RE: NPV 12p/share Valuation23 Feb 2022 10:25
"One issue that i have never been entirely sure about is that in these opaque placings contractors i believe are being paid in shares who are then selling into the open market for working capital, regardless of price. " As I understood it the contractors (not just here but in general) never actually see the shares, which is why you rarely/never see a TR1 for them. (Here you might not see one anyway because there are so many shares in issue they might not reach reporting threshold.) They are issued but the broker sells (or forward sells) on their behalf, in a roughly orderly way. In the chart above you can see the dump of 245m appear on admitted-to-trading day, 30 Dec, for the first set (the Firm Placing). Usually they'd have been forward sold before the placing announcement so they get a chunk of the placing discount. The conditional placing is interesting here because many of those receiving the shares I'd expect would keep them (maybe not, though, looking at the recent 22m dump say and comparing with the issue table). Other management might have dumped them since they get the warrants anyway to exercise when the project finally gets going properly. I'd have though most of the overhand would be gone by now, and the current fluctuation is the algobot back trading (collect low and dump higher, repeat). Should get the first monthly update fairly soon, I suppose, which ought to lift things.