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Speaking of TJ, I've dropped him a message on LI to ask for his views on the current farce, not that he'll reply.
I see he's stopped waffling on about space long enough to update his tag line to "driving innovation in Commodity Markets & Fintech | Published Author & Thought Leader".
I might suggest "Heaping misery on Shareholders and Serial Underperformer | Co-conspirator and simp of Mr. Zamboni" would be more accurate.
@WiggyP - the word used in 29th Feb update was "finalised", so if we believe SYME respect the sanctity of the markets and provide honest disclosures in RNS, realistically it should now be final, or at the very least by the end of this month.
However, given the track record, I accept that "if" in the previous sentence is doing a tremendous amount of heavy lifting. The usual pattern is promise something way in advance, subsequent update the market to say it's close, then radio silence and no further updates.
What's curious is AZ no longer goes on camera - you'd think if WL was close the PR machine at SYME and indeed BPM would be kicking into gear, and the share price would have continued to build in anticipation, no drift a further 15-odd %. Maybe we can't afford Proactive's fees anymore.
The first deal is unlikely to move the share price - 10m monetised is buttons in terms of revenue. It doesn't even cover Alessandro's annual salary.
The market no longer trusts "envisages", "finalised" or other nonsense business buzz words Alessandro has used in the past to create a false sense of anticipation.
SYME has exhausted it's spike on promise of future deals - only tangible received revenue will move this, so realistically investors will be waiting at least another 2+ years, assuming WL really is in it's final stages and comes to fruition in the next week or so.
Do I? There was about 800 remaining LTHs down from about 1500 if memory serves when I was booted from General... I've no idea if they were hodling, trading or otherwise, but I do know trading has been an ever-present discussion in every SYME group I was in previously, to the point I grew tired with the bickering.
At what point to the remaining LTHs start kicking up a stink? If WL doesn't come to fruition? Or do we wait for the next SACE/VEChain/whatever else story AZ can invent to kick the can down the road?
@MRRR - 1000% agree with you. Perhaps I was naive, but I am staggered a CEO can tank a share price 98%, list another company and do exactly the same with RTOP, and there isn't either an FCA collar or a shareholder revolt. Perhaps AZ should consider updating our ticker to #SIMP.
I am sadly in a similar boat, to the point that it has deterred me from investing in individual businesses going forwards. I rescued what little I had left here and stuck it all in an ETF. I miss the excitement of investing in start-ups, but I feel well and truly had here, and I think SYME serves to highlight what little protection we as investors have.
Why hasn't an EGM been called? Have a lot of those purporting to be LTH's been trading this calamity all along?
Banks don't tend to offer insurance products either, they also white label via established providers. The same for consultancies and outsourcing partners - these are all established companies with a track record of delivery.
You've explained the traditional funding model - I get the premise behind that, I had a fair sum invested based on my understanding - it's the WL aspect I'm struggling with.
As part of BPM's due diligence, they're going to look at a business with a product that hasn't got off the ground in 4+ years, that has numerous critics and a CEO who has been - to be kind - economical with the truth, and they're going to lend their considerable weight to white labelling this product? Is this what we're expected to believe now?
Another major concern - and my reason for selling - is WL and BancoBPM being heralded as the next transformational activity for SYME which will finally start to generate revenue. WL in SYME's position makes zero sense.
Granted, I am not a banking expert, but I've been around the insurance market for a long time and worked on setting up a WL arrangement. An example would be Allianz and BMW - BMW want to sell cars and offer their customers a branded insurance policy and a "free" 7-day drive away cover so customers can collect their cars off the forecourt.
BMW offer their customer base, their branding and their reputation to the WL arrangement.
Allianz bring years of expertise, a solid reputation and provide BMW comfort that they're not going to upset their customers.
It works to an extent, as some particularly brand loyal customers will pay a bit extra to have their insurance policy on BMW paper, safe in their knowledge their brand new £60k M340 wagon has suitable cover. As there are two pigs at the trough, so to speak, the pricing is not especially competitive - how many of you have bought manufacturer branded car insurance after buying a new car from a main dealer?
Another, more successful example is Covea (formerly Provident amongst others) and John Lewis. Covea, not a particularly well known name outside of insurance, but a long standing trusted insurer leverage John Lewis' existing customer base and brand to sell insurance.
