Bioprogress is a stock I have been in and out of quite a few times since it floated in May but not much mention here on the Investors' Room. Does anyone else follow this stock. I see it is up 1.5p today and a few good buyers seem to have appeared.

ethel, forget about a broker that rips you off.. this game is difficult enough without brokers loading the dice the wrong way even further!
There are a lot of brokers around that charge much less than 20 for any size trade.

Ample is 10.00 flat trade...

Just thought I would like to give a little happiness to somebody!

Volumes could be a little better.

Well,I really fell out of the tree on that one...words fail me needless to say,I am p+++++ *** Should have hung on in there. Learn't me lesson.Thankyou for all your indignation,I shall act on it.I have paid the family broker(inherited with mother's shares)thoooooousands of pounds over the last three years.Which is easier,ComDirect or Ample?

Comdirect is good so are their online news Charts and watchlists. Deal 12.5 Management fees small. Also has stop losses. Barclays deals at 12 and for frequent deals at 7.50. Online research has improved immensely. Has good research facilities but I think poor Charting. Seem to have cocked up a few things for me, Stop losses on 350, Staff try to be helpful and pleasant. I wish they had a more complete transaction printout. I think expensive management fees. Bu finding it difficult to extract myself and transfer

Have a look at the 'share centre' at www.share.com as little as 2.50 a deal, average around 7.50. Great web site and deals done in seconds(on-line or phone), simple to navigate and very few problems (ive had none). Easy to top up on bprg then, happy hunting.

I am in agreement Kivver, I've used The Share Centre for some years.... always a pleasure, fast & efficient, aint life goood

Also recommend the share centre, 1% or 2.50min to buy batch or 7.50 instant.
Sells 7.50. Quick efficient and deals done in seconds. The one downside is unable to real-time trade until after 8.15am or after 4.15pm.
You can set-it up in 24hours and your off and running.

ethel, I use ComDirect and wont hear a word said against them - well not many anyway. You can set up electronic trades to buy/sell if a stock reaches a certain price whci usually works faultlessly.

Comdirect for me.

andysmith - Don't like the idea of missing the first and last 15 mins of trading. There's good moves made at those times. Wonder if Share Centre keep some stuff in-house.

Is this still the bioprogress thread. Just checking :-)

Thankyou all very much for the kind advice.No more chit chats with Mr P when I ring up in a hurry to do a trade and he wants to talk about road rage.I shall miss him.The old fashioned broker,still buying mainly the Footsie 100 and unwilling to take risks:the only problem is that commission plus his complete ignorance of the small caps.Ether

This is showing well of late,could a 1.20 be back on the cards soon.

Glad I topped up yesterday at 78p :)

http://www.wallstreetreporter.com/profiles/AXMPharma.html


Here is my transcript of the interview. Ive edited out the umms and aahhs to make it read better and edited the punctuation as well.

For those who dont know, Bioprogresss products will be on sale in about two weeks time in China marketed through the Sunkist brand via AXM Pharma.



WallStreetReporter interview with Douglas C. MacLellan. Vice Chairman of AXM Pharma.

Dated: February 16th 2005


IAN: Good-day from Wallstreet and welcome to all our listeners to the
WallStreetReporter. This is Ian Roberts, Senior Analyst with the WallStreetReporter. Today our featured company is a global pharmaceutical company involved in the marketing, distribution of pharmaceutical products in China. The company produces markets and distributes medicines in various dosages and forms in most areas of medicinal treatment as well as herbal remedies, vitamins and adjunctive therapies. The name of the company involved here is AXM Pharma Incorporated. AXM Pharma trading its shares on the American stock exchange; the symbol AXJ.

And joining me to discuss AXM Pharma in light of recent initiatives and strategies for 2005 and beyond is Doug Mac Lellan, the Vice-Chairman of AXM Pharma Incorporated. Doug, good morning, welcome to WallStreetReporter,

DOUG: Good morning.

IAN: For those members of our audience who havent followed AXM Pharma in its history, lets start with an overview with a time-line please.

DOUG: Well, we started building a state-of-the-art plant in Xiang-yang China which is the fifth largest city in China but it is located at northeastern part of China just above Beijing. We started building that plant about two and a half years ago and went on-line with it literally last month. Its a state-of-the-art pharma production facility and were quite proud of the progress weve made with that.

We got a ten year operating history where we were manufacturing products in an old Chinese plant, but this is a world-class plant that really has the ability to produce an enormous amount of production for us. In fact it is an in-licensing platform for production because we the ability to build up to 170 million year in sales just through that single plant.

