Texas Prawns

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Texas Prawns

• Q u a l i t y S e a f o o d
• S e r v e d A r o u n d
• t h e W o r l d

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Texas Prawns Corporate Officers

• President
• Alexandra Costello
• VP Quality Control/Regulatory Affairs
• Sulema Valdez
• VP Research and Development
• Latifah Amin
• VP Finance
• Imants Plume
• VP Communications/Marketing
• John Gillon

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Texas Prawns Corporate Structure
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Texas Prawns Our Products

• Standard 25 to the pound
• New 8 10 to the pound

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Texas Prawns History

• Privately Held
• Formed in 1990
• Homebase Beaumont, Texas, USA
• Selling to the International Market Since 1997

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Texas Prawns History (contd)

• Texas Prawns has farmed prawns in specially
  designed and built lakes in southern Texas since
  1991.
• All stock are specially bred, constantly
  monitored by our own staffand by independent
  testing.

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Texas Prawns History (contd)

• All water systems are self-contained, monitored
  and recycled to prevent spillage into the
  neighboring environment.
• Byproductssuch as prawn shellare sold into the
  after-market for use in cosmetics and other such
  products.

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Texas Prawns Financial

• 30 Million (BP 20.5 Million) Capitalization
• 32 Million/Yr. (BP 21.9 Million) Cash Flow
• Debt 3 Million (1 Million due June 2004, and
  2 Million due June 2006)
• Credit Line 5 Million (100 available)
• Seeking 20 Million 10 Yr. Bonds(rate to be
  determined), Convertible to Common Stock (contd)

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Texas Prawns Financial (contd)

• Present Profit Margin 25 Percent
• Projected Profit Margin Increase to 30 Percent (a
  25 Percent Rise)

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Texas Prawns The World Market for Seafood

• 122 Million Tons/Yr. (Industry Figures)
• 93 Million Tons/Yr. Human Consumption
• Aquaculture31 Million Tons
• Commercial Fisheries Revenue (1996) 86
  Billion/Yr. (BP58.9 Billion)
• Aquaculture Revenues (1996) 46
  Billon/Yr. (BP31.5 Billion)

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Texas Prawns The World Market for Seafood
(contd)

• Again
• Commercial Fisheries Revenue (1996)
  86 Billion/Yr. (BP58.9 Billion)
• Aquaculture Revenues (1996)
  46 Billon/Yr. (BP31.5 Billion)
• While Aquaculture accounts for one-third of the
  world market tonnage, it produces more than 53
  percent of the revenues

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Texas Prawns Why in Britain?

• A British super market manager was in Texas on
  holiday, tasted and liked our product, and asked
  how he could get it for his customers!

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Texas Prawns Why Our New Product?

• Our customersand theirsasked if we could
  provide to them a prawn of as high quality as our
  standard prawn, but a larger, fancier variety
  with better quality and consistency than a tiger
  prawn.

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Texas Prawns What Did We Do to Get Our New
Product?

• Texas Prawns captured the quality that Nature
  uses to bring the lobster, to its large size so
  quickly, and matched that quality with our
  standard prawn.
• Using techniques that have been known and used
  years, Texas Prawns quality control staff ensured
  the consistency and stability of that product.

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Texas Prawns The Technology

• Texas Prawns takes its standard prawn, uses
  microinjection to insert the growth hormone into
  the prawn eggs, pairs this with a florescent
  marker and a terminator to remove the marker once
  that new parent generation has been produced.
• From this parent generation the market product is
  produced.

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Texas Prawns Testing and Approval for Our New
Product?

• After more than two years of testing for safety,
  Texas Prawns received two months ago the approval
  by the US Food and Drug Administration for sale
  in that market . . . and from the British
  authorities for sale in this one.

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Texas Prawns Recent Events

• Media Reports Some children in Beaumont were
  said to have developed one or more allergic
  reactions--and the cause was unknown

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Texas Prawns Recent Events

• Sudden Fears The medias reports triggered in
  some parents fears that Texas Prawnss use of
  biotech advances might harm their children . . .
  and in searching for a connection, they latched
  onto national studies showing that women were
  giving birth to larger babies . . . .

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Texas Prawns Recent Events

• Market Reaction Several of our customers in this
  area of the world suddenly cancelled their orders
  for our new product.

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Texas Prawns Response to Events

• First Texas Prawns turned over to state and
  federal public health officials samples of our
  technology to use to see if there was any match
  that showed up in any of the children reported to
  have experienced an allergic reactionwe wanted
  the health investigators to know exactly what
  they would be looking for if they expected to
  find a connection.

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Texas Prawns Response to Events

• Second Texas Prawns turned over to state and
  federal public health officials records setting
  out the timetable of our work to demonstrate to
  them not only what we did and howbut also when.

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Texas Prawns Response to Events

• Third Texas Prawns contacted our customers, and
  instructed them to return at our cost any and all
  unused productwhich we then turned over to state
  and federal health experts for studyand we sent
  to our customers at our cost equal weight
  supplies of our standard prawn product.

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Texas Prawns Response to Events

• Fourth Texas Prawns has placed on its
  websitewww.TexasPrawns.comhypertext links to
  the US Patent and Trademark Office, the British
  Patent Office and the European Patent Office for
  the public, worldwide, to see and read the full
  content of the patented technology we use to
  produce our new product.

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Texas Prawns Response to Events

• Fifth Texas Prawns has placed on its
  websitewww.TexasPrawns.comhypertext links to
  studies by US, British and European investigators
  showing that mothers were beginning to deliver
  larger babies in these regions more than ten
  years before Texas Prawns developed or brought to
  market its new product.

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Texas Prawns Response to Events

• Sixth To answer quickly your questionWhat IS
  Texas Prawnss technology?here is a brief
  explanation
• We take our standard prawn, then using a
  technique called microinjection, we insert into
  the prawn egg the natural (but refined) growth
  hormone from the lobster.
• For quality control, we also add a florescing
  genethat helps us identify and separate out the
  properly treated eggsand its companion that will
  turn off that property before the next generation
  of prawns are conceived and born.

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Texas Prawns Response to Events

• This explains why Alexandra Costello, the
  president of Texas Prawns is not with us
  todayshe is in Beaumont, Texas, with state and
  federal public health personnel, holding a press
  conference to share this information with the
  people of our home community!
• The people of Beaumont are our neighbors, our
  customers, and our family. Theyas youare
  important to us and to the life of Texas Prawns.

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Texas Prawns Response to Events

• BTW The human version of growth hormone has been
  for many years a standard and well known and
  understood treatment for persons with dwarfism.

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Texas Prawns Response to Events

• Remember The hypertext link to the complete
  description of the process is on our website.
  (Why there? Because we want the public to know
  that the place where they will find the
  description is independent and not controlled by
  Texas Prawns!)

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Texas Prawns Response to Events

• Finally Are Texas Prawns disturbed by recent
  events? No, actually. We could not have purchased
  at any price the attention that our company has
  been given by the media. These events were not
  nasty bitsthey were opportunities . . . .

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Texas Prawns Response to Events

• And we at Texas Prawns hope that you have learned
  how good we are at taking advantage of
  opportunities . . . .

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Texas Prawns Thanks you for your attention.