It’s All About the Numbers with Latteno Food Corp (PINK:LATF)

Our last article about Latteno Food Corp (PINK:LATF) was published about a week ago and, back then, we discussed all sorts of things like LATF‘s annual report, their new subsidiaries, the financial situation, the lack of information and other important subjects. Things are changing every day with LATF, though, and when we saw that yesterday’s session resulted in a 22% loss, we decided to see what’s going on.

Actually, the people who believe in LATF and their potential have not had it easy during the last couple of days. In fact, things have been pretty grim. As you can see from the chart on the right, after the 50% run that they had on April 8, they have had only one day when they closed in the green and the rest of the trading sessions have presented some pretty serious blows to the price. Couple that with the fact that there was a pump for them back at the end of March and you will see that they have lost quite a lot of value in an extremely short period of time.

With other small cap ventures, the reason for this is, more often than not, the paid promotions. With LATF, however, things are a little bit different. The pumping action initiated by Stock Mister as well as several smaller promoters had little effect on the performance, and the drop wasn’t as sudden as with other penny stocks.

At the same time the company has been churning out press releases by the dozens which should have boosted the enthusiasm of both long-term shareholders and potential investors, but somehow, the PR frenzy failed to do so. The problem might be hiding in the announcements, themselves. As we wrote in one of our previous articles, whenever LATF announce an acquisition, they are quick to point out that their new subsidiary is extremely successful in this or that sphere, that it has made millions in revenue, but they say nothing about the details around the acquisition.

Sometimes, they can’t even be bothered to write about the operations of the new subsidiary. A classic case in point is the merger with a company called GTG, Inc that we wrote about in our previous article.

Despite that, they have not stopped publishing all sorts of exciting news and we can see that they have turned their attention to yet more business opportunities. This time, it has nothing to do with the marijuana that they have been talking about for so long, which is something of a surprise for us. On April 11 they announced that they would like to venture into the business of importing fish and fresh seafood from Southeast Asia. Like their previous releases, the figures are impressive – projected revenues of $2.5 million by the end of the year and $10 million by the end of 2015. That’s quite a lot and we’re sure that LATF did some extremely complex calculations before they publish those numbers, but once again, we’re left with the impression that the information simply isn’t enough. The only thing that they mention is the fact that they are growing in the seafood distribution business. When will the distribution start? Was there an acquisition of a company dealing in this sector? How much was paid for the acquisition? Do LATF have ships through which they will import the fish?

All question that will remain unanswered for now and probably because of this, the investors weren’t that impressed by the PR – on April 11 they gained just 11%, an increase that they wiped out the next day.

So what will happen today? Well, as you all know, only time will tell, but LATF have set the scene for an interesting session. A few hours after yesterday’s closing bell they announced that due to favorable laws being passed in an increasing number of states, they were “forced” to increase their revenue projections. While the sound of the word “projections” is enough to send shivers down our spines, we were eager to open the press release and see what LATF‘s expectations are. Unfortunately, judging by what we read in the announcement, they have no idea. Either that, or they are not willing to tell us. The PR is full of quotes from articles in newspapers, forecasts of the potential of the industry as a whole, but absolutely no information as to what LATF plan to do in order to be successful.

If we have to be honest, yesterday’s press release looks a lot like what the paid pumpers write in their emails. And we all know how they affect the stock.