Member Info for shychap

Https://www.lse.co.uk/news/uk-construction-optimism-hits-lowest-in-two-and-a-half-years-pmi-rnhy3n2a73su55d.html

"You are making the same points I articulated as though we are polar opposites"

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No, I was disagreeing with your punchline that the psychological damage inflicted on long-term investors is difficult to reverse. It can easily be reversed at the AGM if our BoD haven't had an epiphany before then.

Obsisian, don't get confused. I'm sure that most PIs are optimistic about the future of SBTX. They simply don't like being treated like idiots by a CEO who should know better. Keeping us in the dark, misleading us, lying to us, diluting us without forecasting any ROI, not responding to bona fide questions, etc certainly affects sentiment – but the fundamentals don't change. And the cure is simple enough, come the AGM, if our chairman and CEO don't change their ways dramatically.

Curious timing for this press release which is their first public statement to credit Skinbiotherapeutics. I assumed it was a pot-boiler of a press release amongst a raft of others this year, but it isn't. Considering the broad scope of their business and the constant product development, they have issued very few press releases (this is the first in a couple of months and most are corporate/personnel announcements).

Coincidentally perhaps, their SP was strongly up today, as was Skin's.

My spin, FWIW, is that Croda have now publicly nailed their colours to the Zenakine mast – but only after they satisfied themselves that it was going to be a winner. This was a press release they didn't need to issue, which makes it all the more significant for me.

"I do believe the house broker is selling down the stock of a major client."

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That can happen - and for a variety of reasons. But given that DB recently upped his stake, I doubt that any of our established IIs are dumping. I also think it's unlikely that any of the 20m+ new 17p shares are being dumped at 14p – at least not unless the subscriber forward sold at 20p+ in order to acquire them. SOH may be selling – he usually is – but his disposals are forced and not dictated by the SBTX share price or insider knowledge (as he demonstrated last year by selling at 12p).

If it _is_ all down to Zenakine, then we might as well dump the rest, make most of the employees redundant and revert being a private company because SBTX is Croda's passenger going forward. But would any decent CEO with such an IP portfolio do that? Would shareholders vote for it?

I don't think so. SBTX has only scratched the surface of what is possible. And contracts with two blue chip customers already proves what a goldmine the IP could be. Ashman hasn't had the cash to properly explore the other pillars or to build on the assume success of Zenakine; so when he has the resources to expand, he should do so as quickly as possible – leaving shareholders without dividends in the short/medium term.

Whether he is the right man to take the company forward is highly debatable. Until he started misleading us since April with false promises, a sudden/bloated/opaque placing and mis-stated trading updates, I think he had performed well. He had the vision of an entrepreneur and the apparent skillset to monetise our IP. But, wound care aside, he may not know enough about the target markets which will want our IP. And many shareholders now perceive him to be untrustworthy and an adversary instead of an ally, which certainly cannot continue.

Until the June 30 nonsense, I had been very happy to know nothing about Zenakine sales until the end of 2025, since that is what Ashman originally prepared shareholders for. So notwithstanding his various communications missteps this year, some shareholders will still support him if he delivers transparent year-end results, starts communicating honestly and ponies up for a decent chunk of shares. If that all happens before the end of 2025, I might not try to vote him out at the AGM. If it doesn't, I will be among many trying to oust him.

But my shares are not for sale.

Toyin, I'm not disagreeing with you either. The excuse SA trotted out in his last Q&A for bypassing existing IIs was that there wasn't sufficient time to arrange a conventional placing with a roadshow. And it isn't clear to me either why existing IIs would be unable to move as quickly as the subscribers he did find. He also said during that Q&A that he had tapped into IIs who had previously told him to contact them if he needed cash – which suggests that were, after all, existing shareholders. But dishing out 20m+ new shares to existing shareholders surely must have taken some of them over a notifiable threshold… All very confusing, and suspicious. It's also possible that some of the IIs on your list may have been given the opportunity to dump a few million shares at 18p and higher, replacing them with exactly the same number of 17p shares in the placing. Not that any of them would fess up to that unless the information is buried deep in their fund reports.

Toyin, I understood SA to say that he had to bypass existing SBTX IIs because they wouldn't have been able to move fast enough. Certainly, the one II on that list I have spoken to was annoyed at being made a passive bystander. Therefore, I assumed that all the subscribers were new investors possibly introduced by Singer. There are plenty of institutional investors who aren't on the SBTX share register. And possibly SA was misdescribing some HNW individuals as IIs…

It's possible to distribute 20m+ shares to five subscribers (presumably excluding DB) without triggering a TR1 – especially if some were given the opportunity to forward sell at high prices. But to raise that much cash without any projection of ROI is a nonsense. Where is the investment case to justify diluting shareholders by 10% out of the blue?

At least one longstanding II is no wiser than I am and shares my frustration.

For Janet Atkins at least…

https://www.pressreader.com/uk/daily-mail/20250819/282209426949198?srsltid=AfmBOopKVH3wHm65h_prAQL12Np49xpkW7VTUSrM6lYEzcpKRABeOr4c

Top of my cleansing list would be a clear statement justifying the £4.2m equity raise and 10% dilution in terms of return on investment.

It is simply not good enough to sign an NDA with a new customer and proceed to raise that amount of cash without explaining to shareholders why the new investment is proportionate and justified.

The resulting dilution and subsequent fall in the share price amount to daylight robbery unless we are told the business case which justifies this shafting.

