RE: Bloodbath RNS.16 Feb 2026 09:22
Shocking news. Some reassurances about customer contracts and cash in the bank but potentially more bad news to come, albeit the subsidiaries are said to be trading in line. And an unwelcome mystery surrounding the whereabouts of payments received from Croda.
It is difficult to fathom the declared confidence of the investigation team in the company's current management. It seems impossible that Ashman could have been the only director involved in this misrepresentation and I can only assume that Hunt at least will also have to resign, along with the auditors.
The best-case scenario would be that Croda revenues have merely slipped into 2026 after Ashman was led to believe that they would land in 2025. Based on the 19/11/24 RNS, the contract terms are that SBTX would be paid tiered royalties based on global sales revenues on any licensed products derived from the partnership, so we could still be waiting for royalties, albeit some early stage Croda payments were reported to be incoming before the year end.
I hope that any liabilities will only arise from the date the y/e accounts were published. Ashman may well have misrepresented the state of play when pitching the June fundraise (and again at the following IMC presentation) but the RNS's announcing both the placing and retail offer made no claims about Croda revenue and did not include any forecasts. The FY trading update on 14/8/25 again made no reference to Croda revenues although the expectation of FY revenues of Β£4.5m-Β£4.8m obviously turned out to be wide of the mark. Presumably Ashman misled his Board colleagues (and subsequently the auditors) about this but the fundraise was done and dusted by that time, with nothing in any regulated documents to indicate any intentional wrongdoing in that process. But there should obviously have been an accurate trading update before the y/e accounts were published.
Meanwhile, SBTX clearly didn't feel that these events warranted a voluntary suspension of trading and the stock exchange hasn't seen fit to impose one.
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