IAN: Very interesting, and taking a look at the Company, lets take a step back here and talk about this market. You know, what is the market that is defined in China as, and what are the opportunities that you see as driving this growth opportunity?

DOUG: Well, I think theres been and certainly a lot of talk on the street about trying to enter the Chinese market. From a professional stand-point, Ive been going to China for over 22 years, so I have, you know, myself and a lot of other members on our management team and Board have an enormous experience working with China.

The magnitude of the size of the market there is of course the driving force. You know, in the United States here we have 9 cities with a population of over 1 million people. In China theyve got, you know, 163 cities that have over a million people in it. And, its just a staggeringly large market with 1.4 billion people. Also the Chinese consumer market is much larger than most people think and more affluent than most people think. Today there are over 100 million Chinese managers that make over $40 000 a year. And that is the base to which we look to market our product.

IAN: Very interesting, and talking a bit about this, lets talk about the companys recent initiatives. I understand that you have opened a new state-of-the-art facility. Tell us a bit more about this and how it advances the companys mission.

DOUG: Well, our goal is as the market has changed in China and since the signing of WTO, China has begun to enforce much more stricter regime of quality controls which lead us to build a new state-of-the-art facility that needs Chinese GMP standard. In fact all plants in China today must meet that. That traded by the way a consolidation in the industry. Last year in 2004 there were probably about 6000 pharmaceutical plants and today on estimates there are approximately 2200, of which were one.

So there has been an enormous consolidation of quality in the market place and I guess our point is were competing on, or better than, these other facilities that are available in China. And the first part of doing any business in China is to make a good product and were in this position to do that. And the next thing of course, is to have a good set of products to manufacture and to have a good distribution network to get the products to the market place. We think were effectively in 2005 are going to hit all those things in a way that drives sales in a strong pattern.

IAN: Exceptional. Lets focus now on your product and line of products. Particularly I note that the highlights there with your Sunkist products. Tell us a bit more about this and the market opportunity you see outlined.

DOUG: Sure. AXM has licenses to produce 43 different products. Of those licenses today, were making about 3 or 4 products out of those licenses. In addition to that weve introduced some new products. Well be expanding off our old licenses and adding new ones as we go forward. We have a feminine hygiene product today thats in the market called Whisper. We have a product called Aspron (?) for respiratory infection. We have a skin and acne treatment. We are also of course, bringing in childs vitamins and supplements which you know, is really the largest driver for us in sales in 2005. And those supplements and vitamins come through us a licensing agreement, an exclusive licensing agreement we have with Sunkist trademark for originally for China but now we have expanded it for Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Sunkist ranks in the top 25 brands in China and similarly in Hong Kong and Taiwan.
And we expect to have a very strong showing in that category and that includes vitamins in product strip products which are similar to Listerine products except they have therapeutic elements to them. Either they are Vitamin C., Euchanasia or they are cold and flu season and its really a very effective delivery system for us. But our goal is that by the end of the first quarter or the beginning of the second quarter we should have up to 13 products out in the market selling those. And we expect to see significant growth because of that

IAN: Now Looking at the line of products you mentioned, the growth drivers there, what are the other things that we should note here in the strategic steps necessary to ensure success. I understand that regional distribution partners will play a substantial part in that role. Can you give us a sense in where you stand in these efforts?

D.M: Sure. There is like in any business, there is the cost if distribution. In traditional markets like the United States there are times when many companies can do their own distribution effectively. I would say that in China first of all, regulatory it was required that all pharma companies utilize third party distributors. That has slightly changed over the last year but for us to be effective in going to market quickly we needed to use third party, and continue to use third party distributors.

Now in prior years we had a very small regional distributor out of Chang Chun (?) Province. Last year we signed an in-depth agreement with China Zuellig which is a subsidiary of Interpharma Group which is the largest pharmaceutical distributor in Asia with an annual revenues exceeding $3 billion. And they are pushing very hard for us, particularly on the Sunkist brand of products in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. And you know, our relationship with them and theirs with us, we think bodes well for us to drive sales particular with those product lines.

We also expect to be selling direct in some cases to several large chain-store pharmacies depending on the product line. And we are likely to sign up to one or two additional nationwide distributorships with Chinese distributors with certain of our products. So we will be expanding off now with what we have built up with Zuellig but again, it will position us to have a really strong 2005.

IAN: Lets talk about this 2005. In terms of looking at the product offering, what are some of the things we should expect to see and understand of the companies growth prospects. What are the major milestones youve outlined?

