The latest Investing Matters Podcast episode featuring financial educator and author Jared Dillian has been released. Listen here.
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Get out while you can as long as Kevin Johnston is in charge this share is going only one way and will either be bought for a song by the chinese or will go belly up .imo
ShamI89 with his first ever post on the boards with 'placing on the way'
LOL who are you fooling? ya gran?
Following an event organised by Hardman in conjunction with Surface Transforms around 20th April 2023 participants were asked for Feedback which I readily supplied by email after being asked to highlight in ‘bold type’ questions I particularly wanted answered. I highlighted Q2 to Q6.
See below
I don’t recall getting any comprehensive response!
------ Original Message ------
From: "Events"
To “Poole”
Sent: Friday, 21 Apr, 23 At 12:18
Subject: RE: FEEDBACK ON THE SURFACE TRANSFORMS EVENT?
Dear “Poole”
My apologies on the feedback form. Please find the questions below. If you would like to respond I will collate the feedback with the rest of the responses.
Regarding the questions, please highlight any below you want further details on and I pass this on to the team.
Many thanks
Alona
My questions
Q1 Re: Operational Management. You say intending to recruit a person for the new position of Chief Operating Officer reporting directly to the CEO . Any update on making a permanent appointment? Meantime you have made an interim appointment. What are the professional qualifications of the interim appointee?
Q2 How many professionally qualified Chemical Engineers do we employ?
Q3 You have separately been advertising for a ‘Six Sigma Project Manager’. Who will they be reporting to?
Q4 It is not clear what adding each ‘new cell’ consists of? Is it principally an extra furnace or is it a complete suite of Stages 1 through to Stage 10 as shown on your web site?
Q5 (a)As an attendee last year at one of your shareholder events at Knowsley I understood that the new furnaces (Stage 3) represented a major change in the manufacturing process. In the light of recent events even before the introduction of additional cells (now due Q2 2023) there needs to be clarification as to what changes that involved.
At that Knowsley event last year, I had anticipating possible issues with making a major process change asked whether pre-testing off site was to take place. From recollection I got a short non-answer reply. Perhaps I should have been more insistent as it now appears that ought to have been undertaken. Why wasn’t it? (b)Surely if done properly it would before going live have revealed the flue lining failure rate as unacceptable.
Q6 I have also recently questioned without as yet a response whether the process diagram of Stage 3 on your website as shown would provide for stable resilient production. Does it adequately convey the processes to be undertaken at the heart of the new cells furnaces?
Remember the previous right's issue gave no time to qualify for the shares. Just as well ! The Royal Mail Post, hardly call it Royal, more like Lousy Mail Post, even using 1st class signed for. But thankfully I was done a favour as my form and cheque arrived too late. Lol.
Way it is going it looks like it will run out of money soon.Placing on the way.
Apparently so......
Johnson exhibits the worst traits of the over-promoted CEO: blind faith in his own infallibility ; inability to accept when he’s wrong ; failure to consult/ share thinking ; distrust of outsiders esp advisers & investors;
Fevertreeman. But the level of women in Liverpool is better than the rest of the country!!
"We are maintaining sales guidance of £23m for the year ending 31 December 2024. However the scrap problems in particular have absorbed a sizeable amount of working capital and cash. The Board are assessing options to address this short term issue."
How do people read the above? Is the short term issue that they are going to address the scrap problems or the working capital/cash? i.e does this indicate yet more monies are required?
Totally agree - I know that the general level of literacy in Liverpool is lower than the rest of the country , but this was yet another dreadful RNS that, given the general antipathy displayed by Holly Johnson towards the City, might sugggest advisers couldn’t give a toss
Firstly,apologies for typo.Should read new bunch.
The RNS was clearly written by an effing illiterate and presumably was approved by a whole set of moronic advisers.It only talked in the negative and gave no solutions to the latest problems.
Surely even in the grim depths of the North West there is still someone with half a brain that knows how to produce a professional RNS release…
This company is imploding .
See a whole no bunch of misery chasers have arrived.FFS.
It is quite clear that ST has to be sold to an entity with financial clout.
The fact that Bundred is bailing out now,without doing this shows a totally useless tw*t he is or that ST is beyond help.Could be both,of course.And Johnson is probably looking for his contract to be paid out.Greedy,narcissists,the both.
Surely some institutional shareholders can get a grip here .
Surely there won’t be another raise!?
There's a reason you're No.2
I'm reading all the negativity around the company and understand the s hit show that's clearly happened in the last few months.....it's clear there should be a lot more information around what the level of scrappage is so investors can assess it's significance. Not disclosing this does suggest a CEO with his head in the sand and with these unknowns I should likely avoid these shares..but I've just taken a small punt as I can see some upside:
There's clearly a demand for the product - customers are still paying for discs and buying more than can be produced.
