Quarterly Trends, page-43

Very difficult to read the text in the newspaper image. Below is an extract from the article that is of relevance to CDY. It is a pity that the title referred to his earlier association with Coles rather than the new Cellmid connection, which is the reason the article was written.

"There is a pattern here". The intended implication clearly is that Cellmid could fit the same pattern.

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“I go back every year, have been back every year to Australia, every year, since I left. I go to the Australian Open, I am a big tennis fan,’’ Eck tells The Weekend Australian.

‘’Ulta were in a situation somewhat similar to what Coles Myer was when I joined. They did not know how to go forward. I did a five-year business plan, gave it to them and said they could do it one of two ways; they could take the plan and do it themselves or second was for me to be the plan,’’ he says.

“All I wanted to be paid in was share of stock not money. They were going bankrupt, so I ended up with a lot of shares. I got shares that were issued at about $US1.65 or $US1.85 each — It was a long time ago so don’t hold me to it. “When we did an IPO I had about 662,000 shares; now the stock is trading at about $US245 each.”

There is a pattern here. Eck was originally hired as a consultant by Coles Myer in the mid 1990s to construct a plan for the revival of its poor performing supermarkets and would soon replace its then CEO Peter Bartels.

Now he is back. Eck has returned to Australia as a newly minted director of ASX-listed micro-cap biotech company Cellmid. It is a $26m life sciences company with a bulging portfolio of lead programs in multiple disease indications but also with a strong focus on anti-ageing beauty products such as hair loss.

He paid $1m late last year for a roughly 5 per cent stake in Cellmid (the shares have risen more than 20 per cent since). He says his other main investments in Australia are in CSL and Cochlear.

Why dabble in risky biotech? Eck explains in a matter-of-fact way that he was unlikely to repeat the massive personal financial success of Ulta. He also was attracted to how Cellmid straddles both biotech research for diseases such as cancer but also has a direct-to-consumer division.

“The way that I thought about this is: what is the next way a person can make a meaningful amount of money? You only get one Ulta in your life, so I guess if I wanted another I needed to think differently.”