I don't have all the facts in front of me right now but I remember before the AGM a discussion between shareholders here on HC about the share issuance. The issue was covered off by management at the AGM as well.
Over the last two days I have read posts from long time holders through to first time posters. The article imo is a wild goose chase that insinuates a lot but doesn't have enough evidence to clearly state anything.
It seems that a lot of people don't even know what they have a problem with. I saw people going from, "OMG they have an agreement with a finance company to help SME's pay for the services". Then there was, "Hugh Massie has too many shares which he holds through an investment company called 5G Capital". Then there was, "Richard Evertz had a name change". Then there was, "The auditor is too small for a business this size how can we trust them". It went from facts to speculation to NFI very quickly.
I want to say this clearly for everyone and this is entirely my own opinion, the article pointed out some facts that have already been disclosed to the market. The article compiled the information with a negative undertone. That in its self was enough to spook enough people that have not done their research into selling their shares.
The business seems too good to be true so people want to see a problem. There's only one problem that I see. The company wants to be a review platform and yet they make all their money selling videos to SME's. The mission for the company is to be the best video review platform. They have not achieved that goal yet. They are however on track and making A LOT of money getting to the end goal. Imo there's still so much more to come from this business.
Let's put some other facts on the table which so many people seem to have forgotten as soon as they read the article.
1. The company made $22.5m last quarter and growing at above 40% QoQ.
2. David Steinberg is now on the advisory board and is an absolute legend.
3. Zeta Global will support the release of the app using it's analytics platform.
4. $30m plus in the bank.
5. The company expects to gain 50k SME's in the US this calendar year.
That's just a few of the great things this business has going for it.
Now, there were a lot of people saying that a trading halt was coming yesterday or many of you believed that a trading halt should have been issued. Here's why we didn't see one. The company made an announcement the evening the article was released, the announcement was in regards to the relationship with Finstro. The announcement was marked as price sensitive. If a price sensitive announcement is released and the share price drops then the ASX will not query this therefore no trading halt is required.
As I said earlier, a lot of people got very carried away yesterday and speculation about so many different areas of the business came into question. Fear will do that. Please watch the video I have linked at the end of the post to understand what the article was trying to imply and what the response from the company was. It should help put the situation into perspective for you.
This is the biggest fear sell down I've personally experienced. I've said before that the market either over buys things or over sells things and there is no in between. Imo this has been greatly oversold without due cause.
I also heard arguments on the hold/buy side say that the AFR were paid to write the story so the price would go down allowing institutions to buy. I don't buy into that at all. The AFR want to sell subscriptions and newspapers. They have a job to do. I don't agree with the article but it certainly caused some hype and this is what they need to do to remain in business. I would say that the journalist probably deserves a bonus for getting so many views. If we see broker data next week showing that firms were buying it doesn't mean they caused the sell off. It means they took advantage of a company that is very very undervalue.
Last point, there were a lot of negative posters on HC yesterday. I don't know what theit reasons were behind their posts and frankly I don't care. I did not see any negative posts that were throughly researched and provided solid evidence that there's a problem. It was all speculation. If you are investing or trading based on HC discussions or media articles then it may be time to review your strategy.
(20min delay)