Member Info for Natdan

Ok, here’s your starter for ten:-
Who recently claimed
“ The foundations for Growth are Stronger than Ever?” No conferring. I’ll have to hurry you. No not Rishi, it was in fact Adam Reynolds.
Such boast was made at the time of the full year results on 27 July. Shortly before he exited the stage, presumably job done.

A closer inspection perhaps in retrospect might indicate where the cracks may have started to appear. A competent accountant with a forensic eye would no doubt highlight concerns which I could not hope to match.

I focus upon the vagueries of the “admin expenses”. Even at the yearly stage the costs were a staggering £18m, spent on such niceties as ‘depreciation of property’ (£1.75m) or US market entry expenses (£1.0m). Even at the half yearlies, the sum was hardly reduced to £7.2m (six months).
No wonder the Co. now boasts “we have a key focus on reducing cost base with operational efficiencies…”
Who knew?
Closing the rotting stable after the horse has truly bolted?
How BH remains in post, as well as the Teflon LR (the buck stops with the CEO) is beyond belief.

MissBee, the 4.75p averaging-down reference did in fact start much,much earlier -at 16p, since when the rinse-and-repeat strategy has led him blindly all the way down and down to the ‘bargain-basement’ price of 0.3p in the retail offer. Whisper it quietly, but he is convinced it is a success. The men in white coats remain on standby.

Fine twix , all part of the service I aim to provide. I see your charisma bi-pass was successful.
Try a little humour now and then, you might enjoy a little more success than your life as a consistently failed tipster. Taiwan, market crag, etc, anyone?

It’s good to see that most of the directors still on board the heavily-listing boat Ygen have now found enough spare coinage to either throw some the way of the billions of new shares now floating below the surface, or to lend the company a quick £200k ( on unspecified terms) to keep the lights on over the festive period.
Whilst Ygen is now claimed to have enough fuel in the tank to keep it afloat until the 3rd quarter or 12 months ( depending on which statement you believe), the great imponderables for any investor here remain.
At the risk of strangling the metaphor, the ship is grounded on rocks and is heavily holed below deck. We have still not been definitively told, for example, what caused the sudden cash-crisis trauma within the company, or why Rees, like the drunken captain swigging from an open bottle, retains command of the ship which he, and his navigator BH, steered blindly onto the rocks.
Enough already. Without doubt this vessel remains a high-risk bet but I am almost tempted, if only by the crew’s recent and decent purchases of shares. All hands on deck!

I expect that once the bean-counter in chief has finished counting all the brand new shares manufactured as a result of this master-plan, there will be billions of the rascals coming out of the proverbial ears. A massive share consolidation will inevitably follow as the sheer numbers are now meaningless. It is possible to shovel up a million of them for around £7k. Absurd.

Let me say from the outset I believe the calls for legal action against the CEO led by Andyken are commendable and symptomatic of many PI investors here. I am not even sure what offences might appear on the charge sheet, other than a general ‘catch-all’ claim of negligence and/or gross incompetence. If the latter was the case, then much of extensive ‘Broken Britain’ would now be in the dock on trial. How I long for Al Murray’s pub landlord character to liberate us all.

If any Aim regulations may have been breached then it would be surely for Aim to investigate and take proceedings if culpability is found to be the case. Someone has already commented that the chances of Aim regulators running with this and conducting a thorough internal are next to zero.
My own view is that LR has at this stage survived this disgraceful episode in transparently running a plc. We have not heard a word from the dynamic chairman (who he?). The fact that one individual from the IIs has been nominated to the BOD at the same time as a number of existing anonymous BODs exit stage left strongly indicates that the CEO retains backstage support from the IIs for now, and that his ‘rescue-plan’ (ah, bless him for saving us PIs) has just enough meat on it to give YGEN a sporting chance of survival near-term.
I believe the IIs have concluded that it is better to retain the services of LR as he will have built up business contacts during his tenure and would not be easily or effectively replaced at short notice. If the heat continues, I believe there will be no hesitation to offer up the CFO as the sacrificial lamb, so BH will likely fall on his sword, cushioned by his recent share purchase. The problem is he may well know where any skeletons are buried.
Whichever take one puts on this,LR has been a wretched failure but incompetence nowadays is rarely a crime in UK plc.

