MTEX ==> The Columbus Day Winner

[spikefader]

I take this information to heart and have changed my behavior. Just last week when I was in Vegas, I drank Coors Lite instead of Heineken and smoked only 5 cigars. Health is important.

LOL great writeup MM.

You make a strong case indeed. You're sittin' pretty with the entry, benefiting nicely from the deep discount yesterday, and your target of 18.87 is at good technical resistance, it's doin' the impulsive thing up intraday, taking out shorts with a chuckle.....price action bodes well for a full recovery from the whacking it received. Good luck!

Another look at the long-term triangle has me lookin' for my horns again hehe

[Gatorman]

Got it at 12:11 P.M. Eastern

[mrmarket]

did any of you get my email on this pick? I didn't even get it myself!

[billyjoe]

Mr. Market,
You're still huge but I'm going to have to think about this one. Did you taste the manna bears? Who will eat them if they're foul tasting? My wife makes dirt pudding and could use some manna worms to appear to be crawling out of the pudding. Kids go crazy over it. We had plenty of bears around here , but the worms are difficult to find.

-------billyjoe

[mrmarket]

On any given day after school we probably have 20 boys, ages between 12 – 16, running through our humble home, playing video games and rummaging through our pantry cabinets. Given this kind of adolescent throughput, what do you suppose are the chances that a bag of Gummy Bears would last more than a couple of hours? Of course the answer cannot be given in hours, it is usually a matter of minutes.

Of course, treating the neighborhood kids to all kinds of sugar, soda and caffeine probably isn’t the best way to ingratiate ourselves with our neighbors (unless our neighbor is a dentist, which he is but I digress). So from time to time, Mrs. Market decides that it might be good to leave out a basket of apples or carrots for the kids. Of course when I get home from work, I look for the Gummy Bears but all I find are the apples and the carrots that the kids have not consumed.

Alright, so the kids don’t eat the apples. So our next idea was to try something new and different. Manna•Bears™—Mannatech’s latest product innovation for children—supports every parent’s desire to minimize the continuing chore of getting kids to consume the proper nutrients. Manna•Bears™ are designed as a delicious, chewy, sweet supplement in colorful, gummi-bear shapes—a mouthwatering natural health product kids will come back for again and again.

In addition to its specially formulated glyconutritional blend, Manna•Bears™ supplement with extracts of 12 different dehydrated fruits and vegetables, plus antioxidant green tea powder. Everything is packed into a colorful, wholesome pectin base, derived from natural sources.

When used as part of a healthful diet along with Glyco•Bears® multivitamin/mineral supplements, Manna•Bears™ are a wonderful way to help children stay healthy and grow properly.

Well guess what…the kids didn’t eat the MannaBears because most likely they tasted like crap. I didn’t think this was a big deal until I saw that the MannaBears cost $25 for a bottle of 120. That’s 21 cents per Mannabear. Which led me to believe that if any kid was eating this stuff, the people that made Mannabears…Mannatech..were making big bucks.

So today I bought MTEX (Mannatech) at 17.22. I will sell it in 4 to 6 weeks at 19.87. Here’s why I like MTEX.

MTEX stock is up 64% in the last 52 weeks, yet its PE is only 14 and its forward PE is only 12. Take a look at the chart:




Vibrant health is no longer a certainty. For many, it is intermittent at best. This realization has triggered a Wellness Revolution, and it’s changing the lives of people around the world. Mannatech is on the cutting edge of new technologies that provide what every body needs for optimal health. Even more than optimal health products, Mannatech offers you the opportunity for an optimal life. The chance to be part of something meaningful. Something driven by purpose and characterized by integrity. Something bigger than yourself. I take this information to heart and have changed my behavior. Just last week when I was in Vegas, I drank Coors Lite instead of Heineken and smoked only 5 cigars. Health is important.



