Finde die Website sehr informativ, es gibt aktuelle Beiträge des Managements und weitere Informationen zur Branche. Bin sehr gespannt wie sich Umsatz und Gewinn von Namaste mit diesem Zukauf und Eintritt in den US-Markt entwickeln.
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Chairman’s Industry Review
by admin | Apr 14, 2016 | Chairmans Blog | 0 comments
Greetings to all investors, industry investigators and folks interested in following Namaste Technologies from a corporate perspective. We are in an exciting e-commerce and growth consumer space. I hope to provide ongoing updates in this section of the web site to help keep you up on the company, e-commerce, and our consumer products. The perspective here is to inform you on information which can help contribute to the internal data base you need to evaluate the industry and the company from an investment perspective.
The topics we will be reviewing in this blog include, the market size of the vaporizer industry, what vaporizers are, including their history, consumer trends, corporate trends, regulatory aspects, and valuations, and other relevant subjects as they develop.
Vaporizers as investment perspective
From an investment perspective let’s first review industry trends and size in general, and then in some detail what vaporizers are. I will start from the commercial angle, and then get to the technology. In later blogs we will look at the health and regulatory issues, and interesting issues like medical marijuana use. Vaporizers have advanced the technology of what used to be called smoking. We will get into the history of where vaporizers came from.
Bonnie Herzog invest
Wells Fargo Analyst Bonnie Herzog
Wells Fargo Analyst Bonnie Herzog (to the left) wrote in early 2015 that the retail market for Vaporizers could exceed $3.5 billion in the US by the end of 2015 and could exceed $7 billion world wide. Since 2008, the number of U.S. “vape shops has grown to about 8,500, and the sale of electronic cigarettes and supplies climbed to $3.5 billion, according to Herzog. She expects U.S. use of e-cigarettes and vaporizers to overtake combustible cigarettes in 10 years or less. (http://www.businessinsider.com/...ers-eye-new-marijuana-market-2015-7 )
An interesting study put out August 2015, analyzed the trends of e-cigarettes (disposable and non-disposable) and vaporizers in increasing detail. (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/vq366f/global_e ) According to that study, the global e-cigarette market is expected to grow over $50 billion by 2025, at an estimated CAGR of 22.36% from 2015 to 2025. Moreover, while disposable e-cigarettes dominated the global e-cigarette product market till 2014, rechargeable e-cigarettes, followed by personal vaporizers and mods are substantially increasing market share. The U.S. market will continue with its dominance through the forecast period, however, China is expected to grow at the fastest CAGR to become the second largest revenue generating country by the end of 2025.
Given how the world has moved to digital from analog in all kinds of markets, it is not surprising that digital technological products, such as e-cigarettes and vaporizers are taking market share from the traditional pre-millennial products. Vaporizers can become very “high tech” in consumer orientation: Think the “internet of things” and consumer digitization of recreational and medical statistics.
Marijuana represents an additional lucrative market. IBISWorld, a market research firm, projects sales of cannabis for medical use to increase to $13.4 billion in 2020 from $3.6 billion in 2015, largely due to demand from an aging population with conditions such as arthritis, Alzheimer’s disease and glaucoma. “The growing acceptance of medical marijuana is providing growers and investors with unprecedented opportunities,” Dmitry Diment of IBISWorld said in a statement. “There has been no shortage of demand in recent years, as the industry has benefited from increased acceptance of the legitimacy of medical marijuana products.” (http://hightimes.com/read/...uana-sales-set-rake-over-13-billion-2020 )Pot Business stocks
A total of 23 US states has set up medicinal marijuana programs – with some legalizing it for recreational use. (http://metro.co.uk/2015/04/23/...billion-by-2020-say-experts-5164525/ )
The vaporizer industry started off as an off-shoot of the Cigarette and Tobacco Manufacturing industry which itself has persevered despite increasingly challenging operating conditions and intense scrutiny from both the government and the public. Cigarette use has declined steadily in recent decades, but cigarette sale declines have been able to be offset through products like e-cigarettes and other smokeless tobacco. Furthermore, the industry has maintained high profit due to continued consolidation of its largest players. As cigarette smoking continues to decrease over the next five years, these companies will continue to shift their focus to e-cigarettes, which are perceived to have fewer health risks than traditional tobacco products and have become a fast-growing industry product segment.
Notwithstanding all of the positives, here are some offsetting variables to be aware of:
•The US Food and Drug Administration is looking to get involved in e-cigarettes, medical marijuana, and the various areas of vaporizing where health claims are made. This is an evolving area. FDA regulations, as they develop, will affect production and distribution costs.
