Katherine Roe, CEO at Wentworth Resources talks through the Ruvuma gas development in Tanzania. Watch the full video here.
It’s far more tax efficient for a director to fund the ‘ tax ‘ benefit on an Option than to pay tax at source then buy in the market, they can gear up / arbitrage their cash and same time enjoy the discount to market price as part of their remuneration and depending on the approved HMRC scheme and size of their eventual capital gain - first £1M taxed at 10% as classed as a business asset - minimise their overall tax bill on disposal
Alister has £millions in options, suggest him/ directors buying in the market is not relevant, he’s been buying via funding his tax liability via his option package
Whilst we await the Biopsy report.
Thought it was helpful to do a de brief of Tom W’s view on Avacta, thought it might be helpful to the BB
- I subscribe to his daily pod cast, mindful of being in my own echo chamber.
Generally speaking Tom speaks a lot of common sense and gets a lot right in general business however I think he spends limited time researching each investment he recommends.
One such example being SkinBio(SBTX)
On this call he’s down a whopping 75% - £120M m/cap to £32M today
Tbf the business is interesting but it’s trying to flog a product on social media but has just 375no Insta following ( Axis Biotix) and has limited capital to promote.
Tom thinks this company will have a serious £market cap a couple years out, more than Avacta is worth on todays valuation
It’s a powder you mix with water and helps your microbiome and helps with auto immune skin issues.
Back to Avacta, his call is Avacta runs out of money 2nd Half 2023 and will need to raise £money, so his thesis states it’s a straight 12 month runway and Avacta will need more cash, which again to be fair none of us can argue against.
However - this is the lack of research on his side which he demonstrates as above - he suggests the share price has to revert to Pre Covid but he discounts the £50M for R&D which will have been spent by July 2023 and attributes no commercial benefit to same.
Any time / day now Avacta could drop the Biopsy RNS report, if as expected that confirms what we think the data will tell us it, Avacta can start negotiating a deal to generate revenue from a partnership from bigger Pharma ,which will provide cash upfront / or we get a Bid for the whole platform - possibility
Toms short is then toast, if it’s a big £number the downside for the shorts trying to close will be brutal, the ‘upside ‘ for Toms traders is not that good against a potential serious loss that will exceed their stake money, it will make Toms 75% loss on SBTX look like deal of the century.
Re Jupiter, suggest they may be running a long / short strategy,
3:1 long / short , which is quite normal of many institutions- beyond us PI’s but they can make a bonus for the managers on the short whilst holding the long, as such I don’t read much into their short.
Sieveco, thing is we didn’t know to the extent till the AGM RNS this week
hence the positive mood, it was a pivotal moment to date on our journey.
We didn’t really know the 2nd cohort was progressing well following the 120mg/m2 dosage, that’s heading to 6 months next month from February.
Brilliant news for the cohort as well of course
Put aside the trial will 12 months old come August 22 and it continues not just in 1 specialist U.K. cancer hospital but now in 6no and they confirm they plan to increase the dosage to 150mg/m2 and at the AGM confirm we may not require MTD - that on its own is highly relevant
There is no way additional hospitals would be adding stage 4 cancer patients IF it wasn’t working - appreciate we picked up on this privately but nice to see RNS confirmation.
Worth noting this gives comfort on the toxicity to the heart being relatively negative to compared to existing treatments.
We have separately debated scans to measure the tumour size - refer to point above 2nd Cohort
Suggest Wiggly is fair to make the assumptions
MRI scans at a local level would be a regular occurrence when undertaking Chemotherapy - CT tends to focus on whole body looking for spread
It’s reasonable to assume Avacta will be aware that the tumour will have shrunk, this concurs Ava6000 has worked as it should do, then we are down to cardiovascular issue's etc
Again why continue if these issues were affecting the patient?
Avacta have no debt
4D balance sheet has been badly managed, their 12 month high was
£180M m/cap
They should have raised capital at £180M rather than borrow $ from a loan shark and enter administration 52 weeks later for £10M cash, we can only guess that insider shareholders knew 4D was a long way off revenue stream / maybe doubts on their IP and made the call to prefer to lose their investment than sink new cash? - something not right over there
Back to Avacta, it’s looking highly likely Ava6000 works, throw in the rest of the IP, our ‘ problem ‘ will be offers from big Pharma that the BoD may find attractive on a personal level, personally I hope we can maintain our quote and enjoy the next part of the Avacta journey
… that’s the problem with the ‘ shorts ‘ trading Thesis
You cant argue with Data/ Maths - you can throw in Al’s house or the LFT debacle and even the lack of commercial savvy of Big Al, not even the most avid LTH’s could defend him
But as a scientist who has been on this journey for years and years he’s close to pulling this off , not because he thinks he will it’s because the data is showing he is delivering the holy grail for chemo treatment, it’s there in black and white.
