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& labour row back on Milliband's net zero crusade, what happens to UKW & sector?

well spotted...the deliberate move to change year end to march has created an information vacuum for the ever-underwhelming ashmore to exploit. another utter *******s rns from ashmore. marginally better than speedy hire's update but only because ashmore moved the goal posts re. year end.

~ trading commentary: ashmore has to do better than this crap. what does growing market presence mean ffs; what's direction of travel ; what's average size of online transaction; is this growing or shrinking; what percentage of online revenues are from which size of customer

~ revenues: held up well to end dec, but the crucial period isn't referred to which is jan-march....speedy hire saw revs drop off badly thanks to rachel reeves incompetence...

- costs; sound like re-org costs will be higher (more headcount coming out) but that slippery sod ashmore covered himself by pulling f'casts blaming the reorg....

- profits: fy fig of £10m half to half decline is grim.

crumbs of comfort - still eking out profit; right-sizing depot model over last 3 years & directing cash into online platform should benefit in due course; balance sheet ok;

Cohort listed co, comprising group of specialist defence businesses. CEO was on Today prog this am commenting about govt initiative to drive MOD defence spending to SMEs....would be good to hear what management thinks about propsect s for the defence arm...

so what happens next: options as i see it :

1. worst case: company runs out of cash as investors stop supporting newland. company goes bust.

2. best case : newland actually manages to secure a decent follow-on contracts, and win new ones. share price recovers strongly; formalises ties up with a number of players....leading to takeover approach

3. mid case: newland lands some follow up contracts but they arent enough to move dial. however, they do prove that clients want what parsotix can do. newland decides to throw in towel, and try and strike a deal while he can. put co up for sale & it gets bought at a ****e price for any shareholders who has held this long than 3 months.

very good question - to pretend as newland consistently does that all is well or its the market's fault, or its redemptions of small cap stocks, is to criminally recklessly and quite obviously avoid the point. the assumption was that newland, having spent years banging the drum ahead of fda approval, has a clear commercial plan, had customers lined up, & had the finances & the right staff to deliver growth. has become stunningly clear that nero had no clue what he was doing, and none of the building blocks for a sustainable commercial business were in place.

luckily for him, investors have been incredibly forgiving as he has flailed about, and yes he has made some painful, dilutive-to-shareholders progress by landing a few tiny clinical trial contracts. but, as yet he has still been unable to shift the co. out of supplying cut-price machines to academic institutes and research labs, and relaign with pharma & biotech as a go-to diagnostic business.

share price absolutely tracks the change in sentiment: post-fda approval share price was £!+, newland stuffed shareholders at 80p, and then issued revenue miss thatn halved the share price to 50p. it then halved again in early 2023;

& since then has pretty much halved again, as he has stiffed shareholders again. mr market is unimpressed, and sees through all the bluster, smokescreens, hyped language, subtle ****s in tone , etc ....

My ears pricked up when Matt Ridley said this. Dislocation between public markets & private markets continues to mar UK plc. Ridley mentioned M&A , and sector to get smaller. Unclear to me if UKW as the big Daddy sees it self playing an active role in this process. But what's clear to Ridley is that he thinks that the sector needs tov shrink, and that can only happen by merger or takeover....PE being the obv player. Place your bets!

As s/o on another board notes, Newland continues to act & behave as if AGL is a research project rather than a commercial enterprise - and our utterly hopeless Board of Directors continue to do sod all . Burning cash at the rate Newland is, is unsustainable for a company that produced revenues of barely £3m.

Annual begging bowl to shareholders is totally unsustainable., as is the constant dilution. As an aside, and I know this is unrealistic, but amusing nevertheless If Newland had put the £9m he raised last June in the bank it would have generated c£450-500k, roughly 15% of the s*** revenues for 2024.

Shenanigans ongoing. Massive block share trades - but share price doent budge nor as yer have there been any disclosures. Complete information vacuum from Ashmore -meantime interim CFO still not confirmed as permanent ; merry go round of board changes leaves Co. Non -independent chair Peterson has a lot to answer for !

Hopeful of what precisely? Newland's modus operandi is totally transparent - ramp like hell webinars, R&D papers, & dangle possible tie-ups with global healthcare, ahead of cash raise. Once cash raise out of way, slam brake on revenue forecasts, blame market for lack of progress, say nothing about deals you've mega-hyped, hope that your existing shareholders are too stupid to understand what you're doing, then go after new retail investors with latest version of growth story, hoping they'll be either be too naive or too stupid to ask right questions and challenge you...

Newland has suckered investors in over the last 10 years. Despite having burnt through £100m of people's money, he seems unable to get past Go. Chance of this coming good are diminishing with every month that goes by without any proper commercial revenue -

Newland's Trading Update comment 4 weeks plus ago 23 January:

"We enter 2025 with confidence that our current large pharma contracts are progressing well and have the potential to lead to larger scale opportunities with the same customers coupled with an ability to secure additional new pharma contracts."

So where is the update on ?

1. Eisei's Phase II pilot study (announced January 3 2024)

2. AZ's DDR Assay (24 April) which was s'posed to last just 6 months (i.e. October....)

3. AZ's CTC-based AR assay which is scheduled for completion Q1 i.e. by end of March

But hey in Newland's alternative universe, he pumps out photos of him with yet another smiling academic in Guildford who's delighted to use the system to support her research interests. Newland mate, you're supposed to be running a commercial enterprise not a diagnostic support centre for university academics. 100+ peer bloody reviewed papers has not translated into any sustainable bloody revenues.

Ask Newland how many Parsortix machines Uni of Athens uses and what price they paid for the machine(s)

Agree it looks cheap . However, theres's still small little matter of agreeing commercial terms with the APIKUR members, who have been royally shafted by the competing political interests. The contrast between share priCes of Genl & GKP really shows Genel and its management in very poor light.

1M: GKP + 28% VS GENL +15%

3M: GKP +34% vs GENL -16%

6M: GKP + 55% vs GENL -19%

12M: GKP +41% VS GENL -17%

Losing the arbitration wasnt well received by the market, not just because Genl lost but because of the doubts it casts about the management team.

And who has a 60 year old specialist defence business...yes Petards.

Very suspicious - a trade of that size does not move share price. Chairman commented about it being a pivotal time when Ravensworth dude joined board to sit alongside Exponent NED. Perhaps he meant around ownership rather than operations. Lots of work gone on over last 3 years reshaping, reducing cap intensity, reducing headcount, footprint, improving digital etc....

And share price hasn't budged.

Distressed sellers? The sp action is down to (1) those traders buying in the 10s, 11s, 12s banking a healthy profit (2) those with higher averages part selling into strength in order to reduce average & possibly buy back lower.

The Board needs a shake-up. High time that the Board asked the same questions we're asking about Newland's constant evasiveness & hype; missed revenue forecasts; deafening silence on previously hyped collaborations (Solaris) ; & excuses about market conditions. There is no doubt that the staff work damn hard , and there is genuine enthusiasm for the science & potential uses for the product. But as s/o else mentioned Newland's approach seems to be he is running this as if its the research arm of a university, rather than as a commercial enterprise

Liam,

SP is news-driven. Newland ramped the Illumina webinar, with predictable results. SP marched up to 16p+ , and has now deflated as (1) Market recognised no current commercial implications (2) Focus back on AZ/EISAI & lack of updates (3) Worries about another raise resurface.