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The 16:35 daily sale was today 52,261 shares. An all-time high if I remember correctly. Is anyone tracking this to project when Swedbank and Invesco's divestment will complete?

TinyBuild CEO underwrites capital raise

https://www.investorschronicle.co.uk/news/2023/12/21/companies-roundup-globaldata-shares-tinybuild-s-radical-fund-raise/

TinyBuild’s radical fund raise

Banks and other financial institutions often underwrite equiĵty raises so to give a guarantee to others taking part in the issue the whole transaction won’t fall apart. TinyBuild (TBLD) has gone for a more radical approach.

The video game developer has seen its balance sheet and market capitalisation crumble this year, with its share price falling 96 per cent. To keep operating it has announced a $10mn (£7.9mn) raise, almost double the current market cap, fully underwritten by chief executive Alex Nichiporchik. This is the same chief executive who sold £55.8mn in shares in the 2021 IPO. Shareholders may be more focused on the massive dilution and complete wipe-out compared to the IPO price of 169p a share.

Those same investors will have to support Nichiporchik taking up to a 59 per cent stake in the company through the raise, which will also dilute their holdings significantly. Atari is also putting $2mn into TinyBuild. The company, or its Nomad Berenberg, flagged the realities of the arrangement. “The ownership levels of the CEO may have the effect of delaying, deferring or preventing a change of control, merger, consolidation, takeover or other business combination or discouraging a potential acquirer from making a tender offer or otherwise attempting to obtain control of the company, which in turn could harm the trading price of the shares,” TinyBuild said. AH

Any propective new investor sees the cause of those years of failure isn't lack of investment but lack of management. So he would not ask those responsible for commitment to stay, but commitment to leave. Remember this conversation was probably already had with incumbent investors Swedbank and Invesco. Management stayed, investors left and soon so did 80% of company value. Any new investor would foresee that the remaining investors who have already lost a pile at the hands of David Braben, Johnny Watts etc. would quit in despair and tank the new invetment share value if the announcement of this dilutive cash rescue came from the same clowns.

We are talking about the directors that purchased and Mitchell did not.

Braben's stake did not prevent the last cash raise in same circumstances so should not prevent the next.

Current cash might suffice if the next game is on time and profitable, but since the last game was both very late and very loss-making, proceeding now without extra cash would be reckless in the extreme. Cash raise is needed ASAP because its cap is already down to £16m and further drop with the share price would render it insufficient to fund akother game.

OK, so you're says these directors found out there was a cash investment incoming, didn't tell the market, and instead personally purchased shares.

Illegal insider dealing plus concealment of price-sensitive information. A new investor might want director skin in game, but director skin in jail is not a good look.

No, I'll stick with the obvious explanation. Directors purchased in attempt to support the share price, recognising that the faster it falls, the sooner they'll be out of their jobs.

He has a seat on the board. So I disagree that he's distant from Frontier.

There is no mystery about these simultaneous purchases by directors. This is clearly the usual expression of confidence that directors make to try to slow a plummeting share price when there is no genuine good news to put out. And also to bolster gamw sales, because there's a lot of news coverage of Frontier's troubles and this is bound to discourage purchasers.

However an expression of confidence by this board could seriously backfire. An investor recalling the CEO's confidence ahead of the last few disasters might take this one as a sign to sell.

Mitchell is Tencent's Chief Strategy Officer. Oops. His strategy with Frontier has lost Tencent 75% of its stake value. Presumably today's purchase to prop up this falling stock is being put through his wife's name to avoid attracting attention to this corporate embarrasment.

Frontier's public filings identify this James Mitchell as an officer of Tencent who joined the board at the time Tencent bailed Frontier out of an impending cash crisis in 2017, in exchange for new shares amounting to 9% of the company.

And interesting that there is no purchase by that director himself, James Mitchell of Tencent, or by director David Braben.

True, and to save any staff at all, Frontier will have to shed many more than the 20% announced.

For comparison, the launch sales target of 1000-person-Frontier's recent Warhammer game was met last week by a new Warhammer game from competitor Owlcat which has just 125 staff.

That's the downsize order of magnitude Frontier has to make if it is to survive on its cut-back plan of just one game release per year.

And this still leaves the productivity issue. The above requires Frontier to lift earnings per employee by about 1000% relative to its three most recent games.

All this will clearly require much work from a competent management team. Fortunately it requires little work from the current management team. Just resignations.⁷

"In background it has lost more than 50% in a month"

...which tends to obscure the far more significant fact that it lost more than 20x that in the last three years.

Share price is now far below the placing price at the IPO ten years ago - in an industry that boomed in the same period.

Take a moment to appreciate the degree of ineptitude required to achieve shareholder value destruction on such a scale, and you will see that thid stock will do nothing but fall until those responsible pass control to new management - voluntarily or not.

"Realms of Ruin has £1.6m and looks like an uptick is starting to happen with the Xmas sale."

Complete fiction. £1.6m is fabricated. Steam shows zero uptick. Game is not in any Xmas sale.

"Appears that my speculation about GM takeover was spot on"

... but somehow RNS feed lost the news that GW has bought the inept creators of the biggest videogame flop in Warhammer history for £70m, rather than get them for free by planting a Hiring! sign outside the Frontier staff exit door, or simply by waiting a few months for most of the staff to be laid off.

"And yes, rerate coming"

He got one thing right. Simplywall.st today revalued FDEV at 13p per share. Based on a discounted cash flow model, rather than the broker's "let's not attract attention to how appalingly we f*cked up with last month's pie-in-the-sky numbers" model.

The fact so many of FD's titles are burdened by licences is a big big negative for takeover. Licences take a hefty cut of receipts, restrict what can be added to the game, prevent licencing onward, and have an exipry date and termination clauses. And note that FD's licenced games JWE2, F1M and Realms of Ruin have disappointed to the tune of approx. 80% loss of share price.

> Until a official announcement of a new title & what it'll be is annouced, there's literally nothing but hope and chance to go on here.

If that announcement comes from the current management team, which announced the last four major releases, each of which tanked the share price, then still there's nothing but hope and chance.

For the next game to save Frontier from bankruptcy, it has to jump multiple hurdles. Game has to 1 actually appear - unlike half the news games of this and the previous FY, which disappeared without trace. 2 actually not be a huge loss-making flop like all the games this team has produced for the last three years. And 3 it has to make enough profit to fund the next game.

Plus Frontier must pull off this hattrick before its dwindling cash runs out, and with fewer staff than has already proved inadequate for the job.

Is this possible? In theory yes.

Is this likely? In practice, no.

Is this worth betting on, considering also this bet lost means company bankrupt? Clue: management aren't buying shares - at a tiny fraction of the price of when they last told shareholders everything was fine.

Liberum note today, target price 150p.

Estimates Realms of Ruin underperformance at 80%.

I aplogize for the behaviour of this cruddy board software. Satisfied?

The sore losers on tbis board have only theselves to blame.

The sore losers on tbis board have only theselves to blame.

The sore losers on tbis board have only theselves to blame.

“We couldn't overcome weak demand for video games and the sudden reversal of market dynamics that had favoured us over the previous years. We innovated in marketing, refocused our catalogue, and adjusted the cost base as quickly as possible, and, despite these actions, it wasn't enough in such a rapidly evolving market."

https://www.standard.co.uk/business/game-maker-tinybuild-warns-it-could-run-out-of-cash-in-january-b1124919.html