The shorts are going to get toasted here, as soon as the biopsy report drops, with a blink of an eye they are liquidated and more, its going to hurt.
Been a holder for over 2years plus
From AGM business update
‘• Dose escalated February 2022 to 120 mg/m2 and second cohort progressing well.’
How encouraging is this news for the individual / their family
Entering month 6 next week since 120mg/m2 and progressing well.
I have no problem with anyone shorting any stock, each to their own trading strategy, but in this case unless we hear really bad news they are going to get burnt in this share
Its good a news story today for the patients involved and shareholders, Avacta are on the cusp of something very very special, after 2 years holding another few weeks is nothing to me.
Thanks for the notes Tom / Sports Trader
Steve, it’s now set up if they want to do deals they can do.
In affect they can raise £ for each subsidiary independent of the PLC, that’s good business practise.
Personal opinion, I can’t see Matt giving up his Golden Share just yet, he can build JV partnerships with the likes of SoftBank within Ingenuity for example, they fund for Ingenuity equity, not further THG stock.
If cost of capital is too expensive for a PE deal to work then Matt / advisors have gone with plan A and believe they can make it work better without debt to buy out us PI’s , fair enough.
Goldy
This wasn’t about £1.70 for us
The structure of a deal wasn’t right for Matt/ insiders
They won’t accept a Debt funded deal - who would in this climate ?
Iain Mc & Candyman didn’t have £B’s in their bank accounts
The ‘old ‘ money being the insiders left behind needed to be treated the same as the new money … plus warrants & Carry on top
Can’t see a PE deal short term with a rising cost of capital in general market
think that boat has sailed and we move on.
Restructuring, remove Golden Share so we can enjoy Premium
Listing, we can then be included in ETF’s
That will steady the ship but Matt may be nervous to lose the golden share for time being.
Contd ..
‘It added: "International expansion will add scale and diversification and in support of the rating, which is premised on replicating the operational and economic success of its UK retail operations internationally."
Ocado believes the surge in online food shopping seen during the pandemic is set to continue betting on long-term growth despite a short-term slowdown caused by a cost-of-living squeeze.
Investment should help cut the amount of time it takes to get Ocado Solutions’ highly automated warehouses up and running.
During the pandemic, Ocado Retail, its joint venture with Marks & Spencer, struggled with capacity and was forced to temporarily close its website in March 2020 after being overwhelmed by orders.
Ocado Solutions currently has 11 partnerships and it expects its clients to generate over £20bn in sales over the next few years.
Ocado estimates that its own revenue and profits will reach £6.3bn and £750m respectively.
The company was founded by three former Goldman Sachs bankers in 2000 and has hardly made a profit since. Management argues the company is investing for growth and Ocado has raised significant amounts of cash over the past two decades to fuel development of its technology.
The latest fundraising follows a drop in the share price, which has nearly halved since the start of the year as customers returned to pre-pandemic shopping habits.
Shares were flat at 831.68p on Monday.’
Firewall,
‘The loss-making grocer Ocado is raising £575m in fresh funding to expand its technology business, despite signs of inflation slowing the online retail revolution.
News of the cash call came as ratings agency Fitch hit the company with a downgrade and warned of mounting risks at its international business.
Ocado announced plans to sell shares to institutional and individual investors after markets closed on Monday and said it had secured a £300m loan from a consortium of banks.
The company gathered enough orders to cover the share sale within about half an hour, according to terms seen by Bloomberg. Ocado said members of its leadership team, including chief executive Tim Steiner, will buy new shares as part of the placing.
The cash injection will be used to support the growth of its Ocado Solutions business, which provides automated warehouse technology to retail partners.
While Ocado is best known in Britain as an online grocer, its main focus today is selling robotic warehouse technology to retailers worldwide, such as Kroger in the US and Coles in Australia. The group said it needs fresh cash to fund investment as demand for its tech grows.
But the fundraising came as credit rating agency Fitch warned investors of an "increased execution risk" within Ocado's international segment, as operations ramp up more slowly than expected.
The agency downgraded Ocado’s rating from 'stable' to 'negative' and said profits are now forecast to come by November 2024, one year later than initially planned’
Ocado partner with THG/ Ingenuity and their robotic fulfilment centres
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/06/20/ocado-hit-ratings-downgrade-raises-575m-international-push/