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Won’t matter what the NATO budget is or will be. In the queue for contracts Basu will ensure KMK is right at the back, hiding, hoping he won’t be noticed, despite having a product, while waving ahead CEOs with nothing but a glittering promise and confident patter… a la Gates, Trev Milton, Holmes…
@skid35, I admit Sugar can’t hold a candle to bezos, but he’s about the closest the UK has ever had of a market grabber. American CEOs are nurtured from kindergarten to amplify any leadership capabilities, to be pushy promoters, like the near offensive O’Leary, but gets the company stock moving up. CEOs need to be like that to push their company ahead of the queue, esp if its small, like the scrappy runt of a litter. Unfortunately Basu would be better positioned as the CIO (Chief Incompetence Officer).
Not heard of any UK CEOs showing the kind of cut & thrust a small company needs to grow like a weed, but do name some.
As for the cost, stock options are the perfect incentive, that’s why US tech giants attract the best. As for dilution, it is irrelevant to wealth if the CEO can increase the value of the company to a far greater level than the award. Stock options to senior staff are conditional on the shareprice reaching targets set by the BoD with shareholder support.
Having 0.01% of a company worth $1bn is better than having 1% of a company worth $100mn
But we agree, Basu can seriously damage your wealth.
Hire an American CEO & the stock will recover its true potential. Otherwise its a loser stock. The closest in the UK to a Bezos is Sugar, there simply isn’t enough of the right stuff, without which this shrimp will stay a shrimp.
@Aqc888 - Yeah RINSE & REPEAT!
The tech works, demand peaked in 2020, but still there, but this T****R can’t deliver. Liz Holmes or Trev Milton did a better job of marketing their company & stock even without a product than this
This CEO only knows how to maintain a yes man BoD, who will go along with whatever lack of ambition the CEO requires and keep his & their job. They had a great product but tech is not for wallflowers like him.
Getting out and put it into something with better prospects…
The entire BoD & C suite would have to be fired & jailed for failing in their fiduciary duties, and maybe CEO demoted to his true self, a lab tech. Never seen a company so successfully grab defeat from the jaws of victory.
Its not that they don’t trust KMK, its the boffin sitting in the CEO position that is the problem. In a bull market he’s treated the shareholder trust & investment like a sponsored lab experiment and has no idea how to commercialise
The CEO, ie CHIEF EXEC officer is the albatross around kmk’s neck. He is not CEO material, few Brits are, except for Brandson, Dyson, Sugar, Lord Browne, Trevor Milton (american that should you can skyrocket a stock despite no product, just selling a dream), Mick O’Leary guys you don’t have a pint with, but brash, loud, charismatic, driven and able to put their company on the international scene, and visible everywhere.
Not a wilting introverted wallflower boffin that should be a CTO but never a CEO.
The BoD is just a bunch of dozy folks who the CEO invites to keep up pretences and comply with regs. Don’t blame the BoD, its the CEO not being C or E.
It does not matter how good the product is, if the CEO is frightened of success & high expectations. It is why ARM despite having tech that could rule the world, is a footnote.
He is not learning constructively from past mistakes, and instead of improving, he is paralysed with the fear of the spotlight on the CEO & closing off opportunity. It’s a good job Thomas Edison was nothing like him, or we’d be waiting until someone else re-invented the lightbulb and marketed it.
I agree, however, if Basu has any further science value then he should find a job in the lab and hire a professional CEO to take his place. No shame in that, Google founders did that.
I think Skid35 sums up the incompetent CEO perfectly, “ Basu just seems in a parallel universe running the company as an extension to a PhD as a academic exercise, seemingly Very happy with poor performance.”
He is the effing Chief Exec, the CFO & BoD dozy wasters but they are not steering the ship. What Basu is doing is destroying shareholder value and should be a criminal offence.
