On a mission to bulk up

The market is probably trying to send a message when you pull up a company’s five-year share price graph and look back fondly on the heady days of July 2015, when the price was peaking at a princely 4c/share.

For a while now Nutritional Holdings has rested at a less frothy valuation of 1c, a status on which late 1980s pop sensation Yazz may well have been commenting when she suggested “the only way is up, baby”.

Unless, of course, it trends down, suggesting the company has no value whatsoever and that everybody would be better served by terminating the hassle and expense of a listing.

Nutritional Holdings has been engaging in Cristiano Ronaldo-style quantities of fancy footwork to keep the lights on in the face of ever-growing losses. It has sold its health-care division, raised R10m in a rights issue, extended the payback period of one loan and settled another by taking out a further medium-term loan.

But all this is like shifting deckchairs on the Titanic unless the company can address the main issue, which is that it needs to flog considerably more of its range of dry food products to its customer base of largescale industrial food users.

The good news is that it has concluded a three-year manufacturing contract with a supplier to the national health department. This should give a much-needed boost to the tonnage of throughput in the Klerksdorp factory, and could even result in the group returning to profitability.

The company needs to get the fortified porridge flying out of the factory — and fast.