Back in November of last year the CEO of Cake Box (CBOX) sold 3 million shares at 350p to mug fund managers. That means that over the past two years he has trousered £16.4 million at 170p and 350p. Lucky him. The company, which I have called out for months as a slam dunk car crash waiting to happen, has recently served up a horrific profit warning and its shares touched 90p. But then the CEO invested £250,000 at 121p and hey presto the shares are now 142p – more than halfway back to the pre-warning 180p level. This is absurd.

In today's bearcast I look in detail at Cake Box (CBOX), nanosynth (NNN) and Skinbiotherapeutics (SBTX). 

Lucian Miers may have become a big fan of Cake Box’s (CBOX) egg-free mega calorie cream cakes but it seems that others are taking a different view. You have been repeatedly warned that this was a disaster in waiting and today there is a catastrophic profits warning and it is only going to get worse. How jolly glad the CEO and his Mrs who sold 3 million shares at 350 to poor dumb sheeple fund managers last November and 3.75 million 170p in September 2020 will be to have banked £16.88 million as the shares are now just 98p. And things will get worse.

We're halfway through the year, and that gives us a little time to reflect back on the most-listened-to Bearcasts of this past six months. 

I start with my wonderful son, Joshua, losing every race at Sports Day with bravery and humour. Then, onto UK Network Agency; Innovation Agri-Tech; Eden Pharma; the wretched FCA's failure on £65 million fraud, Appbox Media/One True View; Ocado (OCDO); Morses Club (MCL); Cake Box (CBOX) - where Steve is wrong; Verditek (VDTK); and Shield Therapeutics (STX).

I discuss those threats and at a company level I add commentary on Nightcap (NGHT), Cake Box (CBOX) Chill Brands (CHLL), Cellular Goods (CBX) and Supply@ME Capital (SYME)

Following, in January, excellent analysis noting accounting issues by Maynard Paton and added to by Tom Winnifrith on this website, Cake Box Holdings (CBOX) played it down as “commentary from a retail investor blogger”. Now “Management Changes and Trading Update”…

I want to be 100% transparent with you so I explain why, as of 8 AM today, Peter is no longer a member of this parish after apologising for yesterday’s poor sound quality for which there was a good reason. I look at two shocking economic statistics and what they mean. I then cover: SkinBiotherapeutics (SBTX), Bluebird Merchant Ventures (BMV),  AEX Gold (AEXG), Novacyt (NCYT), Avacta (AVCT) and Cake Box (CBOX). 

These are the most-read articles and most listened-to Bearcasts of the week. The most-read non-Tom is Eurasia Mining: It’s Time to Fess Up and Tell the Truth SP Angel! by Evil Banksta at Number 8 ornumber 15 including bearcasts.

A late and short bearcast. I have been distracted by news coming out about historic incidents at my old school Warwick. It is all very disturbing. In the podcast I look at Cake Box (CBOX), Amur Minerals (AMC), Novacyt (NCYT), Verditek (VDTK) and Red Rock Resources (RRR) where Andrew Bell has somemore explaining to do to we long suffering shareholders.

Today we were told that the COO of Cake Box (CBOX) had bought £50,000 of shares yesterday. Compared to the £10.5 million dump by his boss in November it is peanuts. Showing rather poor form, Dr Jaswir Singh made the purchase BEFORE rather than AFTER the company put out a weedy and patronising RNS trying to refute the bear case as explained HERE on Sunday.  Surely the good Dr was aware that a refutation was coming and thus had price sensitive information? While Dr Singh was dealing like a dervish, Lucian Miers went to visit the franchise stores in Eastleigh and Southampton. The photo below is from Eastleigh.

This podcast contains reference to various chats with Lucian on the markets, millennials and on Cake Box (CBOX) after yesterday’s bearcast & the Maynard Paton expose. I discuss what Trustpilot says about the company HERE and Lucian’s road trip to do more due diligence. Re Lucian I also discuss other big blowups that will happen this year and bitcoin. Then there is Amigo (AMGO), Chill Brands (TOAST), MyHealthchecked (MHC), Novacyt (NYCT) and Argo Blockchain (ARB) in light of today’s NFT nonsense but also the collapsing bitcoin price.

I start with a few words on Oxford Cannabinoid (OCTP). I have not said fill your boots nor should you. The issue here is management allegedly lining their own pockets ahead of corporate action which they know all about. One should not buy shares in such companies. Then I reflect on an excellent piece by Maynard Paton on Cake Box (CBOX) which you can read HERE. I comment on some of the excellent points he makes but add in half a dozen of my own, notably comparing boasted net cash and net interest costs but also the shameful CEO pump and dump and the macro headwind given the demographic of its end user base. This is probably not another Patisserie Valerie but at 320p it is a stonking short.

Almost 13 months ago I observed about Cake Box (CBOX) that ‘all I have to do to complete my due diligence is…eat one of its cakes’. For a couple of reasons it did not happen, but the shares are up 4% today and up by more than 120% during the last year. That is far from shabby! But how do I feel now about the ‘Eggfree Cake’ company, where ‘having an egg free, fresh cream, celebration cake is as easy as 1,2… that’s it’?

Cake Box (CBOX) describes itself as a ‘specialist retailer of fresh cream cakes’ and has a store a few miles from where I live…not that I have troubled its doors. Whilst the company has traded positively since its 2018 IPO, the stock has had its issues above and beyond the high profile failure at Patisserie Valerie…

Newly-listed firm Cake Box (CBOX) has been making headlines, as its share price rocketed over 40% in the space of a few days since the company’s IPO last week. Meanwhile, speculation continues to mount over the specifics regarding Aston Martin’s expected IPO later in the year. With new listings making the news, we take a look this week at broker and tipster stances towards firms following their admission to the London Stock Exchange. Using IPO data going back to the beginning of 2015, we retrieved broker and tipster recommendations in the calendar year following each new listing. A “Buy” or “Risky Buy” rating is scored as a 5, a “Hold” rating as a 3 and a “Sell” or “Avoid” rating as a 1. The data throws up some interesting results, which are summarised in the two charts below.