These guys are absolutely taking the piss. If I were Markus and...

These guys are absolutely taking the piss. If I were Markus and Jarrod (who set the company up together ~10 years ago), I would be foregoing my salary for a year to do everything within my power to stem the losses, try to turn the company around, show my commitment to making this company work, and hope that as a result other investors would be willing to come to the party, with a view to getting a capital raise that would actually shift the dial (ie not a pitiful raise of 733k, which does little more than provide the funds to pay these guys for another year).

Between them they instead trouser half a million bucks while the company makes a loss of $5.65m.

What I'm suggesting isn't a benevolent selfless act from them. If they really believed the company had a future, forsaking $250k for a year each is nothing compared to the potential benefits it would have for the equity they each hold (between them about a quarter of the company, which at its peak was valued at ~$30m). Instead it looks like they're resigned to the inevitable insolvency/fire sale of remaining assets, and trying to cash in as much as possible before that happens.

It doesn't take a genius to see what's going to happen to this company if these guys don't think outside the box ASAP and demonstrate to the market that they believe in the company. Market cap of about $2.5m, serious difficulty finding investors, losses of $5m+ per year, and independent directors resigning (no director wants the liability of being on the ship when serious questions are raised around whether there could be insolvent trading and whether the company needs to file for insolvency). I give this 6-12 months before the inevitable insolvency/fire sale. No doubt in the interim Markus and Jarrod will be looking for every possible way to milk the cow before it dies (keep taking that long service leave Jarrod! And enjoy the gap year in the USA Markus!)

And to be clear I'm not a disgruntled holder - I bought in shortly after IPO and roughly broke even when I liquidated half my portfolio in the COVID years when everything seemed a little too good to be true. I'm just an interested onlooker who would genuinely like to see the company succeed (I used to love their black and red rice products, even before they listed). But for that to happen, at a minimum they need to sacrifice their salaries for a year and provide the market with some confidence that they actually think the company has a future. Otherwise this will be insolvent within the next 12 months.