Mannatech develops innovative, high-quality, proprietary, nutritional supplements, skin-care and topical products, and weight-management products that are sold through approximately 526,000 independent associates and members in the United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, Japan, New Zealand, Republic of Korea, Taiwan, Denmark, and Germany. Mannatech’s products are focused around impacting optimal health and wellness and are based on the science of carbohydrate technology and phytochemistry. Mannatech’s flagship patented ingredient – Ambrotose™ is found in the majority of its products and is based on the science that
certain naturally-occurring components of various plants are believed to effectively support optimal health and wellness, as well as address certain important aspects of the body’s immune system. An anti-oxidant newcomer launched last year, Ambrotose-AO uses a blend of anti-oxidants mixed with the sugars to supposedly boost the immune system and help fight off environmental toxins. It’s all about glyconutrients.

Medical research acknowledges that eight glyconutrient sugars are needed at the cellular level for optimum immune system function. Considering that six of these glyconutrients are often lacking in modern diets, Mannatech sought new and better sources of the nutrients. The effort culminated in the Ambrotose complex. Twenty patents -- including one from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office -- have been issued to Mannatech for technology related to the Ambrotose complex.

How does the body use glyconutrients?

Over the last decade, researchers have made many exciting discoveries, but few are as significant as the realization that carbohydrates aren’t just for energy. Certain sugars that we call glyconutrients or super sugars aren’t burned as fuel like glucose, but are used to communicate with and to control and protect every cell in the body. Just as computers need a code to write and translate information, your body needs a code to operate. This sugar code of biological information exists in and on every cell in your body.

According to Mannatech, the body joins these sugars to proteins making structures known as glycoproteins which are attached to the surface of every cell. They send and translate commands from one cell to another throughout your body’s 600 trillion cells. Projecting from the cell surface, they act as keys to “unlock” the required functions of the adjoining cell. If the right glycoprotein “keys” are available, the body functions smoothly as the flow of information between cells is uninterrupted. If the needed glycoproteins are not available, communication is slowed or impaired. When I don’t get enough sleep, my communication is also slowed and impaired..so I know what the man is talking about.

Getting the blend of sugars in Ambrotose® complex provides your body with a ready supply of raw materials for coding. No combination of vitamins, minerals, amino acids or herbals can take their place. You become an instant genius, like $$$MR. MARKET$$$.

Dr. Bill McAnalley, Mannatech Senior Vice President and Chief Science Officer, reasoned that if mannose supported health, so would the other specific sugar molecules known to be involved in all cellular communication. Other scientists, working independently of Dr. McAnalley, proved that proteins, due to the limited number of ways that amino acids bond, could not account for all of the functions performed by the body. Only carbohydrates could be combined in the number of ways required to account for the body’s enormous coding capacity.

Does this stuff work? I have no idea…but it sells like crazy. Today Mannatech has more than two dozen glyconutritional products for adults and children that address health and nutrition, sports performance, weight management and skin care.
Here are some factoids on Mannatech:

• In business since 1993;
• Solid balance sheet with limited debt;
• Core products based on patented propriety raw material blend;

Mannatech has extremely loyal customers who value the benefits and quality from its products. Mannatech focuses on transitioning identified research and development into innovative science backed proprietary patentable products that target optimizing optimal health. Furthermore, Mannatech offers its independent Associates a host of opportunities to succeed in their financial pursuits through creative training aids, specialized seminars, and innovative technology. Hold on a minute, did I say Associates? Yep..you guessed it. Mannatech is an Amway, Shaklee pyramid clone. Now don’t get me wrong, you won’t find boxes of this stuff in my garage and closets…. but direct selling works. People do buy from their friends. Mannatech has a sales force that they employ and pay NOTHING! Talk about cost control.