In both cases, these WL arrangements widen White-Labeller's product offering without having to invest in staff, systems and resources to deliver the product. John Lewis use Covea people, systems and product, but the end customer gets their documentation on John Lewis paper. Both Covea and Allianz are trusted long-standing insurers with great reputations - in both cases, the white labeller can be confident their reputation is intact because the provider has a long-standing reputation for delivery under their own branding and via other distribution models.
What do SYME actually bring to BancoBPM that BPM can't do themselves? Are we to believe the platform is so especially innovative BPM could not build it themselves? Are we to believe monetisation is so complex than BancoBPM's infinite resources cannot deliver the same/something similar? Why would BancoBPM trust their name to a relative unknown - a CEO that has a track record for failure, scores of unhappy investors and the company has struggled to get the product off the ground under their own name?
Does this kind of WL arrangement, where a banking product is white-labelled by a relative unknown with limited to no history of selling this product under their own name or any other distribution model, exist anywhere else in the banking world?
WL was always for me a long-term revenue stream once SYME had established themselves in their own right. I struggle to see how WL will take off in isolation.
2G2D: "why do it that would make no sense struggling to get a difficult business model off the ground"
That's my point - 4 years since listing, supposedly numerous years prior to that developing the model, numerous seismic shifts in strategic direction, and they haven't. The business model is very much grounded.
To turn that on it's head, why get involved in a secondary business (RTOP), why buy and then sell another business (Tradeflow), instead of focusing on getting your own difficult business model off the ground?
i'm angry so my judgement is clouded, but fwiw with benefit of hindsight and with the lack of delivery (barring a couple of half-****ed im's through vechain to keep the story alive), i think syme was set up with the purpose of making money through share movement rather than through the business model itself. the loan share agreement, the open offer, the inflated tfc purchase funded by clns only to later sell it with the relationship delivering nought, az's li messages, the options calls, all points to a ceo who was far more interested in what the share price is doing than business delivery. none of these activities really make any sense in the context of setting up a new fintech with an innovative product.
@chewy8uk - no, I'm not tw or Nobby reincarnated, otherwise I wouldn't be £15k down thanks to AZ and his criminal enterprise. My losses would be a lot bigger if not for some lucky (crazy?!) averaging down. I sold up in September/October time for 0.10p on a spike, and to be honest the current share price since has me incensed. Hindsight casts a very dim light on some of the disclosures, activities, statements and LinkedIn messages from AZ and others shared across Telegram. I even had a letter sent to my home address by a troll urging me to sell. The dwindling share price and still the lack of WL delivery (yet another delay for a supposedly transformational move in the company's development) leaves me with the overwhelming feeling I've been well and truly had.
For a long time I was one of AZ's biggest defenders. I've been here 3.5 years, I made over 40 purchases, and I now sincerely regret every one. I believe I was falsely induced to purchase shares based on material representation in formal news releases to market, and I've said as much to the company (although they have declined to respond).
So when I see baseless ramping using the same phrases that people were banding about in late 2020, I'm inclined to call it out. I'd dearly love to see AZ turn the ship around - I still have enough warrants that a return to the SP of 0.10p would take the sting off my losses here, but frankly the continued antics, distraction techniques, pining false hope on unrelated bits of news, the embarrassing RTOP performance, now huge spread and noticeable lack of buys, it is looking increasingly unlikely.
Chewy8uk - are you JonesRichard reincarnated? If you’re going to make silly suggestions, at least back it up with some justification otherwise it just comes across as desperate ramping.
I’m tempted to goto the AGM to go on the rampage - do my warrants (now utterly worthless) qualify me as a holder? Anyone remember the Open Offer? What the $€|¥ was the point in that, and what happened to no more dilution?
Thanks Mickey - makes complete sense.
If I understand correctly, you're suggesting Nuburu rhymes with Subaru, who once made a car called an Impreza, which had an interaction called the World Rally Cross, or WRX for short, which just so happens to be the ticker for a Crypto Currency called WazirX, which inevitably means Stratton Oakmont are lining up a $4,000,000,000,000 bid for a 2% equity holding in Eight Capital Partners, who will then invest the profits in Supply@ME? Did I get that right?
What's wrong with just doing the basic delivery? Why/where is AZ getting funds from to invest in another company that is 98% down?
Instead of starting up/investing in other companies, what's wrong with performing the basic business model and generating some revenue? Maybe AZ is addicted to share charts with cataclysmic drops in shareholder value.
I'd love to see some recovery in the share price, but this has all the hallmarks of another AZ smoke and mirrors share dealing to distract from the complete lack of delivery from the underlying business.