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Even a few of our detractors have now come around
Changing auditors for a listed public company a month before the Group’s year end isn’t a planned event as planned rotations are indicated upfront in the audit report and accounts and the notice to the Annual General Meeting. As I pointed out in my note yesterday, such a late change is indicative of a tension between the company and its auditor’s even if that does not rise to the level of the auditors saying that there are no circumstances that the auditors wish to bring to the attention of creditors.
AIM-listed graphene play Haydale (HAYD) announced its interim results to December 2021 this morning and despite the advertised £3.84 million of cash, yet another placing is surely inevitable. Revenues fell from £1.28 million to £1.19 million, pre-tax losses increased from £1.93 million to £2.46 million year on year – what’s not to like? But the real problem is the balance sheet.
Last week saw yet another RNS Reach announcement from AIM-listed Graphene play Haydale (HAYD). Reach announcements are used for non-regulatory news, ie non-financially significant announcements and advertising, so a deluge of them is a Red Flag for me, indicating it is bucket-shop placing ahoy.
A rise in the shares of AIM-listed Applied Graphene (AGM) caught my eye today. Like Haydale (HAYD) and Versarien (VRS) – apparently – it is a graphene play on the world’s most successful growth market. So how is the growth here? Er…..
This is so desperate it is almost pathetic. Instead of serving up its traditional January end of year lack of sales, mounting losses, lies about contracts exposed and perilous cash position statement, Verditek (VDTK) has a spoof RNS which is a joke. What investors need to know is the cash position and how the company is going to raise more money to keep the lights on. So to the spoof. It is almost worthy of Neill Ricketts. Apparently solar panels might be even better if they contained graphene.
On Monday AIM listed Haydale (HAYD) announced the appointment of new Nomad/Broker FinnCap. Yesterday there was a first RNS Reach spoof and today there is another. With cash surely inadequate to get through the auditor’s Going Concern test later this year, I ask again: when’s the placing.
AIM-listed Graphene play Haydale (HAYD) has appointed FinnCap as Nomad and Broker. So is it fundraising ahoy?
Let’s start with a positive. Versarien (VRS) now separates its revenues and losses between graphene and non-graphene business as we have long suggested it should do. This avoids the need for Shareprophets to undertake an annual visit to Companies House to perform the analysis to reveal the low ongoing graphene sales and the scale of the losses that are being racked up in this business.
It is hard to know where to begin with the results from Versarien (VRS) for the year to March 31 2021. They are, at every level, just utterly diabolical. However much the morally bankrupt PR spinners at Yellow Jersey – who else would act for such scoundrels – try to polish the turd, it is still a turd.
The Bulletin Board cult followers of the dog Versarien (VRS) never look under the bonnet at hidden horrors. That is why critics such as Ian Westbrook are so useful. Ian has now raised more than 70% of the cash needed to make loathsome stock hustler Neill Ricketts sweat with a court hearing. He has six days to raise the rest. Please donate, even if it is just a tenner, HERE. If the full £20,000 is not raised you get your cash back. Please give now. So what is this little horror I have stumbled across?
Self-styled “a leading producer and supplier of graphene nanoplatelets based products for use in consumer and industrial markets” Directa Plus (DCTA) “is pleased to report that this strong revenue growth is continuing in the last two months of the current first half”. What does it mean financially?…
Shoddy AIM promote Versarien (VRS) presents and markets itself as graphene led business. Its annual reports contain huge narrative detail on its graphene business but the plastics and hardware business barely get a mention (limited to a paragraph or two for each). Furthermore, its recent acquisitions being Hanwha Aerospace for £4.34 million and Gnanomat for £3.0 million were both in the graphene space and the graphene business now represent the majority of the goodwill on the balance sheet. It had a recent strategic investment by a South Korean firm called Graphene Lab. Its retail investor base is clearly focused on the potential for hockey stick growth in revenue and profits from graphene products as relentlessly promoted by loathsome CEO Neill Ricketts.
