US Perspective

First, a brief background, disclaimer: My adolescent aged son developed several food intolerances about 3 years ago, after having a normal diet for his first 10 years. He was at the point of being able to eat very little other than fresh foods. He could not tolerate dairy, and disliked the taste of virtually all alternative milks. Early this year, we heard an interview with Blake Waltrip on CNBC, and bought him A2M to try that night. He drank 3 large glasses, happy to be able to drink real milk, and has suffered no ill effects ever since drinking A2M every day. Later that week, I bought shares of A2M.

I live in the Midwest, where A2M has not officially launched. The milk is sold, however, at a local large-format grocery store chain and just a couple weeks ago was also picked up by a small chain of health food stores. As far as I know, there is no marketing/advertising of A2M in our region. I hear about people on the west and east coast seeing many ads for A2M but not here.

For 2 weeks, I visited our two local grocery chains every day to check on the stocking levels of A2M, to try to estimate how much of the milk is selling. When fully stocked, our grocery merchandises 12 half-gallons of 2%, 12 half-gallons for Whole, and 6 half gallons of Chocolate on the shelf. I estimated that the stores are selling at least 54 units per week at $4.49 per unit. My methodology is imperfect due to not knowing the number of times the shelves are re-stocked, but I believe that this estimate is a minimum.

This is 54 units of sales per location in an area of the US with no promotion, awareness is virtually non-existent. A2M said earlier this year that their milk is now available at 5000 US locations. I believe the number is higher now, given the small health food expansion even here in the midwest (the small format stores would sell at a much lower volume than the 60 units at the large grocery). Yet even a conservative extrapolation of the numbers to areas where the milk is being promoted would me that A2M's sales in the US will greatly exceed the guidance provided by the company.

There are other reasons to be very optimistic about the sales of A2M in the US, but I've gone on long enough for now. I hope this is information is helpful.