•There is very minimal research on the health aspects of the various vaporizing trends. The issues involve processing temperatures, the nature of the substrates (tobacco, marijuana, extracts including oils and liquids, the materials used to make vaporizer products, etc.)
•How will public perception of “vapeing” affect demand?
Quick Review of E-Cigarettes and Transition to Vaporizers
First, what is “smoke” and what is “vapor”?
Smoke is an aerosol of solid particles and liquid droplets which has been produced under high temperature. Smoke is a collection of airborne solid and liquid particulates and gases emitted when a material undergoes combustion or pyrolysis (burning of material without adequate supply of oxygen resulting in large amounts of hydrocarbons) together with the quantity of air that is entrained or otherwise mixed into the mass. Commercially, smoke has been used in rituals where incense, sage, or resin is burned to produce a smell for spiritual purposes. Smoke is sometimes used as a flavoring agent, and preservative for various foodstuffs.
Because of the high temperature at which smoke is produced, the inhalation of smoke over time, or under extreme conditions, can be very dangerous due to thermal tissue damage, noxious chemicals produced under high temperature and/or the heating of synthetic materials, and pulmonary irritation caused by carbon monoxide and other combustion-produced chemicals, and solid particles. When a herb such as tobacco or cannabis or tobacco is smoked, it is quite being destroyed by the high temperature of the fire which is causing a multiplicity of chemical reactions.
Vaporising, on the other hand, is not such a brutal process. The vapors produced are also aerosols or suspensions, primarily of liquids, but there are some solid particles, but they are understood to contain far less by-product noxious molecules and far less solid particles. But a lot of scientific investigation is yet to be done. Furthermore, vaporization is not a standard process, so it is hard to generalize about what is actually contained in any one vapor. The concept is clear though: Vaporizing, being a gentler process then burning, is intended to be a healthier alternative to smoking. As opposed to burning, vaporizing doesn‘t involve an open flame, which greatly reduces the temperature the herb is exposed to. When cannabis is vaporised, it is intended to be heated up to the point where the cannabinoids change their state from solid resin to molecules dissolved in liquid oil or water or floating molecules intermixed with air. In the case of an E-Cigarette, only the carrier liquid (PG – propylene glycol, or VG – vegetable glycerin) is vaporised, which then naturally carries with it the nicotine, flavours and other ingredients.
When cannabis is burned, many of the cannabinoids within the plant are actually destroyed by the heat. Research has found that the smoke created from burning cannabis contains 88 percent non-cannabinoid matter. What this means is that smoking cannabis actually wastes much of the active ingredients from cannabis. This is why it is possible to save money from vaporizers; they make all the cannabinoids available, rather than just burning them.
As a consequence of burning, the smoke is full of carbon-monoxide, tar, and many other harmful toxins that are produced in this process. Carbon-monoxide, for example, cannot be found in the cannabis itself, but once herb is burned, this gas is created in the process. This applies to many toxic products found in smoke.
Conversely, vapour is much more pure. Since nothing is burned, there are many fewer such toxic products being created. Cannabis vapour consist of 95 percent cannabinoids, with the remaining 5 percent being flavonoids and one single polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon. It arguably contains far fewer of the toxins found in smoke, whilst delivering a much purer and resource efficient experience.
Historically of course, vaporizers in a commercial sense, started as cigarette substitutes. E-cigarettes were loaded up nicotine solutions. The mostly common solutions were composed of a base of propylene glycol or vegetable glycerin.
A vaporizer is used to heat up herbs to the point when it releases its active components and produces vapor. The advantage over burning herbs is, that the material is not combusted. No smoke is produced.
Aromatherapy and Vapors
Most of the aromas of trees and plants, which we perceive as pleasant, are produced by oils. The smell of pine when walking through a forest or the odor of lavender is exuded by the trees and flowers and is nothing else but oil molecules. These oils pleasing our olfactory sense. Essential oils of jasmine, cannabis, lemon balm, rose, eucalyptus, rosemary, chamomile, sage and thyme have a long history of use in perfumes and fragrance mixtures and are known for their positive effects on both mind and body. A vaporizer is used to detach the active components of recreational or medicinal herbs for inhalation. Inhaling vapor has an immediate effect and is more efficient and much cleaner, hence healthier, than smoking and/or incensing.
Here’ Some of the History of Vaporizers.
( https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=vaporizer )
The history stems from two sources: Cannabinoids, and e-cigarettes. A cannabinoid is any of a group of closely related compounds that include cannabinol and the active constituents of cannabis.
