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Clearly Canadian: Flowing
Clearly Into the Future by Glenn
Wilkins - AllPennyStocks.com News Reporter
February 8, 2007 (AllPennyStocks.com Media Inc.) -
Canadians, the popular perception goes, are "hewers of wood
and drawers of water". How it should follow, then, that one of
our natural success stories is the one being played out by
Clearly Canadian
(OTCBB: CCBEF), the British Columbia-based maker and
distributor of Natural Enhanced and sparkling flavoured water
products.
In the late 1980s, Clearly Canadian, a perky little
start-up out of the town of Vernon, introduced a line of
sparkling flavoured waters that blazed a trail for what is now
known as the Alternative Beverage category, a category
currently estimated at $21 billion within North America alone.
We visited this stock last summer, just as the company was
starting to take its product to a bigger stage. We return as
Clearly Canadian hitches its wagon to a star of the basketball
court. On the eve of the NBA All-Star game, the company
released promotional videos featuring Steve Nash, the
Canadian-born backcourt ace with back-to-back Most Valuable
Player trophies on his mantle.
The promos are available on the company website,
http://www.clearly.ca. It's been speculated they could pop
up on computer monitors everywhere, thus improving company
visibility.
Another marketing strategy is evidence by the new one-litre
plastic bottle in which Clearly is bringing out its product.
The bigger bottle bears a similar label and package design as
the current 14-ounce container most folks recognize, and will
house the company's original (strawberry and blackberry) and
zero calorie (pink grapefruit and blueberry) flavours.
Clearly (pardon the pun), this is a company on the move.
Not so long ago, the firm was in debt. One of the highlights
of 2006 was the company reporting $5 million in the bank (all
amounts in U.S. dollars unless specified otherwise).
Another highlight was the announcement of $4.6 million in
financing, to help back this incredible growth the company
foresees, and on which it now seems to be delivering. Arrows
for 2007 point to two new distribution agreements already, and
diversification through acquisition, as well as the
establishment of more product lines and expansion into Asia
while streamlining its operations.
Big Geyser is one of New York's largest independent
non-alcoholic beverage distributors, with a growing number of
convenience, drug and grocery store chains, restaurants and
food service outlets. Big Geyser came on board in late January
as distributor and Clearly Canadian President Brent Lokash
calls it a "strong partner" for his firm.
The end of January saw the launch of the company's three
new product lines of non-carbonated Natural Enhanced Waters:
dailyEnergy, dailyVitamin and dailyHydration, a certified
organic essence water. These new Natural Enhanced Waters are
low or zero-calorie, health-conscious beverages with no
preservatives or artificial sweeteners. "Our goal", says
Lokash, "is to put Clearly Canadian back at the forefront of
the alternative beverage industry and to provide a platform
for further extensions of this product lineup."
The company's fiscal year coincides with the calendar year,
so the last period in which there is financial information is
the third quarter of 2006, during which Clearly Canadian
reported sales slightly down from the same quarter of 2005,
but still a respectable $2.02 million. Gross profit was
$620,000, though also off from the same period the year
before, likely linked to the expense of launching the new
product lines.
But the combination of new developments in marketing and
the declining price of the stock may raise the eyebrows of
small cap investors. The price of the stock (trading on the
OTCBB under the symbol CCBEF) has waxed and waned from a
52-week high of $4.50 last July to a low around the two-dollar
mark in November. It has settled into a range between $2.80
and $3.00 over the winter, but the company has indicated it
plans to make much more of a dent in the alternative beverage
market, and the sales should flow from those developments. As
a result, investors should watch what this B.C. based company
does over the coming quarters.
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