Kebble’s giant battle against the rising tide
When you have the same surname as the late Brett Kebble, you need to adjust your business strategy accordingly
FORMER rugby Springbok Guy Kebble — brother of the infamous Brett — is hoping to clean up in the US with a business based on purity.
Kebble runs liquid-purification company SurePure, which is listed on the New York exchange OTC Markets which in turn caters for investors in venture-capital companies.
This week, SurePure posted an annual report showing a spectacular 226% rise in revenue — yet it was an island in a sea of otherwise horrible figures.
This did not deter Kebble, who said he was loving the way that things were going in his company. “It is a fun thing for me . . . It is going to make me some money in my time.”
SurePure’s value lies in its patented technology, which removes toxins and other undesirable elements from a range of products. Rather than using heat, it uses ultraviolet light to purify opaque liquids, including milk and fruit and vegetable juices. Most other UV purification process are only effective on transparent liquids.
The product could, for example, be used to purify milk in India — a market that Kebble described as a huge prospect.
“The vegetable-juice industry is going to blow your mind,” he said.
SurePure claims to be a “greener alternative to comparable heat or chemical-based processes” and offers “significant process and energy savings”. “Thermal is in the past. It’s dead,” Kebble said.
But Kebble’s view that SurePure is destined to make money seems a trifle optimistic, given that its net loss since its launch in 2005 now stands at more than $34-million (about R415-million).
This week’s report said that “historical losses are expected to continue unless we are able to generate significant amounts of revenue”. Operating losses have been so immense that it has been “difficult for us to raise additional working capital”.
It has not exactly been good news for Kebble’s investors, either: since the company was listed in New York in 2012, the share price has plummeted from over $1.50 to $0.16.
But Kebble said his company was monstrously undervalued.
He described it as a “100 bagger” — meaning it is worth 100 times its purchase price.
Maybe so — but it needs to pay around $2.8-million in taxes, salaries and “other current liabilities”.
Kebble said that he, as well as “friends and family” who put money into the project, decided to list the company in the US to get traction for the innovative product idea. This group involved people he has “known for a long time”, some of whom he admitted were Swiss bankers.
Part of the reason that the company is not listed on the JSE is because of the monumental fraud and eventual assassination of Kebble’s brother.
Brett Kebble was CEO of mining companies JCI, Randgold & Exploration and Western Areas until a few weeks before his death, when he was ousted by Allan Gray and Investec.
Kebble was murdered nearly a decade ago in a shooting on a bridge near Melrose Arch in Johannesburg. But the case still fascinates the country, partly because it emerged that Kebble had pillaged billions from his shareholders, paid bribes to several people (including police chief Jackie Selebi) and supposedly orchestrated his own death. Multiple conspiracy theories still abound, and several books have been written detail- ing ever-more incredible facts and minutiae. A movie was released last year, with Brett’s killers — including Mikey Schultz — playing themselves.
So there is no doubt any company bearing the Kebble name in South Africa would — at least initially — raise eyebrows and deter potential investors.
Kebble said that he listed SurePure in the US because, “after all the s**t with my brother, where would my support base be?”
He said that he “needed to catch the tall trees” — people with serious money to spend.
It has not proven easy, and the company said “we cannot provide any assurance that any additional financing will be available to us, or if available, will be on terms favourable to us”.
The company has outlets, offices and factories around the world. This includes a SurePure factory in Paarl, in the Western Cape, which does some of the initial work on different prod- ucts. Kebble said he was keen to increase South African operations and that a local listing has not been ruled out.
“Whatever I can do here, I will,” he said.
As an example of having “done his bit” for the country, Kebble could not resist a mention of his former glory days as a Springbok rugby prop. He also notes that his son Oli played for the Stormers.
But a listing on the JSE seems far away, given the low appetite for speculative venture-capital start-ups.
Although the prospects still look anything but certain, there are some encouraging signs, which attest to Kebble’s optimism. For example, orders signed since January 2014 now exceed $2.5-million.
This is a turbo-charged leap forward from a sluggish start, considering that in the nine-odd years after the company was founded in August 2005, SurePure pulled in orders equal to half this value.
But even this might not help, if the risks to the business outlined in the annual report materialise, including that “our SurePure Photopurification Technology may become obsolete”.
The negative sentiment of “risk factors” continues with de- pressing statements like “general economic conditions will affect our operations . . . [including] volatility, uncertainty or actual or potential downturns”.
Worse still, “the delayed recovery of the global economy is not conducive to growth, particularly of technology companies with newly commercialised products”.
Kebble remains adamant that the future is bright, and he talks a good game: even home-care products such as shampoos and soaps need to be purified and the technology works for them too. An even bigger revenue stream, he said, was the product’s potential to purify carbonated soft drinks, one of the world’s most lucrative industries.
If this company’s future were premised on the sort of optimism espoused by Kebble, its success would be assured.
It is a fun thing for me . . . It is going to make me some money in my time