Hello, Share Scrapers. Fairly recently I commended Pets at Home (PETS) to you. Allow me to feature another company which could benefit from the current boom in pet ownership. CVS Group (CVSG) is a company which does veterinary services for creatures great and small, including horses. It also has some other interesting animal sidelines.

I deal with Skinbiotherapeutics (SBTX) first.  Then it is onto Yourgene (YGEN) and its trading statement, Eurasia (EUA) and a two year farce and finally the bid for Arden (ARDN) by Ince Group (INCE) and what to make of it all. I feel uncomfortable for reasons I explain.

Yesterday I flagged up how reviews from folks like Alpha FX (AFX) news spinner/turd polisher Josh Royston of Alma PR kept damning customer reviews slating the company off the top slot on google. Now let’s look at the glassdoor reviews which is a site where folks go to see how current and former employees go to say what it is like working at a company. What we see looks extraordinarily odd.

Like the complete weirdo I am, I do like doing a bit of sector research now and again. I do find it strange that whilst fundamental caution towards fixed income markets still makes a lot of sense, technical (rather than fundamental) bullishness for equity markets seems to have become more important. Typically active management and fundamental investment rationales are akin to one another, as is passive management and technical investment preferences. And then I read that more investors now believe that the S&P 500 – by the end of the year – will not only hit a number of all-time highs above the level achieved in 2017 (62 all-time highs) but also the all-time high of 77 achieved in 1995. No doubt too many of such people are overly excited by Tesla’s market cap reaching $1 trillion and tripling this (or more!) by the end of the decade. As if. Anyhow, back onto stocks I really care about. Three names my pension fund owns have reported today and – very nicely – all are doing rather well (and I think there is more to come).

Iconic (ICON) shares have been suspended since 7 June 2021 due to the appointment of administrators by Toxic Dave Sefton on 4 June 2021.  The joint administrators have tried to hold a general meeting four times but each they have been adjourned with the latest adjournment being until 19 October 2021.  There has been no announcement since that date.

I cannot help but notice that shares in AIM-listed John Zorbas vehicle URU Metals (URU) have crashed by 19% thus far today, on no news. Having called it a sell at 405p in August, a sell at  320p in September and a sell at 270p earlier this month, the stock is now down to 190p. Of course, it is still a sell but perhaps it is time for an early Ouzo as the shares have now more than halved.

AIM-listed jam-tomorrow IoT investment company Tern plc (TERN) has released a portfolio update this morning. Naturally the BBMs are pleased as punch but I fear that, once again, the company has borrowed the Adam Reynolds (who, for the avoidance of doubt, has nothing to do with Tern) keyboard, for there are no meaningful numbers to be found – and the few included are pitiful.

A trading update announcement from ‘celebrations, craft, gifting, stationery and creative play products’ group IG Design (IGR) commences that it “has delivered a good revenue performance in the first half of the financial year with like-for-like revenue up 11% on the prior year, and up 5% on proforma revenues (including CSS prior to ownership) for the six months to 30 September 2019”. So why are the shares, currently at around 300p, more than 30% lower in response?…

Tintra (TNT) continues to pump out new RNS announcements. Some are bollocks and a spoof, but one vindicates a major thrust of my attack on this POS.

Recommending last month shares in developer and manufacturer of touch sensors for use with electronic displays in industrial, self-service and public access equipment, Zytronic (ZYT) at a 175p offer price we noted expected performance ahead of expectations and further potential in a faster return towards previous levels of trading.

Since, a few weeks ago, Matt Earl launched his first bear dossier on Civitas Social Housing (CSH) its shares have fallen by 25% to 91p. The company did issue a response to the first dossier published by the bear raider known as “the Dark Destroyer”.

Hello, Share Scratchers. It’s likely many green shares will be boosted in the glare of the imminent global warming shindig in Glasgow. So it’s a good time to review Biome Technologies’ (BIOM) bioplastics division. This company makes plastic substitutes from plants, cutting out the carbon element. One of its promising products is throwaway coffee cups which biodegrade. But let’s look at another exciting avenue for the company.

In today’s Bearcast, I look at Skinbiotherapeutics (SBTX), Optibiotix (OPTI), Kefi (KEFI), Nightcap (NGHT), VAST Resources (VAST) and finally at my old pal Richard Poulden’s Valereum Blockchain (VLRM), the current love interest of Big Dave Lenigas. 

Reading the top few reviews for Alpha FX (AFX) on Google one is struck by how its customers really do not seem to like it. Luckily to push the bad customer reviews down the pile and make themless read there are newer ones not from customers. Top of the pile, as you can see below, is Josh Royston who just happens to be an employee of Alma PR which is paid to spin for Alpha. Indeed Josh is the Alpha account manager at Alma.  Odd that.

A trading update from marine service provider James Fisher & Sons (FSJ) includes that “revenue in the quarter ended 30 September 2021 was 7.6% higher than Q3 2020 and 8.7% higher than Q2 of 2021… The board now anticipates Underlying Operating Profit for the full year, before separately disclosed items, to be in the range of £27m – £32m”. So why are the shares currently, at around 530p, more than 30% lower?…

Today, Vast Resources (VAST) served up its usual fare of bad news: project delays, financing set backs and death spirals ahoy. All the usual bad news but enough to send the shares crashing below 4p. And it was only two months ago when the company’s third rate joint broker Axis Capital raised it £1.76 million at 6.3p. Ouch. The shares were almost 5.5p last Monday but fell throughout the week to close Friday at 4.2p.

Aquis lobster-pot listed Rutherford Health (RUTH) has announced yet another delay in its acquisition of Proton Partners International Health Care Investments LLC, UAE. The deal, originally announced on 31 August 2021 – along with a placing which is also delayed – was due to complete 21 days on from a share swap deed dated 28 August. Then it was 11 October 2021. Now it is 16 November and the ShareProphets bookies are offering generous odds on yet another extension after that.

I remember – about 25 years ago – that my first boss told me a story concerning a previous contact of his who had bought shares in HSBC (HSBA) many years beforehand and it had provided a fantastic total return profile for the next few decades. Such is the attraction of thinking a bit like Warren Buffett and spotting an idea that is set to continue to perform well for the next thirty or forty years – and holding on. However, hindsight is easy to quote but harder to achieve. And whilst I have my own list of names I anticipate my pension fund is unlikely to sell its holding in during the rest of the 2020s, unsurprisingly this list does not include HSBC which I dumped about 4 years ago (at an akin share price I had purchased the stock at about 4 years earlier). The ‘Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited’ is a flash name, but despite the rise and rise of Asia over recent decades, any HSBC shareholder will be aware that the shares peaked in the year 2000.

Faced with a plunging share price since the “oversubscribed” placing and founder shareholder stock dump in May, what does Dragon’s Den “star” Sarah Willingham do for her NightCap (NGHT) baby.  First: panic. Second put out out a rushed trading statement with old news and missing out critical numbers.

I noted on Friday that the I shares from the alphabet soup that is Edge Performance VCT (EDGH for news, EDGI for the shares) are going to be wound up and sent off to the great share repository in the sky. This is after I shareholders got an 8.5p dividend with roughly another 3.5p to come following the disposal of Coolabi via a takeover on an enterprise value of £35 million. But I fancy I shareholders will be bitterly disappointed, given that they lost over half of their money over a nine-year period. A look at what happened with Coolabi may begin to explain why.