Even at this festive period when existing PIs are primarily nursing substantial paper losses, in all probability never recoverable, our very own resident Buffett cannot resist with his learned, tried and failed strategy-
“… my advice is get behind the fundraising and average down.”
Please be aware Mr Holier-than-thou, you are not authorised to provide financial “advice”, here or any other board. To be blunt, looking at your past performances SHOULD be a guide to future returns.
Ps As was recently suggested on this board, are you sure you are not acting as one of TW’s useful idiots?

Scharnhorst, I expect LR might well argue that much can happen in a 5-month period with the fortunes of a small listed public company.
LR conducted a more recent presentation on 27 September (have not had the opportunity to re-listen yet). If he was still making positive noises re the cash position at that stage, then questions might well need detailed responses.
What material change necessitated a refinancing of a small listed public company?
When and how did LR become aware of a deterioration in the cash requirements of the company? What potential courses of action were considered? Was a short-term suspension of the shares considered pending clarification of the company remaining as a ‘going concern?’
These questions and many more besides.

My primary complaint on this site has been the fact that twix has relentlessly contaminated this board with an arrogant, holier-than-thou self-belief in his own righteousness. When anyone challenged his personal risk profile in continuing to throw good money after bad, then personal abuse in the true twitterati fashion was his only response. Even today he is in denial. He is incapable of an admission of making a (whisper it quietly) wrong call.
I too have lost heavily but don’t seek to attain the martyrdom status Twix seeks.
Stas20, I have no need to take a preaching lesson from you. Instead of carping relentlessly about the company and its management team, why not challenge them and at least attend the general meeting early next year?

It is a little sad to see an investment guru down on his luck, especially at this festive time of the year. I too readily acknowledge taking a sizeable hit as a result of the atrocious mismanagement of this plc with great potential.
However. When a poster under the pseudonym Twix repeatedly and incessantly boasts of endless purchases in the shares of a single company on the basis of a high-risk investment strategy he affectionately referred to as ‘averaging-down’, accompanied by name-calling and personal abuse to anyone who dare challenge that pseudo-superiority, then when the fall arrives, there is likely little or no sympathy for the devil.
One would have thought that an investor badly burnt by the previous ‘Vialogy’ experience would have reassessed, cut his losses and quietly retreated into the background.
Maybe he will this time. I’ve heard NS&I provide a risk-free opportunity to attain millionaire status overnight. Twix, from James Bond to Premium Bond in the course of a single RNS.

This morning I feel like one of those old Laurel and Hardy films where Ollie takes an explosion full-on and emerges with a gunpowder-stained visage.
I blame myself predominantly on this one for not applying a rigid exit strategy oh so many moons ago. Mr Market is not often wrong and his pointing out clearly a direction of travel of the SP consistently over a period in excess of a year should have been warning enough.

The main positive I see at this late stage of the proceedings is the culling of the long over-bloated BOD. Elevating predominantly scientists with little or no business acumen onto a board where hard-faced business should have been the norm was poor strategy. Just look what happened when Witty and Valance were in effect promoted and usurped a whole economy and country impacting matters of business!
What this company lacked from the outset was a no-nonsense chairman, a boardroom operator from the unsentimental old school. One who made it clear that the buck ultimately stops at the chief executive’s door. For LR to preside over such a disastrous business outcome surely makes it untenable for him to remain in post. One would surely expect the II’s who have also lost heavily here to show him the exit soonest, and without any golden-bye compensation package.
As for the CFO, he has shown himself to be hopelessly out of his depth in terms of cash management, where cheques appear to have been signed with minimum accounting considerations. A case in point might be the regularrelocation of premises around Manchester is hardly going to be cheap, especially if contractual leases are terminated at short notice. Or the mass recruiting and now firing of staff. Ygen may well be attacking its cost base, but after the horse has bolted?
If this is LR’s idea of a festive gift to all shareholders then he must, Grinch-like, cancel Christmas forthwith.