Network-marketing minimizes up-front costs as compared to conventional marketing methods and allows Mannatech to be more responsive to the everchanging, overall market conditions of the marketplace. Mannatech intends to continue to research potentially new products and focus on controlled successful international expansion. Mannatech has over one-half million independent associates and members purchasing its packs and products. With this kind of broad reaching platform, it’s difficult to imagine any of these sales forces eroding in the near future. Mannatech has hired several scientists to sift through research on carbohydrate technology and help come up with new products using it. Plenty of rank and file converts vouch for the products. Mannatech's direct sales model uses thousands of customers to spread the word through personal testimony.

Mannatech’s newest product is MannaBars..not to be confused with MannaBears. I guess MannaBars are a lot like the NitroTech protein bars that I take after I lift in the morning. Although people who eat MannaBars probably walk around in sandals and don’t have 19” biceps like the people who eat NitroTech protein bars.

So how does this all add up? This company is making oodles of money. Last quarter, MTEX reported record earnings for second quarter 2006 of $0.31 per diluted share, up 48% from second quarter 2005 earnings of $0.21 per diluted share. Pretax profit reached $13.4 million for the quarter, up 41% over prior year, reflecting favorable costs relative to sales. Net income for the quarter reached a record $8.6 million with a net profit ratio of 8.2%, a rate improvement of 2.5 points versus 2005, partially due to a lower effective tax rate in the quarter.

Total second quarter revenue was $104.8 million, up 2.1 percent versus prior year. Total current Mannatech independent associates and members grew to 526,000 as of June 30, 2006, an increase of 19.5% compared with the same time prior year. The record current independent associate and member count resulted primarily from the increase in continuing current independent associates and members.

The main factors that will impact the personal products industry as a whole for the remainder of the year are the direction of consumer spending and raw material prices. Both of these are in a favorable trend right now. Bolstered by an increased awareness in health and well being, the overall growth should be “healthy”.

As long as Mannatech continues to grow their membership (geometrically or pyramidically) they will continue to grow their sales. ANAL-ysts have MTEX pegged to earn $1.25/share on revenues of $420 million. Actually, $$$MR. MARKET$$$ thinks that this ANAL-yst won’t be too far off the mark. $$$MR. MARKET$$$ projects 2006 earnings of $1.45/share on revenues of $471 million. At today’s PE of 14, the $1.45/share would get the stock up to $20.30, which is in excess of my sales target.

$$$MR. MARKET$$$’s growth rate projections are very reasonable when you consider that 5 year sales growth is 24%, 3 year sales growth is 42% and one year sales growth is 32%. As long as more people are eating Manna Bars and Manna Bears, MTEX will be seeing green and that’s not the green tea they are selling. I’m talking dead presidents..Jackson, Lincoln and mostly Franklins (even though he wasn’t a president).

Return on Equity is up to 45%. ROA is 26%. MTEX has no long term debt. Mannatech has more cash and current assets on its books than it ever has had. It’s net income, as a percent of revenue, is also at a historical high of 7.4%. Also it pays a 2% dividend. All good things for investor security.

Here’s what the boss, Sam Caster, Board Chairman and CEO, had to say:

"We are working to strengthen our growth trend in the second half of 2006 based on significant new product introduction. This will include the launch in the fourth quarter of a revolutionary new product, called PhytoMatrix, the nutrition industry's first supplement containing completely standardized levels of all natural vitamin complexes and 100% plant sourced minerals and phytochemicals. This important product development fills the needs of health-conscious consumers who prefer natural plant-based wellness products over synthetic ingredients. In addition, we are preparing to expand 'Optimal' our proprietary new preservative-free skin care system, into several more of our current markets. 'Optimal' was successfully introduced in Japan in mid-May, where it generated more than $1.2 million in sales by the end of June."

While he’s over in Japan, maybe he should sell some of this stuff to North Korea. If that guy over there felt better about himself, maybe he’d stop lighting off his nukes. If people buy this stuff, and feel good about what they are buying, then $$$MR. MARKET$$$ will be a happy man.

Let me know what you think of this write up and if you like it, email it on to a few friends.

I am HUGE!

$$$MR. MARKET$$$

https://www.mrmarketishuge.com