Member Info for shychap

Kitchentowel, the SP is irrelevant to most of the complaints about our directors. However much it rises, it would have been much higher with an effective BoD.

You need a smarter bot – one which knows that Ashman and Hunt removed the AGM resolutions to re-elect them and hence guaranteed themselves an extension of their overpaid term of office. And they only deleted the resolutions after they had seen a week's voting on the original re-election resolutions, which presumably didn't look good for them.

If their days weren't numbered beforehand, they are now. Directors who seek to avoid accountability to shareholders don't last long.

Kitchentowel, most shareholders aren't aware of the board's failings. All shareholders will become aware via an EGM when these failings will have to be spelled out in an RNS statement which won't be written by Ashman & Co.

…And yet the SP is around 50% lower than in April, despite the news of the Superdrug deal, confirmation of higher than expected revenues from Croda and a new shareholder scooping up 39m shares on the open market. We would surely have been pushing 40p by now if we had an effective board of directors instead of a dishonourable bunch of evasive, self-serving amateurs who are too scared to put themselves up for re-election.

I'll be turning over a new leaf when SBTX cleans up its corporate governance, becomes accountable to shareholders, communicates transparently, answers questions and stops behaving like a spoilt child. Until then, I will continue to lobby for new brooms. Unless Ashman & Co have an epiphany tomorrow, I want an EGM.

"your time here is over."

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This forum isn't restricted to shareholders.

No delusions here, kitchentowel. SBTX allegedly received a material amount of excess revenue (approx 25% of the entire year's forecast in addition to whatever revenue had been forecast for Q1) in the first few weeks of Q1 and should have disclosed it – not least because they had previously revised the FY25 forecast down to adjust for the missing revenue in Q4.

Kitchentowel, presumably you don't know either. Ashman telling you a figure isn't reliable, as most PIs know by now. And anyway, proper management would have saved any expense.

As for Ashman's "slight miss", he said the missing revenue came in during the first six weeks of Q1, ie by mid-August. It was a material amount (around £1.5m) and should have forced a trading update without delay. Then, they need to explain why the twice-stated FY25 forecast is only c.£1.5m higher than FY25 actual given that all of that revenue boost came in Q1.

Kitchentowel, the reasons no-one is going to the AGM are nothing to do with me. They appear to have been put off by a) the AGM falling in the middle of a family festive holiday; b) the AGM venue being in the middle of nowhere; and c) the AGM agenda being stripped of all interest in a late rewrite this month.

The fact that no-one can get there doesn't make the problems disappear.

And an EGM will cost us too. Like the other complaints (I assume mainly from TW), good governance would have saved the lawyers' bills. Blaming PIs for filing complaints when the company messes up and then refuses to engage is misleading.

Kitchentowel, the "cracking start" is a vague, temporary and unofficial thing. The 2025 revenue miss is precise, permanent and now official following the publication of the FY results. If it's OK with you, I choose to attach greater importance to the latter since it needs further explanation.

And I attach even greater importance to the company's frequent governance mis-steps – which you are entitled to attach no importance to. But you aren't entitled to attempt to shut down discussion of any valid topic simply because it doesn't interest you.

I'm still searching for someone - anyone - who genuinely is going to the AGM.

All I ever see from you, PGlancy, is hot air, trouble-stirring and no substance. So I don't think I'll be missing much by filtering you.

I don't do riddles, PGlancy. If you have something to say, spit it out.

If this life sciences executive salary guide is accurate then Ashman is overpaid and the remuneration committee is aiding and abetting. And he isn't even doing his job properly. https://www.hyperec.com/blog/life-sciences-ceo-job-profile-salary/

All that said, Ashman is obviously right to be angry if one or two PIs has contacted senior Croda management for sales information. Whoever did that was misguided and reckless but it could only have been a tiny minority of PIs and Ashman is behaving like a schoolkid if he hides behind that as an excuse for shutting down the IR function for much of 2025.

And I also sympathise if he has received too many enquiries/complaints about the opacity of the Croda deal. Mature shareholders won't have done that because he made it clear at the outset that, due to the NDA, no royalty information would be available until the FY results. I have never contacted him about Croda, only about legitimate matters which he was free to respond to but chose not to.

That said, he invited trouble when inadvisedly promising PIs that he would release some Croda royalty information on June 30. He claimed afterwards that he had wrongly assumed that the Croda NDA would have been lifted by then – but in hindsight, it looks like an improper attempt to support the SP to help get the £4.2m fundraise away.

And even though he doubtless received too many unanswerable Croda questions to deal with, he should simply have set up a polite bot auto-response to leave him plenty of time to deal with answerable questions.

At the Lemming Q&A, Ashman also copied the well-worn shiny CEO trick of accusing disgruntled investors of not being "genuine shareholders" and spreading "spurious allegations". Of course, he knows for certain that the many shareholders who have tried - and failed - to get answers from him to legitimate enquiries/complaints over the past year are bona fide members of the company. And he picked on Bazzaman simply because Bazzaman's frustration has turned him into an annoying parrot on this BB. But really it was because Bazzaman was the first to out Ashman for his misdemeanours.

Ashman also said, risibly, that the AGM was "very easy to get to".

And he showed his naiveté by trying to explain that a hybrid AGM wasn't an option because it wouldn't allow verification of online participants. He is either lying or blissfully ignorant of the many PLCs which convene hybrid AGMs without any such issues.

For the record, Ashman also said that he "couldn't be happier" with the performance of the subsidiaries which had reported only "a slight miss". He's in a very small club in that case.

"Mr Ashman has "promised" to ask the regulators if he can move the date of the AGM to something more suitable"

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Yes jansy - and did you hear him say/lie in the Lemming Q&A that no-one had ever complained before about the timing or location of the AGM? I wasn't invested earlier but I have copies of my emails to him a year ago asking for the date and venue to be changed so that people could get to it.

Yes, mol42, much bigger, more complex and multinational companies can manage to get their books audited within three months of the year end. Ashman & Co must be deliberately slowing the process down because it suits them to hold the AGM over Xmas when no-one can attend. If they dare to blame the auditor, sack them and find a proper auditor.

My reply to Emily Bertram:

"Dear Ms Bertram,

Thank you for your email and seasonal wishes.

I need to point out that by refusing to put the chairman up for re-election at this AGM when he has already exceeded nine years in post, you will force disgruntled shareholders to convene an EGM in order to accomplish what the company failed to do. I trust that there will be no complaints from the Board about this avoidable expense.

Sadly, I have just received news which makes it unlikely that I will be able to attend the AGM. I have therefore cast my votes on the resolutions via CREST and will appoint a proxy to represent me in all other matters and any additional votes if that is in order.

To that end, could you please tell me if the chairman will read out, and answer, my four Questions in Advance or whether I need to instruct my proxy to ask them from the floor?"