Bakky, only if the guru twix advised it would be a good time to..erm…’average-down?’

The upside here that I can see is that you can be the proud owner of a further 2 million shiny shares for less than £8k! Where else could you fill your boots so cheaply? The sales have well and truly arrived early this year. LR you are so thoughtful.

Have never seen such a disconnect between the results update ( reasonable) with a fund raise four minutes later which effectively destroys any shareholder value which remained.
Now we know why the CEO and his band of yes men were so silent over the past months.
How do we get rid of them?

Don’t wish to be accused of a bout of pre-Christmas pessimism but it seems the time-slot window to allow for the posting of the half-yearlies is becoming ever narrower.
If as has been recently indicated here the results must be delivered by the end of December then the available trading days in which such an announcement is made is becoming increasingly constrained.
Perish the thought but some cynics amongst us might be predicting results being surreptitiously slipped out in the no-man’s-land betwixt Christmas and the New Year, in the hope some eagle-eyed analysts might not be at their usual desk!
It is an increasingly negative sentiment that the company has now for some months adopted a near-silent approach to its public pronouncements, preferring Twitter or an occasional web-site addition.
For a plc to suffer a near-90% decline in its trading share price and not to be accompanied by an explanation or justification by the Chairman (who he?), the CEO and/or the resident anonymous bean-counter amounts, in my humble view, to a serious dereliction of duty. Some might even claim fiduciary duty.
Update required soonest please, if only to rebuild Twix’s sanity as he desperately thrashes and flounders around for his next average-down buying opp.

A couple of grains of truth seeping into Twix’s psyche today. Such as:-
“ I've been very critical of delivery versus expectations here”, indeed buying at 16p all the way downwards to sub 2p has repeatedly failed to match his expectations.
Also,
“ okay Yourgene enough time spent giving me trading opp after trading opp.”
In the meantime twix appears to have found a weekend friend, another carper from the keyboard, ColSoul. Inspirational duo.

What on earth is twix jibbering on about, the tipster who never misses a bulls-eye? It seems that having missed his certain call on the ‘market crash’, the 16p and numerous other mis-timed screaming buy predictions all the way down to present sub-2p, the imminent Taiwan incursion ad nauseum, we now have to endure the philosophical debate as to when a pre-announcement will actually morph into a formal results update…
Really, anyone with the slightest self-awareness would long ago have quietly exited stage left, pursued by a bear (market).

And quadrupled hopefully throw some more cash at it, in the name of the mantra “average-down”, all on a wing and a prayer. (16p + consistently down to sub 2p don’t ya’ know).

GLTader, noted thanks.
I am in favour of employees under one roof if efficiencies can be established. I am wary of the ‘synergies’ claim per se, especially where associated expenses likely accrue such as negotiating early exits from potentially onerous rental lease contracts
Longer-term followers of Ygen will recall that the listed company began life as ‘Nipt’ on Lloyd St Manchester, only for it now to return to …Lloyd St Manchester.
For a company with an ever-decreasing mkt cap, let’s hope that the much rearranging of furniture pays off for the SP.

A year to the day when Ygen released its half-year report. Whilst accepting that the timing can never be precise and is subject to fluctuations for a variety of reasons, any delays at this particularly sensitive time can do nothing to improve sentiment.
I look forward to the bullet-point highlights of the company’s more recent achievements, but I rather suspect the approx 90% drop in the SP may be conspicuous by its absence.
It remains unclear why the Co. has adopted a strategy of minimising communication with the outside world, particularly in terms of growth or contractual tie-ups. To take one simple example- I have yet to see the definitive explanation as to why the Co. upped sticks at very short notice from its modern premises in Nelson St. Manchester to a new establishment barely 800 metres away ( as the crow flies). Expansion mode? Retraction mode? Or being chased for rent arrears? Who knows?
Oh Mr CEO, I think you are taking too literally the mantra of ‘Speak now, or forever hold your peace.’ The last 5-year plan -from Stalin I believe- didn’t work out too well either.