SP20 Apr 2016 09:16
Teathers Financial (TEA) has been a shocking stock for a long time now for a whole number of reasons but yesterday’s RNS appears to bring the finishing line of this debacle ever closer.
I’m not a fan of subscale investment companies at the best of times but this one seems to have ticked all the boxes.
Dreadful use of investors’ funds – Teathers invested in a whole host of random quoted companies, most of which I could invest in myself, if I was mad enough to, although the majority of them are underwater. The few that made money were sold – cutting profits early and letting losses run was always a great investment policy!
The two investments that deserve special mention were the £100,000 in the ridiculous Lenigas Cuba, and £100,000 in unquoted Kentucky Oil and Gas – never to be heard of again. I can only imagine that someone’s back was being scratched with that second one.
The full results for Teathers should be out by the end of the month so at least one will be able to get a clearer view of the balance sheet and the net asset position to better assess the investment debacle.
Failure to implement investment policy – despite the numerous investments, the company was suddenly suspended on 4 December 2015, without any prior warning to investors, for failing to implement its investment policy successfully within 12 months.
When the business was being ramped left, right and centre in September 2015, which coincidentally allowed a few warrant holders to get out, it was surprising that there was no mention of this potential impending suspension.
It’s never been totally clear as to how it failed to implement its investment policy, although my personal view is that it is linked to TFSL, the app, which is owned 100% by Teathers and has had significant investment internally rather than being an investment in an external third-party company; not that it really matters now.
TFSL – talking of which, the Teathers app aimed at giving PIs access to placings and IPOs and ramped to high heavens has been a huge disappointment with only one broker, Shard Capital, signed up and only a handful of placings and IPOs undertaken.
Poor communication from the Board throughout, particularly since suspension. The fact that Oli Fattal seemed to think that Twitter was the best form of communicating with shareholders was pretty bad, particularly as hardly anything he mentioned appeared to be factually correct, although at least he poked his head above the parapet from time to time unlike Jason Drummond who hasn’t been seen in months.
Anyway, moving to the present, the update that was promised by the end of February finally arrived yesterday. So what did it say?
The date by which Teathers has to implement its investment policy or leave AIM is 4 June and Teathers reiterated that the Board considers it unlikely that it will be able to implement the investment policy via its p