I do not think the SP has been or would have been pushed down by the company in any way. Apart from the fact that there would have to be disclosures if that happened, as was the case in the past, e.g. selling by Ian Dennis for legitimate reasons, the idea does not really hold water in the larger picture. Why antagonise your existing investor base needlessly?
Case in point: Weebit (WBT) just raised $26m from a major investor to accelerate its planned growth, alongside a simultaneous offer to current holders. The SP not only did not fall when the company raised such a substantial cash injection it seems to have gone up. The market and the investor base all saw this as a good idea. And there are quite a few similarities between the two companies and their stages of progress. AP is likely to need a similar cash injection soon and for simile reasons, so why would it encourage doubt in its own future? It makes no sense.
I would be more inclined to think the SP has tanked because it has been manipulated down by parties who want to buy in at their last opportunity to do so before the likelihood of positive announcements in the near future. Part of that push to gut the SP is typically the appearance of knockers, who, for whatever their motive, are doing their desperate best to discredit everything they can about the company. As an observer of the market around this stock this pattern has been repeated at this same stage more than once in the past. There is always a new poster with a new disposable identity that shows up to undermine confidence, and always it is done without any facts to back up any of the insinuations and assertions made. Go back and check HC's archives if you want to follow what happens.
Once we get a significant announcement we should expect a significant bounce back to all time highs and beyond. We know that the SP has risen to ~$30 and higher when there was serious expectation of a finished product ready for demo and industry approval. There is no reason to not expect that SP to be reached and exceeded again.
But this time there is likely to be a lot more meat on the bones in terms of details of performance and specs of an actual finished product.
The day the technology can be unequivocally shown to meet and exceed the hype everyone has latched onto, the product will be seen to be largely de-risked, and ceases to be a "speculative tech future", and immediately becomes an innovative development reality, right at the start of its exponential growth curve, right at the point that it is set to hit the market. That, shall we say, changes everything. From that point onwards the SP is likely to rise to wherever the market rates the sales and revenue potential the product will bring to the company.
Even though it will be early days on that pathway, the likelihood of the product realising that hype suddenly changes the investment thesis. AP becomes the company that sells its customers on the product's "sizzle", then places orders on its supplier chain to fabricate and package its chips, and sends them off to its customers, while on the way collecting the cash and paying its suppliers, while pocketing a heap of profits, and few overhead costs. This "clipping the ticket" model is a pretty good business model to have. It will allow the company to expand and diversify its supplier base at the same time that it expands its customer base, and this will continue until it reaches the full penetration of that whole market's potential. Nice!
Once again of course, this is allconjecture on my part, my own opinion and investment thesis, and of course I could be completely wrong, and those carping worm tongues could be right after all: its all a dirty rotten scam aimed at defrauding ordinary punters on the ASX. It's your money they're all after, after all, so DYOR! And GLTAH.
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