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The January fund raise resulted in an additional 10.71m shares. It looks like William Currie took up 3.57m then, Sir Leahy's position prior to this weeks fund raise was 3.57m shares, which could imply that he also subscribed to the January fund raise in the same amount again as William Currie. Sir Leahy is connected with the William Currie group as per their website. The subscription price in January was 14p and 8p now, so that could put Sir Leahy's total investment at c£1m total - £500k for January fundraise and £500k for May fundraise. So the January fundraise could be two-thirds Currie/Leahy, and one third some other parties. May fundraise was 100% Currie/Sir Leahy. Not stating all this as facts, just some speculation based on piecing together and making some assumptions from the information available.
I have a different opinion to many on the board today. While they see the positives from the parties, in particular SIr Leahy, that subscribed to this weeks fund raise, I view the fact that another fundraise has been needed so soon after January, that it is at a substantially lower valuation than January, and that the implied YTD 2022 Brandshield progress in customer/ARR numbers in my opinion are not great (decelerating) as more negatives.
If Sir Leahy is already in for £500k of his own money and William Currie is in for maybe >£1.2m at higher valuations prior to this week's further fundraise, what options do they really have if the scenario is (not saying that this is indeed the actual reality of the situation) that Brandshield is facing a cash crunch and need an injection ?
Companies can often put out statements that create a positive spin on things, but the reality is something different. Not saying this is the case here, but worth considering. Look at what companies are saying, but see if that is stacking up with the numbers. 2021 growth looked good, 2022 I am not so sure.

@shandypants2 - Tracing back through the TR1 notification RNS's and doing some sums, if I have got the maths right the positions could be as follows:
William Currie held 5.43m shares (see TR1 notification RNS 12/11/2021) prior to the 28 Jan 2022 fund raise. Spreadex Ltd appeared to be quite a large seller according to theirTR1 notifications over 2021.
William Currie subscribed to the 28 Jan 2022 fundraise, so their next batch of shares taking them up to 9m (see TR1 notification RNS 07/02/2022) could have been new shares issued by Brandshield from the fundraise rather than bought on secondary market.
Now the latest fundraise earlier this week saw William Currie shares increase to 15.2m (TR1 notification RNS 27/05/2022), again new shares issued by Brandshield rather than bought on secondary market. Brandshield issued 12.5m shares for this fund raise, William Currie's position increased by 6.25m (from 9m to 15.2m), which would imply that William Currie went 50/50 with Sir Leahy and Sir Leahy acquired 6.25m from this fund raise.
Sir Leahy TR1 RNS notification from today states his total shares as 9.82m, so if 6.25m came from the fund raise (new shares issued by Brandshield) then he could have already held 3.57m prior to the fund raise. The 3.57m would have been below the 3% ownership notification threshold so that's why we may not have heard about his prior position before this.

In today's RNS my attention was also drawn to the following under vesting conditions: "2 years vesting in monthly instalments plus acceleration in the event of the change of control of the Company". Now why would mention be made of this particular instance, I haven't seen this before in previous option/incentive RNS's : "plus acceleration in the event of the change of control of the Company" ? Is this foreshadowing ? I don't see this as a positive for shareholders who got in post AIM listing if this were to come about in the short to mid term at the current levels of share price.

So there is some information in today's grant of options RNS where you can make some estimates of 2022 YTD progress - see statement "Customer numbers have grown from around 70 to over 140 and ARR has increased from $2.87m to around $6m at the time of this announcement." The starting point is their admission to trading on AIM in Dec20.

-YE21 customers: 130, up 77 from YE20, +69% customer growth, c6.4 net new customer per month.
-YE21 ARR: $5.22m, up $1.94m from YE20, +59% ARR growth, c$164k net ARR increase per month.
Those YE21 figures from the "Proposed Placing to raise £1.5m; Trading Update" RNS on 28 January 2022.

