Nuix - A Monumental Disappointment

It’s the time of year where I, like many, do a bit of stock selling for tax purposes. As a part of this I’ve sold my Nuix shares way down (at a huge loss) to a small holding....have kept a small parcel so I can maybe one day in the distant future extract some tiny pleasure from ever owning this stock.....other than that I’ll put this down as an expensive lesson.

On reflection there were a bunch of greedy opportunists in and around this float ....inflated valuations, slippery backdated documentation creating millionaires out of thin air, the IPO hurried through while the tech sector was running white hot.....and there’s still another snout out there trying to extract $250m out of the smouldering ruins (that’s nearly a third of the market cap FFS)

What a monumental disappointment this stock has been.

The market clearly has no clue how to value it either....no one really trusts the numbers that the company has put out and every week some new story of its dodgy history finds its way into the media - so the stock is just declining bit by bit....rudderless .....from low 3’s....to high 2’s and now mid 2’s

The reason I’ve largely sold out is because of the long term damage that I think has been done. Who would proudly say they had a business relationship with Nuix ? who would proudly say they worked for them ? All the word Nuix conjures up in the business world now is greed, misinformation, incompetence and distrust.

Talk about trash your brand.

Who knows if current clients will stick with Nuix such is the stench around it - who could blame staff for deserting it for the same reason ? .....and how, in this climate, will they ‘attract and retain’ new quality staff ? This makes me question whether this 5 minute wonder is actually heading for oblivion and getting out at $2.50 is literally better than nothing.

For the sake of my remaining small holding I hope this stock gets back on its feet .....but for the above reasons I no longer want anything bar a small exposure to this company. One small glimmer of hope might be that MacBank still has skin in the game and that, together with the embarrassment this whole fiasco has caused them, might see them step in at some point. I certainly don’t think they can afford to watch it spiral to zero and a de-listing.

Good luck to all you true believers (I just ain’t one of them anymore) ....May the future be a never ending stream of rocket and diamond hand cartoons.

“Trust, once lost, could not be easily found. Not in a year, perhaps not even in a lifetime”

J.E.B. Spredemann