Gordon Stein, CFO of CleanTech Lithium, explains why CTL acquired the 23 Laguna Verde licenses. Watch the video here.
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.
“ Poor judgement personified. Need better.”
An apt epitaph to sum up your incessant investment guru advice, twix., all the way down from 16p and above.
I note also you have become a prize irritant on the other board as well, you know the one, where you were completely humiliated and chased off from some years ago, hopefully into oblivion. Clearly not.
My own particular theory is that LR has over time been stung by personal criticism, both by at least one II who challenged the regular granting of share options leading to ever greater share dilution, and also by many disgruntled PI investors who backed the management and intended direction of the company, only to be faced with an ever decreasing valuation of the company.
You only have to look at the Investor Meet presentations where LR is very selective in what he chooses to respond to. Who can forget his sweeping aside of genuine shareholder concerns about SP performance by only discussing matters over which he had influence.
Well Mr CEO, I would contest that enhancing shareholder value over time is a core responsibility of yours, including fiduciary.
There has been decent good news with the company, but to announce such events on the likes of Twitter or on its own website does not maximise the value to the company.
To oversee a company which has lost 90% of its SP value is an abject failure, 5-year plan or not.
One can only conclude that LR has proverbially spat his dummy out, choosing to communicate as and when he personally chooses to.
LR remaining silent, along with his cabal of directors, is disrespectful to all who have put their hard earned in this company. One hopes there is no sinister motive beneath this strategy yet to be revealed.
And still the twix drones on, in the delusional belief that anyone who has posted some average price is a buddy buddy, and that the figures quoted are somehow always accurate, verifiable and truthful, and provides a guide to future performance of the SP.
Twix after all is always sincere in his dealings, n’est-ce pas?
Is this the same twix who supposedly sold copious volumes at the magical 16p only posting this dubious claim long after the event?
Or the twix who has relentlessly bought numerous times since, compounding losses and hoping -nay praying- an ‘average-down’ mantra will save the day for him?
But don’t mention the certain market crash, now some 18 months out of date, nor the Taiwan invasion or, if one wished to pry a little on the personal level, the early exit as an ex-pat from that den of iniquity, aka Ladyboyland.
Trust the Twitter abusive obsessive and latter-day disciple of TW? You decide.
The investor-in-chief aka twix is not singing anymore and is manifesting clear symptoms of depression. From a fictitious base-line of 16p he has been screaming incessantly from the roof-tops as his mantra -“average-down” ad nauseum- appears finally to have come to a grinding, screeching halt. Back to the drawing board one suspects, along with the market crash (18 months late and waiting), the annexation of Taiwan, and any conspiracy theory TW cares to trot out.
Credibility, regrettably, on a par with zero.