Roundtable Discussion; The Future of Mineral Sands. Watch the video here.
There is zero evidence Poppy would reject a 700p bid, and mountains to the contrary. She was happy to sell shares at 350p.
Both of the other institutional shareholders - KKR and Summit - have also fallen below the threshhold. Why are those mediocrities still on the board?
...and "Danny Lopez, chief executive of cybersecurity software firm Glasswall, said nearly all of his software engineers are based in the U.K. even though 90% of the company’s revenue comes from the U.S. Having a cheaper U.K. cost base makes his business more competitive in the U.S. market, he said.
“It is exponentially more expensive to hire in the U.S.,” said Lopez. “It really wouldn’t be realistic to move 50 engineers to the U.S. For a company of our size, it would have a huge financial impact.”
DARK gets constantly hammered for "low" R&D spend. What they never talk about is that R&D is simply much, much cheaper in the UK than in the US. Always mystified me why they don't highlight that. Today's WSJ: "The average salary for a back end software developer in the U.S. is near $130,000, though closer to $175,000 in cities such as San Francisco and New York, according to data from global recruitment agency Robert Half. In the U.K., a developer’s average salary is about $66,000."
Yes indeed confidence is lacking. But it's literally a flip of the coin at this point and nothing but a chance for upside. It also doesn't mean I'm wrong. So much needs to be - and can be - fixed at this company.
It's literally just a punt at this point, hanging on in hope rather than faith. But will still call it like I see it. And indeed for every buy there is a sell, but there are clearly no lot of buyers believing in the future. Hence the static share price. Tomorrow it turns out is worth no more than today.
....or no real sustained buying momentum in over two years. so any selling pushes the price down. no story, no interest, no buyers. not complicated.
Ah POWER, the ghost of ML hovering above all. Hard to see how ML "letting go" of DT will improve the marketing, product, positioning, IR, comms, PR, salesforce churn, customer churn, cash generation, executive performance, board etc. But sure, bye bye ML will fix all of that, and hence the SP will rise.
ML actually does have a position - at least he did at IPO. Some of that position is in the custody of the USA. I don't think his changes are reportable, so no way to know what it is. I don't think it's "controlled" by insiders. The board still includes KKR and Summit, both OG insiders, but hardly able to control the decision making. I think it's "controlled" by a confederacy of dunces.
Indeed. Summit sells half of it's position - as an insider! - at effectively the same price after IPO 2.5 years ago. No value created. Question - why the heck is there a Summit person on the board? They're smaller than some of the shareholders who have come on post-IPO. Whole board should be sacked.
Pretty certain that's a re-print of the Times article from last weekend. I don't have a subscription, but the two paragraphs visible are the same.
Steviewonder77 - I agree with you. She'll get a call after the sale. But they won't know about it ahead of time, ie she won't have it "cleared".
Steviewonder77 - Management couldn't discuss selling with major investors without bringing them "over the wall", ie in on non-public info and therefore blocked from selling until the news is out. It would be highly unusual to do this for management selling - the company wouldn't normally, and the investors wouldn't want to be put offsides for this kind of info.
Lending - agree. The perception is horrible. And FYI Poppy holds approx 4.95m shares and unvested options = circa 0.7% of outstanding equity.
Lending - agree on the overall point, but to be clear a big chunk of her equity dates back to Invoke so pretty close to founding shares. But that doesn't make a difference. Her stake (owned outright) is large enough that she could easily borrow the £250k against it. Say current interest rates are 8%. Poppy has impliedly said she thinks there's less than 8% growth in the shares over the next year (that's before taking into account the tax effect). So her prediction is shares will trade less than 378p a year from now. Otherwise the rational decision would have been to borrow. Plus the negative PR effect. I still put my faith in prayer on this one.
Would be near the top of my question list if I was a potential insitutional buyer. Why would I buy when the management is selling. Maybe time for new management?
Still just holding on and praying on this one.
December was supply and demand 101. Sharp dip was due to Summit (insider, board member) selling a big stake at a discount. Then slippage was due to absence of any real demand at all. No news = bad news for DT. With low volumes this stock will always drift down. There are no major insitutional buyers to buy on the dip, and it's not on the radar of retail investors. Hence supply (however small) outstrips demand, and the shares slip.
Zero chance HP will buy any company associated with Lynch. And the US case has no material relationship to Darktrace, other than on this board where somehow it seems to be the only thing that matters.
100% agree. The reason the company has no marketing strategy is Lynch's fault. The reason the company has no technology vision is ML's fault. The reason the growth shrunk over the last 18 months is ML's fault. The reason IR is so poor is ML's fault. The reason comms with the street are non-existent is ML's fault. The reason Poppy has basically disappeared from public view is Lynch's fault. The reason the board is a bloated mess of mediocrity is ML's fault. The reason there's precisely zero comprehensible corporate and biz dev strategy is ML's fault. The reason the financial results are incomprehensible gibberish is ML's fault. Yup, 100% agree. Any acquirer will be looking at all those things and realize none are fixable until ML is gotten rid of (whatever in the world that means). So yes, I agree. Sadly I think the company agrees too.
Clued - Investors ain't buying. Only one major new investor on the books since IPO. Management will be out there every day selling the equity (ie telling the company story) to analysts and investors. And they're very obviously not buying. The share register is extremely weak.