It has been an impressive start to the trading week for Sunbelt International Corp. (PINKSHEETS: SUNB), or Aptitude Life Ltd. depending on how one might want to identify the company, with shares climbing as high as 0.0250 in early action with volume already exceeding the 8.6 million mark in the first hour of the day. While the share price spike and volume is certainly welcomed by investors the catalyst for this growth is questionable, making the prospect of continued gains far from certain.
For starters SUNB hasn’t issued a press release announcing anything of significance since January 22, 2013 and investors may even question the importance of that announcement. What that press release divulged was that Aptitude Life Ltd., an energy and health drink company based in the UK, had been “invited to showcase its new product line of beverages at the 9th annual InnoBev Global Beverages Congress in Warsaw, Poland.”
Of course Aptitude Life Ltd., for those who don’t recall, is the company Sunbelt agreed to acquire last November essentially ending their failed efforts as a company who identified their goal as deploying and developing “solar and wind technologies in Asia and the emerging markets around the world.”
Prior to this endeavor SUNB was operating under the name Lux Energy Corp. and had been engaged in the exploration and production of oil and gas in North America, yet another plan that never produced the results they sought.
So now investors have to ask is SUNB capable of tackling the competitive energy and health drink industry and at present the company has offered little in the way of reassuring information that would indicate a positive response.
In January SUNB announced that that samples of their newly formulated Aptitude Kids drink had arrived and the taste test results conducted had been overwhelmingly positive; those taste tests involved a group of 25 children. This Aptitude Kids drink is a “special blend of natural, healthy ingredients” that the company says makes it a “perfect choice for parents, while its great taste guarantees it will be a big hit with kids” but it’s hardly the only natural, healthy drink on the market targeting children.
This may be the biggest problem facing SUNB’s entrance into the energy and health beverage market; they really don’t have anything that sets them apart from companies that have already established themselves.
To be fair, Aptitude Life Ltd. isn’t exactly new to the scene as they say “enthusiastic sports professionals and health conscious individuals created Aptitude Life Ltd, in the late 90s as a result of certain increasing market demands in the vitamin supplement area.” Unfortunately that experience may not be a very good thing considering they have been around for more than a decade and their offerings are still not gaining mass appeal.
As it stands SUNB is trading right around the 0.0179 mark, still below their 50-day moving average of 0.0221 and their 200-day moving average of 0.0491. If the company is to make any kind of advancement beyond those markers and produce sustainable gains then they will need to deliver results from that upcoming Global Beverage Conference but that isn’t slated for another month. In the meantime investors will have to simply gamble on what SUNB’s future holds but based on the information that is available it may not be a gamble worth taking.
