4DS - Anything but Charting, page-19530

The current situation can be summed up in one line : "Trust in the board has completely evaporated." Whether or not this is rational is irrelevant.

Trust was the only thing that allowed the board to continue keeping shareholders placated (aka funding capital raises) while being kept in the dark.

This is why director selling was so damaging - it began to erode trust. Further announcements have only accelerated the decline of trust.



It will be interesting to see if board make any attempt to use AGM to start rebuilding trust. The deck seems stacked against success :

• Dave doesn't seem to be the humble pie eating guy
• 99% of questions asked will be negative - some quite "personal". Against votes will be historically high.
• Very likely the really important questions will either not be selected (too difficult) or will be answered with we cannot answer - NDA agreements , risk of upsetting partners etc. This will exacerbate anger. Probing, follow up questions will be limited given format.
• Any sign of business as usual approach (ie Dave/Howard talking out their a@#e) will likely see mental explosions & laptops damaged across the virtual audience.

Here is some free advice for board (in case Dave/Howard is on HC today) for actions prior to meeting:

• FFS get in front of the situation : another 3 weeks of building anger will only worsen the situation. Show your faces. Friendly interviews ie video with tech journalist (not business journalist) would be a start.
• Time for mea culpa - Letter to shareholders - probably best delivered by chairman.
• Commit to doing better (quarterly Q&A's would be a start) & start to demonstrate it.
• Convert options (dont buy shares or it will look like you have purposefully driven down price). Get more skin in game.
• Release answers to tough questions prior to meeting. Allow meeting to focus on future plans rather than the cluster f#ck of second half of 2021.

To summarise "business as usual" only works if "business is usual". Trust is gone. Change is required.