On the cannabinoid side Eagle Bill, a medicine man, who was introduced to vaporizing using a heat gun by a Californian in 1993, modified the idea and came up with his “Eagle Bill’s peace pipe of the future”, the Shake & Vape, which was based on the ancient Egyptian method of vaporizing herbs by utilizing heated stones. A year after a Canadian company had developed the first electric vaporizer. The Vancouver Times published an article about their BC vaporizer, mentioning that “It heats up to the point where it (the herb) does not smoke, but vaporizes the THC, which then re-condenses in your lungs.
The De Verdamper, a vaporizer developed by the Dutch cannabis enthusiast Evert after he had heard about vaporization in 1995. Markus Storz started developing vaporizers in Germany in 1996 and registered a patent for his removable valve balloon for the “Volcano inhaler” in 1998. Two years later he filed a patent for a heating element as a heat exchanger for “hot air extraction inhalers”. Also in 2000, the “Vapormed Inhalatoren” company was founded, initiating the sale of the Volcano.
The Irish company Oglesby & Butler introduced a wireless vaporizer no bigger than a smartphone in 2008: the Iolite. This was the first portable vaporizer featuring a built-in thermostat maintaining a temperature of around 374°F/190°C, powered by piezo ignition and a butane reservoir. Only a few years later, a tiny wooden box vaporizer entered the market of portable vaporizers. The Magic Flight Launch Box, a small compact vaporizer uses conduction and infrared heating to vaporize the herbs within seconds. Its effectiveness (it uses only a single AA battery to reach a temperature of 380°F) and quick heat up time made it one of the most popular vaporizers today.Egyptian Hieroglyph Vaporizer
E-Cigarette History
(Background from various sources including http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4018182/ )
E-cigarettes, also known as electronic nicotine delivery systems or ENDS are a class of products intended to deliver nicotine-containing aerosol to a user by heating a solution typically comprised of propylene glycol and/or glycerol (glycerin), nicotine and flavoring agents . E-cigarettes without nicotine are also available.
The first of these devices that started the trend was invented by a Chinese pharmacist, Hon Lik, in 2003. The U.S. patent application for the device states that the product is “An electronic atomization cigarette that functions as substitutes (sic) for quitting smoking and cigarette substitutes.” (Patent #8,490,628 B2) E-cigarette sales rose rapidly since they entered the marketplace in 2007. They were and are marketed as healthier alternatives to tobacco smoking, useful in quitting smoking and reducing cigarette consumption, and a method for circumventing smoke free laws and enabling users to “smoke anywhere.
Celebs and Vaporizers
Consumer perceptions of the risks and benefits and decisions to use e-cigarettes have been heavily influenced by how they are marketed. Celebrities have been used to market e-cigarettes since at least 2009. Grana and Ling reviewed 59 single-brand e-cigarette retail Web sites in 2012 and found that the most popular claims were that the products are:
•healthier (95%);
•cheaper (93%);
•cleaner (95%);
•can be smoked anywhere (88%);
•can be used to circumvent smoke-free policies (71%);
•do not produce secondhand smoke (76%); are
•are modern (73%).
Awareness of e-cigarettes and e-cigarette trial have at least doubled among both adults and adolescents in several countries from 2008 to 2012. In the United States, awareness is more prevalent among men, but trying e-cigarettes is more prevalent among women.
In the spring of 2014 the “first of its kind” Vapor World Expo Trade Show in Chicago occurred. After attending/speaking at this show, Bonnie Herzog of Wells Fargo stated: “We are even more excited about the vast potential of the e-vapor category which, according to our recent “Tobacco Talk” survey, is a $2.2B retail market in the U.S. (incl. e-cigs). We believe the potential of vapors-tanks-mods (VTMs) is undeniable given the superior product performance and fierce customer commitment to the category. Therefore, if the robust growth of the VTM category continues and is not ultimately hindered by FDA regulation, we expect big tobacco has no choice but to enter this category either organically or via acquisition.”
She also stated in the spring of 2014: “Key Trends in E-Juice – (1) It is increasingly apparent that there is a trend towards high quality e-juice made in the U.S. and some e-juice companies are choosing to manufacturer their own flavors versus importing or using 3rd party flavor providers. We view this as positive especially given potential regulations that could require ingredient disclosure for pre-market approval and/or sale of the product (though it will likely be several years before regulations are finalized); (2) We have been hearing that consumers have very low loyalty to juice brands and, given the vast variety of flavors, they are always wanting to try what’s new and different; (3) Though juice margins are still thought to be well above 50%, given the potential commoditization of e-juice products, we believe there could be margin compression in the industry especially since there are currently somewhat low barriers to entry.”
Conclusion
The E-cigarette and vaporizer industry is just getting going. Increased consumer awareness will increase the trend towards vaporizers in all herb categories. At the same time health regulatory issues, and legalization issues regarding cannabinoids will also have an impact. Lots of evolution to come.
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