True volume of whisky under maturation, page-22

Lark remains the only distilling company I can find that states its litres under maturation at a broken down ABV (43%).

The industry standard for still spirit going into barrel to mature is 63.4% (Australia) and very similar worldwide.

Regardless of this anomaly, of which everyone is now well aware, the next bugbear I have is the current Director's 'performance' rights and the share-price they vest at.

Have a look at the recently released annual report and you can see the detail for each Director.

Some have just lapsed and there is an announcement for this.

In brief, the majority of 'performance' rights vest in December 2022, through 2023 - at prices varying form 1.95 at Dec 22, to 2.25 in Dec 23, and the lofty target of 2.55 in Dec 2024.

Sorry, but is that a joke......? Directors get 'performance' rights for running the company without any meaningful share price growth, and at a level that is well sub 50% of the previous high in share price. Add in gratis options issue and salarys. Thank you for running the company from 5.62 to sub 2.00 - well done. You deserve another bonus. Not with my money you don't.

I'm no genius in technical analysis, but the share price dropping below 2.00 would not appear to bode well to me. Not a lot of support all the way down to mid one dollar range.

I've been a shareholder in this business since it's inception, and cannot complain, as I've managed to trim some profits out along the road, but I've now removed myself to the sidelines and will watch closely, as I do believe the company will go on to achieve good things once it actually commissions the new distillery, achieves a million litres a year production, and proves it can sell that amount of product at good margins.

However, they also have a significant amount of money to spend over the next two years or so to actually achieve a commissioned and fully functioning new facility at Pontville, and I feel that their stated 13 Million budget is probably on the low side by at least 100%, given the recent build costs at Callington Mill, which has been built to produce only half the litres of the Lark proposal per annum.

I understand that Callington cost circa 30 Million Dollars to build plus the bond stores which continue to be added I believe.

Once Lark has achieved all this, I'm almost certain that they will be an attractive 'turn-key' operation that will be absorbed by one of the large liquor conglomerates, but not before then (in my opinion)

So my money is now in cash and I'll look for a buy in again at a suitable price at a suitable time. I sincerely wish the company and shareholders the best, and look forward to becoming re-involved down the track.

Regards to all.