Most of the technical issues have been resolved, so it feels like there's some technical competence in the company.
Expansion is on the books with facilities nearly completed and management still expects to triple sales this year.
So I'm unclear how bad the scrappage issue is and it's also not clear why the accounts are delayed which is also very bad and there seems to be a cashflow problem about to hit which again there wasn't much detail on.
I'm now wondering what I was thinking buying in but what are the chances
Any thoughts on these 3 risks would be helpful. I'm also hoping though that in 3 months we have had the accounts published and significantly improved the scrappage which along with increased sales and increased capacity sounds like good news....although I'm still worried the cashflow issue leads roca rights issue or something else just as bad news. Sounds like I'm daft buying in at this point, anyone agree there's a very small chance of light at the end of the tunnel? #feelimaskingfortrouble
That is some performance by Bundred and Johnson isn't it....move along nothing to worry about in November has the sp stable c25p followed a few weeks later by panic stations and 10p raise, followed by today's omnishambles...
Johnson lacks honesty , detail and clarity.....he has never set out the scale-up problems clearly, he pretends all is well when it isnt, he feigns surprise when things dont go to plan, he missies his own forecasts, then refuses to budge on what appear olympian forecasts based on current performane, and views s/holders with barely disguised contempt.
You are so right about the process change! They develop a great much-needed product that has OEMs
queuing up and giving orders, and then Johnson can't manage the scale up. The lack of planning appears breathtaking: COO appointed far too late; no articulation of HR talent programme, a lack of proper QC.etc
For goodness sake, this was trading above 25p in November. Absolute shambles from the management.
If you can sell at over 6p then do so. You might find it buyable at 4.75p later .
Pokerchips very recent comments (why suddenly no longer shown!) & those of Fevertreeman remain on the ball.
When I last commented in mid-February I said' I live in hope that they have or will very soon iron out the production problems'
I had sensed for some time that there was a lot of scrappage going on -realistically that can only have arisen in either Stages 3 (Chemical Vapour Infiltration(CVIST)) or 4 (Hear Treatment) of the manufacturing process as detailed by the company online. The company refers in communications to 'Furnaces' only with regard to Stage 4(Hear Treatment)!
My suspicion is that the principal problem area is & has been Stage 3 albeit not described online as a furnace. I maybe wrong but from the start that Stage as detailed online looks to lack suitable controls that would ensure uniformity of product through put - and hence potentially much scrappage . As to the extent of Q1 2024 scrappage is all very vague (as usual) -the amount of extra working capital (? twixt £1.5m & £2m)that ZEUS refer to in their paid for research might suggest that scrappage even exceeded acceptable production! Did it?
Frankly I have doubts as to whether the Stage 3 process as detailed online by the company is how it is now organised!
ZEUS state ' ....that in recent weeks their has been considerable success(!) achieved in recent weeks in reducing scrap' . No explanation as to how or where that has been achieved.
Pleased to see that the Chairman will be leaving -the sooner the better. He clearly did not protect shareholders by asking at the outset the right questions about the process changes as to testing & implementation that have led to the serious problems. As for the CEO he did a good job in getting potential customers on board but must hold responsibility for the production mess we got into as a result of not suitably testing and seeing the major process change was feasible and capable of working before committing us to it. He probably needs to go too.
In my last post I said that the dolling out of huge number of new share options at such a depressed share price was a disgrace -it felt like robbery.
!
"1st Q sales and operating update looks good. Things turning round nicely now. £3M sales for the quarter, but £1.5M of that in March as technical problems resolved. Good turnaround share now. ATB"
Good old Bill with his positive review.
However... 4 hrs later!
Ok a bit of a disaster here and not the news we were hoping for. I'm unsure about what to do here now as part of me thinks it might be prudent to just sell up and move on and maybe if they get their act together I could jump back in at a later date. Another part of me says just hold and maybe accumulate on any positives which come out over the next few months. Any ideas or advice around this would be appreciated. Are the majority just going to sell up or hold? It's a terrible RNS but I do not see it as the end of the world. What say you?
Well they do seem to firefight , rather than proactively manage ahead .... but scaling up is never a straight forward task
Bundred should have realised that Johnson was taking on too much and spreading himself too thin , ..and the need for that COO much earlier so that Johnson could step back and manage Operations better
Completely agree ! Johnson has to go - no hiding place for him now. The Board should be contacting h/hunters - if s/hing isn’t done then Easton and Maddocks may well throw in towel, as he and Bundred have totally legged them over. Johnson has comprehensively failed as CEO, and clearly doesn’t have the management skill set to manage the expansion as the multiple mess ups have shown. What’s worse Imb is that he seems to utterly clueless about how to manage shareholders . The RNs is another car crash!