Tom Winnifrith has already exposed the cancer threat, discussed HERE in a 2018 scientific study, posed by wearing graphene enhanced face masks with regard to AIM-listed Versarien (VRS). But it seems that Versarien is not the only company in the firing line, for AIM-listed Haydale (HAYD) is also on the hook.
Shares in Versarien (VRS) have been ramped, in as much as you can ramp a cash guzzling POS, on the back of its graphene enhanced face masks. But as I pointed out yesterday, there is, despite Ricketts’ misleading RNS claims, no scientific study on humans to show that they either stop one human transmitting covid to another but, worse still, there is no proof they do not harm wearers. It gets worse: there is evidence from a scientific study that they may well harm wearers which is why Spain, Ireland and Canada have already moved to ban and recall such products.
The photos will come later (not of underpants). The walk is done but I paid the penalty of ignoring Dan’s golden rule. We have now raised more than £14,000 and as you think of my pain today, will the 96% of bearcast listeners who have yet to donate please do so here. Otherwise I will talk about Dan’s underpants again. In the rest of the podcast, I take issue with ex soccer player Andrew Johnson on tax and then look in detail at the claims made by Versarien (VRS) about its graphene enhanced face nappies and why they do not stack up at two levels and, as such, why there really should be a UK product recall.
Oh dear, oh dear. It never rains but it pours for loathsome Neill Ricketts, the boss of grossly overvalued AIM promote Versarien (VRS). Now realising that his attempts to gag a Bulletin Board critic will end in a humiliating climbdown, his week just got even worse news with developments in Eire. You will remember how Canada has moved to ban graphene enhanced face nappies?
I may have given the impression that Canada was a semi-socialist woke hell hole run by the biggest poltroon on this planet where within a few years the economy will be such a trainwreck that folks like Darren Atwater will be forced to eat their cats. If so, I’d like to apologise, for Canada is a progressive paradise run by a visionary statesman, Mr Justin Trudeau, who wears his Eid socks to the Pride parade, or vice versa (I forgot); a chap who is eerily reminiscent of FDR or Churchill. Where this dynamic and free nation leads, the rest of the world surely will follow which is bad news for loathsome promoter Neill Ricketts and Versarien (VRS).
I can exclusively reveal that Neill Ricketts will be announcing later today the launch by Versarien (VRS) of a new range of graphene-enhanced CBD Range and that in order to maximise value for shareholders, this new division, Versarien Blockchain CBD, is to be spun off onto the AIM casino via a separate IPO. In terms of the cash needed for the project, Ricketts says “funding secured.”
A “Successful Absorption Evaluation Test”-titled announcement from Directa Plus (DCTA) re. its pristine graphene nanoplatelets powder through human skin, with it stated “our suite of successful in vitro tests proves to customers in the textile industry that they can safely adopt our products to create exciting new garments enhanced by our graphene products”. Exciting news?…
Following on from Part 1 my analysis of the Metal and Hard Wear division, I now take a look at the Graphene and Plastics products segment of Versarien (VRS). This is the sexy bit used by loathsome Neill Ricketts and his moronic followers to justify a market cap of £88 million, at 47p. As we saw earlier, the rest of the business cannot be worth much over £3 million!.
A trading update from Directa Plus (DCTA) includes that the company “finished 2020 with better revenues than expected even at the start of December” – and the shares have currently responded more than 13% higher, above 90p. But revenue is, of course, vanity and the achievement in ‘better than expected’, of course, depends on what the expectations are…
AIM-listed graphene outfit Haydale Graphene Industries (HAYD) was “pleased to announce” its interims to June this morning – I’m not sure why, for a £14 million market capitalisation company to offer up a pre-tax loss of £4.4 million in just six months is surely nothing to be pleased about.
