may lead to stock impairment as they had last year (~15% of the value of their year end inventory was written off.....and at $2.5m that is at cost so at a 50% margin that was $5m in revenues), and (c) they are having to pay wages and raw material costs along with rent to make and store these items.

I fully understand the need to hold raw materials and some stock given supply chain issues most companies faced, but the extent of the spend is significant and if this stock does not meet their clients requirements, they have to go out and buy more raw materials when they have limited cash (I suspect this is why the stock price has moved down......the institutions expect a raise at some point soon without cash coming in the door)

As for the technology business, yes again all fine to 'clip the ticket', but you have to make a profit.......2H23 showed 40m in revenues, a 22% gross margin and a PBT loss........if those are the true long term economics of that business, then time to stop burning shareholder money on a loss making business.