DOUG: Well, I think first of all well start seeing product coming out of our plant and ramping up inventory during this 1st quarter. Then moving into the 2nd quarter we expect to see significant sell-through in our products through our distributors and that should continue throughout the year in a significant pace. We arent putting out any guidance yet for numbers but we think we going to have a very significant year and one that should be profitable.

IAN: Lets talk a bit about the infrastructure of the company and talking a bit about management and the team you have assembled. What are the things we should know about the people behind the mission and what additions have you made recently that may enhance the company and its strategy.

DOUG: Well, I think building human capital or management teams is always a difficult thing and a challenge in emerging markets and businesses and cross-border businesses. We did several things this year in that we rearranged some of the authorities and responsibilities of our management. One of the key things was that we shifted responsibility for international sales of our Sunkist product line strictly to Peter Cunningham who has got a very strong background, who was formally our CEO and is now president of international sales.

We also then took a gentleman who has got a significant amount of management experience and senior management experience, Chep(?) Howard who was our CFO and made him CEO and also acting CFO until hiring a new replacement for that spot. And I think notably we also have hired Zemyou Kong (?) who is the formallyor who is retiring as president of China operations for Sino Pharm which is Chinas largest manufacturer and distributor in China and we expect him to be very helpful in all of our China operations, particularly in sales and marketing. And he will be coming in as president of China Ops or operations and CEO of AXM Shenyang which is our operating subsidiary in China.

And lastly we have a very strong chief technical officer, Chris Gee(?) who has been with the Group but has got an enhanced role in really actively building a monitoring system for us internally for our sales and distribution activity.

IAN: Interesting. And looking in light of your business model and recent news, talking a bit about capitalizing on this explosive growth rate, what are the things that we should note here about this market in particular, in terms of trends that you feel may shape the way you accelerate or accomplish your mission?

DOUG: Well, we had a very difficult transition year in 2004 where we were completing our manufacturing facilities. We were completing compliance in all our new sales regulations and licensing regulations for our products and it was really an enormous transition year for us and it took more work than we thought it would. In 2005 all the work we put in 2004 kind finally hits the road and gives us some significant traction in just getting back to being a good strong business with good sales and earnings that are interesting.

IAN: In terms of understanding this do you feel the investor community a whole understands the company and its position to capitalize on the opportunities for growth in this market?

Doug: Well, I think the way we have structured our business unlike many Joint-Ventures in China or as listing as an ADR or some other foreign issuer. We are an American issuer with 100% China operations. We think that and our structure as a wholly owned foreign enterprise in China is unique and we think our model will be used by other Chinese companies in the years to come. We think we have created one that creates more transparency and is easier to understand and look at. I think the investing public is slowly starting to take a look at us and in 2005 with posting some reasonably good numbers our prospects will be changing significantly and the profile of the company will. And I think that will attract some interest. So today we have got a heck of a buying opportunity because we are probably under the radar screen.

IAN: Very interesting to note here. Also, in light of the issue of possible competition. What are the prospects for the company to succeed as you outlined here in light of the possibility of competition entering the market here in 2005?

DOUG: Well, there is a lot of competition in China. The things that make us unique are things like our Sunkist brand that other companies dont have. That Western branding products is a significant driver. We also areour licenses that we have are fairly unique and we do have some products that have some history of having some good sales for instance our product which is for respiratory condition.

So we think we can regain the momentum of those sales of traditional products and also our new products are highly unique. They also take fairly unique manufacturing conditions to make these products which again makes it harder for someone to directly compete against us.

IAN: Very interesting. And in closing words here to our audience, what would you highlight foremost to show us out there. What is the most compelling reason to own or participate in AXM Pharma in 2005 or beyond that date?

DOUG: I think if we can hit our internal plans for sales in by comparison with other international pharmaceutical companies, certainly we are at a price that is at a lot lower valuation than we see everybody else. And we think we will grow in to a much stronger valuation and which today makes us something that people should watch and maybe buy.

IAN: Certainly a fascinating company to follow here. Certainly positioned well to capitalize on the market opportunity in the Chinese over-the-counter pharmaceutical market. I would like to thank my guest Doug MacLellan, the vice chairman of AXM Pharma for taking the time to present us with an update portrait on the company and strategy in moving ahead. Doug, we wish you the best of success there.

DOUG: Thanks for letting me join you . (etc).

Whew!!!!Well done.Does AXM use BPRG films?

phew! amazing, thanks! the only way is up!

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