NRF Completes the Plant-Based Production Cycles while Share Price Lacks Behind

Some said that the hype of NR Instant Produce Public Company Limited (SET: NRF) has died down since there was no more publications after the company made an announcement in May to partner with PTT Public Company Limited (SET: PTT)’s subsidiary in an investment to establish a plant-based food facility.

The joint venture will engage in production and sales of plant-based food throughout ASEAN region as well as operating experience stores and research and development of alternative proteins. The facility is expected to commence within the fourth quarter of 2022.

 

For a company this size that has been trading in the stock exchange over a year to partner with Thailand’s number one company in market size, there is no doubt it will catch investors’ interest.

After the announcement, there was no update on the progress of establishing this facility until last week that NRF finally announced an official establishment of Nutra Regenerative Protein Company Limited (NRPT), the said joint venture with PTT, as an upstream business for the company with an estimated capacity of 3,000 tons per year.

In the meantime, NRF also established Nove Eats Limited as a downstream business to sell plant-based food and beverages to end customers under an internally developed brand through modern trade, convenient store, supermarket, food service industry such as franchise restaurants, as well as exporting to other markets.

The two establishments will fulfill NRF’s existing midstream business which is the production of plant-based food, but the revenue contribution from this is still quite low at 4%, according to the report from its 3Q21 financial statement.

The partnership with PTT is expected to reinforce NRF’s upstream, especially on material-wise from NRPT while Nove Eats will penetrate the market through various offline sales channels.

NRF also announced its partnership earlier with Boosted Ecommerce, Inc. (Boosted), a U.S. company, for an establishment of BOOSTED NRF Corp. to advance on selling its products via Amazon, including other acquisitions to strengthen its portfolio expansion for online channels.

 

After completing all business cycles from upstream to downstream, NRF expects to increase its revenue contribution of plant-based foods to 30%, according to its CEO Dan Pathomvanich, while targeting to achieve a 5,000 million baht in revenue by 2024.

With all the plan and expectation laid out, NRF should be on a smooth path moving forward. However, the only question that remains unanswered is why the share price of NRF is not going anywhere to the point that it is constantly regressing.