RE: Drapers9 Oct 2021 12:45
Its quite telling that those desperate to bash Bids are still finding it necessary to trot out that same old chestnut about the Directors selling shares, which happened exactly 2 years ago a week on Monday.
What those types don`t emphasize is how tiny the percentage of J Drapers holding was that he sold.
For any newbies out there (because we are seeing a few new names) let me explain what happened.
I`ll just focus on JD because he`s the one who got all the flack, and he was by far and away the largest shareholder.
When the sp reached an intraday high of 42p in the summer of 2019 James Draper was sitting on a cool 41 million shares, worth £16m.
In Sept `18 both Directors signed a hard lock-in agreement to not sell any shares for 12 months.
On 19th Sept `19 the lock-in agreement expired...the share price was c26p. His holding was worth £10m.
Five weeks later JD informed the market that he had sold 1.5m shares at 20p, to realise gross sale proceeds of £300,000......on Friday 25th Oct `19.
If he`d sold on the day that the lock-in expired he could have gained around £80,000 more!
So not the despicable ruthless `criminal` that some would like to portray him as.
Besides, I would have done the same, and so would the bashers if they`d been in his position.
He knew that he had a hard slog in front of him, a lot of milestones to reach, hurdles to jump, as well as advertising agencies and games developers to convince.
So if an injection of funds at that time helped him and his family focus on the task ahead without personal financial pressures then I congratulate him for being so smart.
He held 41,260, 562 shares, and sold 1,500,000.....fractionally over 3.5%!!!!
He hasn`t sold any in the two years since.
So now you might think that to keep using this historic event to bash James Draper is getting a bit stretched, both in timeframe, and size of sale.
I actually think its desperate and pathetic, considering the hurdles and milestones that JD has ticked off since, and the progress Bidstack have made under his CEO role.
Its a dramatically different company now than it was in those heady days of two summers ago.