Coit, A lot of what you say is true. But here is my long winded...

Coit,

A lot of what you say is true. But here is my long winded answer to your question why I am willing to defend DM.

I guess the difference between where my head space is and yours is that I have accepted the failure that OHM was, and DM was only partly at fault. As well as OHM failing a lot of the small cap market hype from 2016-18 failed. I was a major shareholder in Quantify, Flamingo, Search party, CV check, Edencrete and and other failures. Over the years I have met and got to know say 100 CEOs. They all have a story to sell. Especially in the mining and tech species.
Without Lifx, Bud would be like the others. Of all the CEOs I have got to know, I have never met one like Dave McLauchlan. He has made mistakes, releasing information that he was lead to believe to be accurate. Whether that was pressure from brokers, ASX rules or investors, or whether it was naivety or a combination of both. WRT OHM, Ingram micro global head did tell him " they wouldn't shelve a product they couldn't sell 10,000 of." I was at that presentation. Digicel CEO presented an amazing future for OHM in the Caribbean and then the entire coy went into admin. Dicker data CEO promised to install OHM in every building. I met with him in Sydney. Rizon said the same. And the list goes on and on. They had school, unis, stadiums, theaters all lined up. I too got hooked up with the potential revenues. It all failed and the SH*T landed on DM. The product failed to be what the market required. Its a very common occurrence. Lesson learnt.

Now we have LIFX with OHM running smalls in the background. Its a great product(s) with huge demand, but also supply issues. The purchase of an $80m coy by a failing specie was seen at outrageous. Market was not prepared to raise the required amount at 8c. (Unfortunately I doubled down here at 8c.) So vendor finance was the ugly sister alternative.
After the acquisition, the real sh*t show started. The Chinese manufacturer had cooked the books, it wasn't growing 70-100% as I was informed, and the retail deals were contracted loss makers. Some will say that is very bad DD. YES, CFO again at fault, IMHO. We all know the story from there. DM worked hard to refinance from a position of weakness. EBITDA -ve and trying to get finance isn't that easy. It took 18 months. SP reflected the uncertainty. Eventually he did it and it was all looking great for $60m-$80m revenue this year and the SP rocketed from 0.6c to 10c. Then a major accounting error and a global chip shortage hit. Neither his direct fault, IMHO.
DM could easily said, this is too hard, put it into admin and moved on to the next thing. Like many other CEOs I have met. He was earning $600kusd a year at Microsoft and could easily get paid that again instead he currently earns $250kusd ( frozen for the last 4 months at his own request ). (The shares he owns he invested money into the company before it listed, and since then he has bought every share in cap raises. He is yet to receive a share for the work he has done. Those performance shares you are speaking about, Dave voluntarily gave back to the company to vest back to him again). But no. He dug in deep. He had all his wealth invested in BUD from 2010. Also had friends and family long stock to the eyeballs. As a side, a lot of people talk about the sale at 20c. He did not personally financially benefit from that. I understand that the entire amount went in back taxes from 2010 to 2016 and to settle with an ex partner. I bought a large percentage of that sale, as I was still believing what I was hearing from the distributers and resellers that continued to be signed up. I thought of the amount older commercial buildings, unis, schools, hotels, in Aust, Mexico, Spain, Brazil, USA, UK, Europe, etc etc etc all paying $750 per month to monitor their water, gas, electricity and steam all on one platform. Anyway, I digress.

Now we are back trading at 2.5 c again. More dilution to get the company back on track. New investors are very fortunate. I know, I wish I was starting from here. Debt with EF has been removed, working capital is in place, supply has been addressed, Sales channels are strongly in place, every light is sold at a profit. All the changes made by DM have the company now position for revenue growth and profits in the not to distant future.
This is the view of the T20 that all know him well. They will not be removing him. There are very few CEOs that command such respect from investor with such a shaded history, but the T20 believe he will finally get this train in full motion.

Hope this someway helps those of you who are hurting with the rest of us T20.

HOLDTIGHT.