Article Excerpt:
TWST: Would you give us a brief historical sketch of the company and a picture of things as they are now?Mr. Dempsey: The company was established in 1991 as the cosmetic and nutrition division of Aeterna Zentaris, a company that is in the pharmaceutical research business. In the early 1990s, we had cash generating products to fund the pharmaceutical research of Aeterna Zentaris. What we did in December 1999 was we spun off out of the cosmetic and nutrition division into a wholly owned subsidiary of Aeterna Zentaris. We started our operations in the year 2000 with our own Board of Management and employees. In 2000, we raised $14 million in a private placement and over the next six years, we did nine acquisitions for a total of $195 million. We did our initial public offering for $61 million, of which $41 million was treasury in April 2005.
TWST: Would you give us some sense of the competitive landscape and the ways in
which you differ from your competitors?
Mr. Dempsey: Before I do that, I will just explain a little bit of what we are
about. We are basically a science-based health and personal care product
company. We develop, manufacture, and supply value-added products. We have two
divisions. The first division is active ingredients and specialty chemicals,
where our customers are in the cosmetic, nutrition, pharmaceutical, and chemical
industries. Our second division is health and nutrition where we manufacture
finished products mostly for healthcare professionals mainly in the US, but also
in North America, Europe, and Asia. We have operations in Canada, the US, and
Europe. Revenues for December 2005, the last fiscal year, were $271 million
with EBITDA of $38 million.
In the competitive landscape, if we look at the personal health and nutrition
division there, we are selling products through healthcare professionals; we
don't sell at the retail level or through multilevel marketing. In the
competitive landscape, we are looking at privately owned companies, such as
Metagenics and Standard Process We are the largest company in North America and
we have approximately a 13% market share. The next competitor is probably about
half the size of us. We're also active in Europe and in Asia, but our main
presence today in health and nutrition is in North America.
In active ingredients and specialty chemicals, our main operations are in
Europe, specifically in France, and they are also in Canada. In Europe, for
active ingredients, we are the number one supplier in France. In North America,
specifically in Canada, we are one of the leaders and we are growing to become a
leader there. We compete with a number of companies, especially in the active
ingredients and specialty chemicals. We compete with large companies and also
with smaller companies that sell mostly niche products.
Tickers included in this excerpt: ATB:TSX
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