Even if we can always discuss the efficiency of this category of...

Even if we can always discuss the efficiency of this category of products, there is a real demand in Australia and Asia for vitamins and supplements.

Vita Life Science (brands : Herbs of Gold, VitaHealth...) is an Australian company which tries to capture that demand in Australia and 5 Asian countries (Malaysia, Singapore, China, Vietnam, Indonesia).
In fact, all the profit comes from 2 geographic areas : Australia and Malaysia/Singapore, where they also make 91 % of their revenues.

Looking at the listed peers (EZZ, Biome), we can see that the main challenge in this sector is not to grow the revenues, it is more to be able to do a decent profit and cash flow, on a regular basis.

Looking at these 3 listed companies, it is clear that it is a tough market which requires a high level of marketing spendings.
The main difficulty seems to be able to create loyal customers which are doing repeat sales, in a market where there are a lot of brands.

Interesting to see what happened to EZZ (mainly in mainland China), they were able to grow sales significantly, thanks to a large level of marketing and promotion.
Unfortunately, the strong growth of their sales stopped when they began to reduce their marketing spendings.
Vital Life has done the opposite choice : they keep increasing their marketing spendings (in % of revenues) which has a negative effect on their margin, but enable them to maintain their profit (and even increase it during H1 25).

Another interesting element about VLS : their ROE of 18 % is hiding a much higher level of ROIC (after tax) of 41 %.
The difference is due to the high level of net cash (29.1 m$).

One of the weak point about this company : its poor liquidity, as the 6 substantial shareholders own 66 % of the company.
In FY 24 (ending in Dec 24), it had a major impact as 2 directors and all the key management people sold shares.
Cumulated, they sold 4.4 % of the capital*.
It was not offset by buyback which represented only 1.3 % of capital.

So far, in FY 25, I have not seen any sign of major disposal by directors.
While they are accelerating the share buyback : already 650,000+ shares bought back during H1 25, vs 714,000 for FY 24 (for 12 months).

* more than 50 % was due to a vested plan share. Shares were sold to repay a loan balance (used to acquire the shares).