plant health care plc


1
from inventor to investor
the inventor
sometimes help comes from unexpected places it was a power outage
that led plant health care founder and chief scientist donald marx to an
important discovery in developing a unique environmentallyfriendly way to
foster plant growth
marx’s research career has been devoted to mycorrhizal fungi which are vital
to plant health and have existed on plant roots for millions of years
while with the usda forest service in the 1960’s he set up a greenhouse
experiment to grow these fungi on pine seedlings one weekend the power
went out shutting off the greenhouse cooling system when he arrived the next
morning the temperature in the greenhouse had reached more than 130

Summary:
 plant health care plc


10
chief executive’s report

introduction and
summary of operating
results
2007 was another successful year for plant health care with our ﬁrst two major
partnership deals with bayer cropscience and monsanto for myconate and harpin
respectively and turnover up 34 to a record 183 million 2006 137 million i am
delighted to report that this growth was led by our us agriculture division established in
2006 which generated 40 million of sales in 2007 and from fee income from partners
which contributed some 5 of turnover
gross proﬁt was up 37 to 84 million 2006 61 million the improvement in our
gross margin to 456 2006 447 is attributable to fee income from our partners
and to our entry into the higher margin harpin business which contributed sales
of 26 million
we continued to develop and test new applications of our natural technologies and we
expanded our sales team to achieve the abovementioned sales growth in us agriculture
this resulted in increased operating costs of 136 million 2006 90 million
the operating loss for the year was 52 million 2006 loss of 29 million slightly
higher than expected due to a delay on another harpin deal which is expected to be
completed in the ﬁrst half of the current year net cash at 31 december 2007 was
98 million boosted by a successful 10 million equity fundraising in september 2007
our natural
technologies
partnerships
myconate