italian guidelines, page-17

eby,
your comment:-

"when CST have at least twice to my knowledge made incorrect sales forecasts,the first was as the company was floated and the other was two or three ago "

you appear to imply there was a deliberate attempt by management to give incorrect guidance and to support this you quote statements made as long ago as 7 years at the time of the IPO?
Wow!, I guess all other companies at IPO stage are able to give accurate forecasts of the unknown?

Certainly at the time of the IPO the directors were optimistic that the company would succeed, I guess without that optimism they would not have had the drive to succeed and we would not have a listed company now. However, as I said before, in recent years management, with the experience gained from years developing the technology and the market, have on a number of occasions endeavoured to hose down unrealistic expectations.

Crystal balls to me are about in the same class as your rear vision mirrors, completely useless and to expect company directors such as the CST guys to be able to accurately predict progress of a new company for many years ahead is ludicrous. The statements made in the IPO to me were honest appraisals by the directors at that time, nothing more, nothing less. Same applies to the FDA approval process, how could CST management have predicted a short staffed FDA would take 18 months to approve a 3rd generation of the same test that originally took only a few short months? It IS totally wrong to lay that one on them.
As you have said statements were made three or four years ago of the anticipated progress expected by this year, once again these statements were made in the reasonable expectation of normal approval times for the 3rd generation in tube version. Increased sales very much depended on this in tube approval, the FDA in turn was unable to give a time for the approval, and this was then out of the control of Cellestis.

My expectations for the performance of the CST directors are high but realistic, I certainly never did expect them to perform forecasting miracles.
In my book they have done a great job.