The Jones Soda BevNET Conference Call - Our Notes
We had the opportunity to listen to BevNET’s conference call earlier today with Peter van Stolk, CEO of Jones Soda. The conference call was set up by the folks at Citigroup.
Here’s what we learned during the call.
Company overview: Jones Soda is a leader in the premium soda market. Their stock trades at about $5.20 per share this morning. It has a $112 million market cap, TTM earnings of four cents per share, and a current P/E ratio of 148 - a bit rich, even for our tastes.
Jones started with six flavors in 1996, and now has 21 SKUs. Mr. van Stolk said that they were a small company, and looks at their business differently. He said they focus on producing a consistent, great tasting beverage, but something that their competitors haven’t thought of.
Their objective: create a brand people can get excited about. Jones is doing this by putting consumers’ photos on the bottles.
It is a clever marketing gimmick - but can you build it into a billion dollar business?
Mr. van Stolk explained that Jones Soda’s marketing efforts took the approach from Ralph Lauren and other clothing companies. Premium sodas, he explained, have been selling in the US for 150 years. Therefore, it is essential that Jones build up their brand as a sort of the Mercedes-Benz of sodas.
Jones Soda is one of the most expensive sodas on the market. According to Mr. van Stolk, consumers pay as much as $1.99 for one bottle of Jones, whereas they could get twelve cans of generic soda for the same price.
Mr. van Stolk emphasized that Jones’ products are made to order. They have the unique ability to customize their packaging, what Mr. van Stolk considers to be a key factor in their marketing efforts.
While the two leaders in the carbonated beverage industry each spend $1 billion in marketing per year, Jones doesn’t have that kind of cash; therefore, they use more guerilla tactics that create buzz, with the hopes that consumers will remember it in the summer months and choose to pay a premium price for the Jones brand.
Jones focuses a number of promotional efforts in the off-season - odd tasting sodas are just a part - and that their out of the box marketing strategies help build brand awareness. According to Mr. van Stolk, turkey and gravy sodas lead to good word of mouth; so does “carbonated fish in a bottle.” They also had a successful launch of their Halloween sodas, including a candy-corn flavored soda, which sold earlier this year.
Mr. van Stolk made some references to what the company would be doing in the future, saying that no one had thought of what they would be doing next month. He declined to comment any further.
One noteworthy point: Jones Soda’s contract with Target expires in July of 2006. While Mr. van Stolk alluded to big marketing plans in the future, he did say it would be an all-organic effort.
Though we got a lot out of the call, we’re a little disappointed in their staff for not letting us ask a question. We must have pressed *1 on the call a hundred times; perhaps they ignored us because we admitted being from the media?
Michael Stefanakis says:
Did they Mention why Jennifer Cue is leaving? - What does all Organic Effort mean?
Thank you for the Summary…
Wednesday, 7 December 2005 @ 12:58am
Administrator says:
“All Organic” Effort just means that the funding/effort will be done exclusively by Jones, as opposed to working with some other distributor.
Wednesday, 7 December 2005 @ 1:31am
agnux says:
A POSSIBLE SOLUTION: BIODIESEL MADE WITH GARBAGE “The Fuel Of The Future”
A group of Spanish developers working under the company name Ecofasa, headed by chief executive officer and inventor Francisco Angulo, has developed a biochemical process to turn urban solid waste into a fatty acid biodiesel feedstock.
Here is a translated description of the tecnology:
ECOFA is a new fuel, which due to its origin, its production, and its solution to the inherent problems in any kind of organic waste, specially the urban solid waste, it is called ‘eco.combustible’ adding FA (initials of Francisco Angulo) in honor of its discoverer.
Ecofa biofuel is a subgroup of biofuels that comes from fatty acids biosynthesized from microbes and to used it in current internal combustion engines and diesel
It is based on the metabolism’s bionatural principle, by mean of which all living organisms, including bacteria, produce fatty acids. The great contribution of Francisco Angulo’s patents, this is why its incalculable economic value, is exactly that this principle is used to the biofuel’s production and comes from the carbon of any organic waste.
The microorganisms that synthesize useful products for men represent, at most, a few hundred species among the more than 100,000 described in Nature. The few that have been useful for industry are valuated for procuding a substance that can not be achieved easily or cheaply by other methods. Next it is going to be explained the advantages that ECOFA has with regard current biodiesel:
* Almost the whole solution to the problem that exists in municipalities with the treatment and storage of domestic rubbish. Moreover, the process produces methane gas and it is also left a remain that could be used as organic fertilizer for fields.
* It would not be necessary to used specific fields of maize, wheat, barley, beets, etc.. which would remain for human consume without creating distortions or famines with unforeseeable consequences.
* So, it would be possible that farmers had to use less plowing , so the field could recover, in a natural way, the lost carbon ( agriculture’s conservation).
* The monocultures’s productions are always more favourable to pests, as it is not spread (because it is not only used to biodiesel ) the risk is lower
* Possibility for town halls of the autonomous processing in its own plants that will generate and will bring wealth to rural populations. The production would be mainly in consumption’s towns, so it would not be necessary pipelines, nor ships sailing with cargo that could be poured into the sea, since the producing plants are not very complex nor expensive and any town can install it without too much complications.
* According to the environment, the use of RSU (Solid Urban Waste) for energy production, is expected to present some added benefits of those that already exist in biofuels. Particularly with regard to smells, the improve of the landscapes and the reduction of pollution in the air, water and soil.
* Finally this microbial technique can be extended to other organic debris, plants or animals, such as those contained in the urban sewage. You can even experiment with other materials such as carbon sources, and this opens up a lot of possibilities; it is only necessary to find out the appropriate bacteria and make them work as a huge army of workers without pay, eating letfovers without stopping, as they reproduce by cloning and therefore bringing more and more quantity of ecocombustible.
CONCLUSION ABOUT ECOFA
ECOFA by their origins, already would represent a first relief to three problems that we suffer nowadays:
* urban solid waste, that would benefit mainly the town halls which have to suffer the logistical problems
* contribution of its share to the supply of the general fuel’s demand .
* and contribution of its share to the solution of climate change problem
But there are also other connotations as important:
* Its production does not cause famine, on the contrary it would generate wealth in the areas of production. Town halls would be again favoured
* As biotechnology takes part in it, and the yeasts and bacteria produce the process, it does not require the input of energy or heat, that others need, so it is also highly worthwhile in terms of its energy balance. Bacteria do not consume energy from others while they are working
* As the biotehconology is the responsible, bacteria and yeast, due to their metabolism, produce fatty acid from any carbon source, including all the organic waste, since it can be done at any stage with the appropiate bacterium: sewage, waste of slaughterhouses, remains and stubble of the field, paper, gauze and cotton (from hospitals, for example) and any other organic waste.
* It is not renewable but multirenewable, since (CO2) that comes from its combustion, leads to the growth of any kind of plants which they do not have to be used to produce biofuels, they might also come in useful for a food cycle and / or biological, leading to organic debris of any kind.
* It is also multisustainable. Obviously, this is due to the diverse origins of organic waste, the logistics of ECOFA’ s raw material , can come from any rubbish and from any place on the planet.
The origin is in some patent, whose owner is Francisco Angulo Lafuente, that support biotechnological processes in order to achieve a fuel from remains and organic waste.
http://www.biodieselmagazine.com/article.jsp?article_id=3225
http://earthtoys.com/emagazine.php?issue_number=09.04.01&article=angu&id=
http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/ecology/how-to-turn-garbage-into-biofuel/4067
Monday, 22 June 2009 @ 11:21am