@Gio Boundless opportunities??? These were as real as the tooth fairy and a job with Santa delivering goodies all over the world in one night! A bunch of fairy tales for the gullible that Moggy mocks as too stupid to understand the UK left the EU to stop them progressing their tax evasion & large scale avoidance scheme. All the seemingly unwelcome laws & rules written up by EU civil servants were waved through by our own MEPs to stoke the misguided hatred. The same goes for the claim about about boat people illegal immigration. Nobody checked that none were EU citizens, and they are still coming, choosing UK’s relatively generous welfare system under UN rules. The rule about having to seek asylum in the first country of safety is an EU rule, which we are no longer a part of.
Or the other fairy tale about 350mn a day being sent to the EU being redirected to the NHS
Or promises to invest in UK tech, and then pouring millions into Boris’s grand gesture white elephant projects that won’t make the country wealthier but just like Gordo’s labour, create lots of fake jobs funded by the govt that end when the tax money runs out.
Instead of pushing & marketing theUK’s fledgling techs, they are being left to flounder.
OCDO
ONT
KMK
are just some examples where if their CEOs were as effective as American CEOs at marketing, with a supportive govt, we’d have a thriving UK PLC tech industry comparable to the US.
Aq888 the pathogen detector could be the cake, but it won’t be, it fears global success and the pressure & expectations it would bring, so will stay on the low sales traditional products and peanuts contracts, until a larger pathogen company eg US based start up comes along and buys out the pathogen detection patents. That will help fund future mediocrity. You can tell this is the way they think. Northern powerhouse its not (although it has the ability, lacks ambition - must try harder).
comatose BoD… afraid of opportunity… why sweat under
shareholder performance expectations when you can be mediocre and collect your fees for doing nothing?
If only a large enough activist shareholder existed that could fire the lot. Unfortunately they have stayed under big shsreholder radar by being mediocre, despite a 1st class product
Darn Skid! I think you are onto something! No wonder the CEO is so crap… Let’s see…
work hard for the shareholders adding value = salary +’options honestly earned
or
do a Sh*t job, get sacked = salary + options + truck load of severance cash & options all for doing nothing, and let the next mug do the hard work.
Yes… I can see it now! There should be a crim law against a pattern of shareholder value destructive behaviour.
Then Fred the shred would be in a jail cell too.
Seems Kromek pulled the previous link, here is the updated one, with just a small piece on the biological threat detector. Pages 12 & 13, but at least this time the idiots have put their star player on the contents page (2) and the first product listed. Marketing Director maybe found his rear with both hands.
https://www.kromek.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Kromek_Group_plc_2021_annual_report__accounts.pdf
I agree with Skid, the BoD seems to have presidential integrity. Of Afghanistan.
The developing threat to the west & world isn’t going to be a nuke, but a self perpetuating relentless virus. And apart from DARPA, everyone else is sitting on their hands.
I am certain Kromek isn’t the only company they have commissioned to do this. Defo the doziest with a weak BoD giving away assets probably giving away assets for a nice lunch.
BTW Have you voted re AGM? If not, do it.
The potential & TAM are certainly there, but from KMK’s history, the CEO’s ability to deliver anything at scale beyond his coldwar stuff seems dubious.
Could not understand why they went into ventilators when there are many other better players when they could have been focusing on the pandemic biothreat detector where there is no competition.
Mike… I agree a lot of great technology from the Brits…
But terrible at commercialising, monetising or scaling up any of that technology.
Look up Paulsboro, New Jersey-based Your Hometown Deli is the sole location for Hometown International, which has an eye-popping market value despite totaling $35,748 in sales in the last two years.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/15/theres-a-single-new-jersey-deli-doing-35000-in-sales-valued-at-100-million-in-the-stock-market.html
You need big money to research and expand, frequent placings for a paltry sum is not the way to do it, CEO thinking like a CEO and drumming up global interest and then placing a tiny amount gets him tons of cash for a team of engineers, programmers manufacturing partners etc.
An introverted boffin not well connected to money bags and media can’t take a company even with the best tech to greatness. Look at ARM, they should be AMD’s greatest rival, a UK Airbus to Intel’s ailing Boeing.
But a company with limited resources but a great CEO can turn straw into gold. Like UK’s Next or BP (under Browne).