Member Info for HarChris

My guess is that he's been made inside and there's a placing coming.

'Due to the lack of revenue streams and the increased cash burn rate, the group's and the parent company's ability to continue as a going concern are dependent on raising additional funding in the second half of 2024. We have discussed with the directors the strategies that they are pursuing to secure further funding if and when required.'

The SP bounced off the bottom following Alastair's director purchase but I'm talking about since the two updates on 7th March. I wasn't expecting immediate changes but we will need start to seeing action match talk for a genuine recovery, of which being at 5.8p isn't.

As the year runs from March to March we're now due a full year trading update, let's hope that H2 at least beat H1 production-wise for starters. From there I expect to start seeing progress on the fronts I previously discussed - cash from the Mad gov. , debt facility, reputable new NEDs etc

I don't disagree now that this has become somewhat uninvestable until changes are seen / improvements are made but that clearly wasn't the case in the past. There was no issue in raising funds even as recently as January and the only reason more wasn't raised previously was because the Poddars didn't want to dilute themselves and believed they could achieve all that they planned to with the most minimal of resources.

It was slowly becoming evident through 2023 that Shishir's walk did not match his talk but it was only after the resignation of Isobel that investors truly rushed for the exit. Before that the board was starting to look a lot healthier but after isobel's resignation, followed by Murat, Shishir was forced into the laughable decision to have a board of three - himself, Puruvi and the apprentice.

So far over a month has passed and none of the proposed changes have been seen. The search for a CFO continues, the search for two new NEDs goes on, the $2m hasn't arrived and there's no news on the working capital facility. So far so bad.

True but that’s partly due to the chasm of difference between the two sectors. The gold environment is so strong that timescales can slip, actuals can fall slightly short but whatever happens cash isn’t going to become a constraint and strategy can go ahead as planned.

There is still a bit of mistrust of management here hence the poor valuation vs fundamentals but the margins and cash generation are simply too good to ignore.

This is why the clients pay the big bucks

In summary Shield has underperformed against expectations time and time again.

The most recent equity raise and debt facility was to get STX to breakeven. For this to happen they needed to hit very punchy targets but not only did the most recent results show they are on the completely wrong path (28.6k prescriptions vs 55.5k target) but the previous quarters were revised down too.

So for example prescriptions in 2023 came in at 77k and if you just looked at the 206% growth rate you might think excellent! But this was the year when the full sales force were in place and trained up. Do you know what the original guidance for 2023 was? 140K, it was then downgraded to 100k-130k range and that was missed by a mile.

In order for that cash break even to be achieved before a cash call is needed STX are going to need to up their average net price per Rx in 2024 and beat the previous target of 330k prescriptions... how likely do you think that is compared with 77k in 2023? And at what cost do you think the cash call will come at if it isn't achieved now that the current mcap has fallen to just £11m?

CS no way that's happening with market cap just a tad higher than the net cash position.

If it carried on in a straight line to £2 (with nothing actually happening re the dispute behind the scenes) then sure they might be obliged to put something out, but not 50p to 70p!

This latest move started with a determined buyer late on Monday that's continued all week. Do they have an inside track as to what's happening re the dispute? Possibly but more likely they're simply happy with the risk:reward on offer here and are building a position ready for that news. And then you'll have traders liking the 'signals' and following them in.

I will be listening intently to what Thomas has to say on Thursday - surely Argo's strategy can't be cross all fingers and toes that BTC rallies enough to offset reward adjustment? (I think it is)

I don’t really know anything about them to be honest.

Wouldn't it be great if AVCT caught these shorters out and paid this next Heights conversion in cash? Unlikely I know but would do sentiment and the SP the world of good and only eat up a fraction of the cash on hand.

In my best Italian Mario voice

'It's a coming!'

When you look at Pacbio's balance sheet you start to realise what a rare position Novacyt is in in have such a strong net cash position and no debt. For example Pacbio was valued at $3b as recently as mid 2023 with net debt of $700m and significantly loss making, even at the ebitda level.

All it will take is very modest profitability whilst remaining debt free for Novacyt to be valued many, many times what it is now.

Financial quarterly results come a month after the less detailed operational updates. Standard practice at THX.

A few of us were saying this Wilson around the time of the YG acquisition as Pacbio had qualified LightBench however it just seemed unlikely that such a giant would getting into a bidding war with little Novacyt - after all Pacbio was valued at $3B at the time.

Funnily enough they themselves have seen their value crash nearly 90% since the start of 2024.

Would be an issue if THX was trading at all time highs given the gold environment but they’re trading 30% down year on year!

I think we'll see confirmation of being net cash positive in the Q2 results, especially as cash generation in q2 will likely dwarf that of Q1.

Of course it's real, they've been receiving it each year since producing with $1.35m received previously.

'Imminent' to me always meant that that was what was coming next, i.e funding coming from this rebate rather than a placing, so far so good on that front although the longer it takes I suspect the slower any on the ground progress is made.

If the next update shows they are still only at ~1000tpm/12000tpa they should probably stop putting out the nonsense spiel of targeting 400000tpa by the end of this decade.

'ARB missed its only chance of a lifeline when it failed to do a placing when the sp surged above 30p'

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Ahem, I think you'll find that the sp 'surged above 30p' and peaked at 35p on the 2nd of Jan and by the 8th of Jan they had got a placing away at 20.5p - problem was they only managed to £7.8m which wasn't enough but is understandable given their outlook.

Over 18 months they have sold Helios for £54m, £11m worth of brand new Bitmain S19j Pro's, £13.5m combined from two placings and £4.9m for Quebec data centre and still they find themselves entering the halving with considerable net debt and minimal cash reserves.

The Shanta acquirers were very clever to get the ball rolling through 2023 and pouncing in December before the really big moves in gold were seen and looking back you can start to see that Eric took his foot off the gas from about the summer onwards, presumedly because he was incentivised to keep attention off Shanta.

If the same had been attempted at Serabi then i'm sure they'd have got a sale away at around 60p but now the gold bull run is well and truly happening by the time something similar is worked the Serabi share price will probably already be close to a pound and a premium on that would be needed - whatever happens SHs will gain by holding at these levels.