From 2024 Annual report (2023 was similar):

"IFRS 8 ‘Operating Segments’ requires operating segments to be determined based on The Group’s internal reporting to the Chief Operating Decision Maker. The Chief Operating Decision Maker has been determined to be The Board of Directors which receives information on the basis of the Group’s operations in key geographical territories, based on the Group’s management and internal reporting structure. Based on this assessment the Group consider there to be 4 operating segments. Despite there being 4 operating segments, it is not currently feasible to allocate assets and liabilities to the operating segments. As these operating segments grow, we expect that allocation of assets and liabilities will be possible. Administrative expenses are not segmented for accounting purposes as the Board do not review these by segment currently."

Https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/6l8rlpl76v1ygggrdfslx/LSE-SBTX-SCROLL.mov?rlkey=7gsil5u9vkhifnc97drqg5kj3&dl=0

Good luck to day traders. OPTI is a bargepole for me.

One way or another, we have been blagged by Ashman. Whether that was for sinister reasons such as to artificially inflate the share price/help get the £4m placing away or because he's a naturally over-optimistic, over-promising, over-confident PT Barnum showman is hard to say but it's like he knew what he was doing as most of the blagging was kept well away from regulated news announcements. The story here is plenty good enough to stand on merit without leading PIs astray; but opacity, obfuscation and deception seem to be in his DNA which is why I now think he should be replaced.

(Part 2)

"Finally, Mr Ashman admitted in the Superdrug investor presentation on 3/7/25 that several SBTX institutional investors were very unhappy with him over the smash-and-grab £4m raise which by-passed them. Retail investors were also angry that valued and longstanding major investors had been marginalised in a rushed 10% dilutive equity raise – which saw over 24m new shares issued to just five subscribers (according to Mr Ashman) and yet only one TR1, leaving over 20m shares unaccounted for.

"Unhappy with his style of management, his unreliable/misleading communications, his naiveté, his corporate governance failings, his inaccurate forecasts, his lack of accountability to shareholders, his very substantial remuneration package and his lack of skin in the game, tens of millions of retail shares will be voting against his re-election at the AGM in December and I wonder if they might be able to count on your support?"

If one or two IIs share the sentiment and lend their vote, then the letter was worth sending. If it merely results in nil support from the IIs, then that knowledge is useful too. Pay coin to follow the story if you like, but heres the letter - in two parts:

"Dear xxxxx,

"I am one of a growing number of retail shareholders in Skinbiotherapeutics Plc who believe that CEO, Stuart Ashman has misled them – and the market – by failing to issue a timely Trading Update by the end of June when it must have been clear to the Board that FY25 revenues would fall materially short of the prevailing market expectation. It also seems likely that the approx £4m net placing and retail offer on 16/6/25 breached corporate governance guidelines by neglecting to declare that FY25 revenues were by then falling materially short of the prevailing guidance.

"The company’s revenue guidance for FY25 was £5.3m (excluding Croda) being the aggregate of £2.9m for Dermatonics, £2.0m for BTS and £0.4m for AxisBiotix – as stated in the FY24 Annual Report and the HY25 Results and restated in the Cavendish broker notes of 26/3/25 and 9/4/25 and reiterated by Stuart Ashman on a number of occasions in media interviews and IMC investor presentations – including the 3/7/25 presentation after the year end wherein Stuart Ashman still talks about FY25 revenues being “north of £5m” when he already knew that they had fallen well short of that figure. This is not acceptable and has already been reported to the regulators.

"We also heard Mr Ashman’s feigned indignation at the Singer initiation note of 7/7/25 wherein the new house broker shocked retail investors by estimating FY25 revenue at only £5.1m apparently including guesstimated Croda revenues. Mr Ashman told the reporter in that interview that he would get the note corrected and reissued – which of course, didn’t happen.

"Worse, the Trading Update of 14/8/25 further downgraded the FY25 revenue estimate to £4.5-£4.8m, shrinking the house broker’s estimate of just one month earlier (which was already £200k plus Croda revenues short of the company’s oft-reiterated forecast) by a further 10% or thereabouts.

"Mr Ashman may want to blame his previous CFO for the shortfall but the new COO and accounting team were already in place when he spoke of revenues “north of £5m” in the 3/7/25 investor presentation. He may alternatively seek to blame it on late orders for Dermatonics and BTS but their trading patterns were already known to him and prior forecasts should have taken that possibiity into account.

"He also promised retail investors that he would announce Croda revenues on or before 30/6/25 – causing some to buy shares and others not to sell. Instead, the RNS on that date stated only that Croda commercialisation was progressing as expected. Assuming that Croda vetoed this announcement, as claimed by Mr Ashman, it was naive of him to have promised it in the first place." (Part 2 follows.)

He is a director of two very small companies/startups. He may be short of cash - always a good reason to sell shares (if he has). Not that £20k will help for long…

"peeps are paying to receive accurate company information before it is shared to all"

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A lot of it turns out to be BS, ie not accurate. But if people want to spend money to hear Ashman misleading them, that's their choice. (I'm aware that there is plenty else on offer for the coin though.)

Thanks AquaeSulis01. So both products are being launched together – but presumably Axis-ac will be in the same powder sachet as Axis-ps? Of course, they may be redesigning the whole range but I would have thought they wouldn't want to invest too much in powder sachet production capability if its days are numbered…and your quote acknowledges that a capsule/gummy formulation may come in the longer term. Since they have been investigating these alternative formulations for several years, without success, may it not be safer to assume that they won't materialise?

The quote also implies that in-house production is a long-term intention, assuming that encapsulation can be made to work. My understanding is that powder is still the only way to deliver the bacteria live to the gut.

Given all the unknowns (including the trial nature of the deal), I assume/hope that Ashman won't be investing £4m now on setting up production lines which may not be needed now, or ever. Hence, I would be interested in AI's numbers working forward rather than backwards from a £4m spend.