Using numbers from todays announcement and supposing an end May position (we are close to month end) to estimate:
-May22 customers: >140 customers, lets assume 145 customers the midpoint of 140-150 as if it was more than 150 then presumably they would have quoted the 150 and not 140. 2022 YTD net new customer growth vs YE21 = 145 - 130, 15 net new customers or 3 per month. That's compared to the c6.4 net new customers per month signed up over 2021.
-May22 ARR: around $6m. 2022 YTD net ARR growth vs YE21 = $6m-$5.22m, $780k net new ARR or $156k per month. That's compared to the c$164k net ARR growth per month over 2021.

So what conclusions can be drawn ? All in my opinion - significant slowdown in net new customer growth with the pace of signup reducing by 50% compared to 2021. There seems to be a struggle in bringing new clients through the door. The underlying assumption in this is retention of existing clients has remained high and subscription terminations are not distorting the estimates. Net new ARR growth in 2022 has also slowed vs 2021, but the difference is not has marked as the slowdown in net new customers. This could indicates that net new ARR growth is coming mainly from cross/upselling to existing customers.
At the Investor Meets sessions they mentioned that Q4 has traditionally been a good/busier quarter for sales, but I could not see any evidence of any significant sales bump over Q4 2021 so I would not be convinced we would expect to see some significant increased activity over Q4 2022. The fund raise is intended to help capitalise on what they believe is a significant market opportunity. So based on the 2022 YTD numbers, would you not question this statement on whether they are successfully capitalising on this opportunity, or whether there is indeed a significant market opportunity ?

For WeShop I think there was an 18 month lock up period for existing shareholders, which would expire around mid 2023. But I don't think there is an active and liquid secondary market to offload WeShop, and they would probably need to find a buyer. I can't remember exactly what the carrying value is they have for WeShop, maybe in the region of £/$ 1.5-2m. Can they find a buyer, and how big a discount to carrying value will they be taking to offload? Based on current market environment I would imagine quite a large discount if they can actually find a buyer.

Does anyone remember the Investor Meets sessions last year ? I am sure there were multiple questions about future fund raises, and the response from memory was that they had sufficient funding from the reverse takeover and fundraise and that the recent loan facility arranged should set investors minds at ease. We are now two equity fund raises later and the language in the most recent RNS has now changed to operating with constrained funds. The additional capital raised appears to be earmarked for the same things that the RTO fundraise was meant to cover i.e. increased effort on sales and marketing, rather than some new opportunities.
Are these red flags?:
1) ARR growth dropped from c79% in 2020 to c59% in 2021. Decelerating % sales growth but presumably increasing costs. It is harder to grow in % terms as the $/£ amount increases, but these volumes are still small in absolute terms. Is the increased investment in sales/marketing/etc. producing a good return ? Ha
2) There is mention of significant increase in interest over 2022, momentum of organic pipeline and several new clients. Those statements are positive but quite subjective. We are 5 months in to 2022 and there has been no trading update to objectively quantify how positive this is in terms of 2022 ARR growth.
3) There is mention of the unique nature of their SaaS solutions and being a leading provider, again positive but subjective. If you browse the websites of their leading competitors you will see that they all offer an automated AI/machine learning proposition, but their customer numbers are 1000+ compared to Brandshield's c130 customers at YE21. One competitor had a debt fundraise of c15m euros, and that same competitor was doubling customers and revenues from a higher base in their early days. Competitors have greater scale and funds (objectively), you can debate the uniqueness of the proposition.
4) The recent 2022 economic climate is probably tough, and this could explain some operating difficulties and decline in share price. The Brandshield share slide was in progress from before the general market shock downturn. Companies should be managing funds conservatively in these times. There was a picture on Brandshield's twitter from the INTA conference in the US, and I counted what I think are 5 Israeli-based staff at the US function. Good use of funds - we will have to see from the trading update ? There was a job ad on their Linkedin page where from the job spec it looked like the key responsibilities were to essentially create a good office environment for the staff, I think I remember writing staff birthday cards being listed as a task. There also seems to be a continuous string of job ads on the Linkedin page for sales and business development people - are these new positions or an indication of churn of existing staff due to difficulties in actually delivering on the sales/business development aspects?

I hope the 2022 trading update dispels some