Now that Versarien (VRS) has finally published its annual report, I have had a look and drawn out a few highlights. As the subsidiary accounts are not yet filed at Companies House, it is not yet possible to perform the detailed analysis of the results to show exactly how little the Graphene sales were as I did for last year’s results showing that sales were just £26,000. However, I show below an indicative analysis by analysing the elements that Versarien does disclose and it makes for grim reading for the deluded followers of Neill Ricketts.
An early morning tweet comes to me from an investor in Directa Plus (DCTA) suggesting that, although the share is speculative it is “under the radar screens of AIM tipsters” and insanely cheap. At 83p the Italian-run company is valued at £51 million so I suspect it has already received a good bit more than zero coverage.
To put this in context, even morally bankrupt Nomad SP Angel, the Nomad of choice for fraudsters, does not think this news is financially significant and so has forced ramping Neill Ricketts to alert his moronic investors via an RNS reach not an RNS. Natch, folks who think it’s okay to murder journalists don’t care about facts so Versarien (VRS) shares are up 12% at 46p – an £8 million increase in market cap on news that even the Nomad thinks is financially irrelevant!
Are the CFO and NEDs at Versarien (VRS) up to the job? Is it storing up more bad news until the finals? Are its boasted net assets now effectively bogus? Compared to the looming cash crisis, the Nomad quitting, and the unravvelling of RNS lies these might seem less than critical issues but they do matter.
Yet again shares in Versarien (VRS) have risen on a rumour which appears to come from the company itself. Once again there is a false market and so once again I have written to AIM Regulation urging it to force the company to come clean.
When forced to fess up on 21 January 2020 that its, much RNS vaunted, US hub was in fact a serviced office with no staff, cash strapped Versarien (VRS) tried to sugar coat the pill by referring to discussions with a leading US tyre manufacturer. That rang a bell. For whom the bell tolls, etc, etc.
The annual report does not lie. It is just a shame that the Bulletin board savants do not read them carefully. Like all companies, Versarien (VRS) is required to carry out an annual impairment test to justify the carrying value of goodwill recorded on the balance sheet which is £4,431,000 and comprised the following:
Uber ramp Versarien (VRS) refuses adamantly to break out how much of its business is actually involved in graphene. It is the graphene hype which explains why the shares are at 79.5p valuing the company at £122 million. The legacy non graphene activities may generate real sales but will never be material cash cows and thus are fundamentally almost worthless. So how much does Versarien actually make from graphene?
At the Woodford Patient Capital Trust (WPCT) AGM this year that scallywag Neil Woodford suggested that if I had any interest in beating the disease that would incdeed kill my dear Uncle Chris within weeks, that is to say cancer, I should be getting behind the joke company Rutherford Internationbal (RUTH) into which he had spunked vast amounts of other folks cash. This is a common meme among shameless promoters.
There is still no sign of any clarity from Neill Ricketts of Versarien (VRS) on his company’s tie up with BIGT, an enterprise without a website, phone number or any web presence at all. But to keep his disciples happy, the Messiah of Graphene hype has borrowed Adam Reynold’s laptop to hammer out news of another exciting collaboration.
Sure, this column is merely about the 10 most read articles and listened-to Bearcasts, but when I can squeeze in something sexy, like Bitcoin or graphene or Frozen Concentrated Orange Juice futures, I get all the page views. This week, I have the big dogL Warren Buffett in graphic form. Look to me on top next week.
I see that Versarien (VRS) has finally got rid of Patrick Abbott so that he can devote more time to defending the charges of securities fraud for which he has been indicted. I wrote back in March that his employment demonstrated a huge lack of judgement by CEO Neill Ricketts – as did the failure to disclose the matter at the time. That he should be fired so soon (eight days) after publicly standing by him a second time after further charges were revealed compounds the sense of management incompetence...
Yesterday, shares in Versarien (VRS) raced ahead by 10% as it announced an order with an (un-named, natch) US oil and has explorer for 12 kg of its high purity graphene nano platelets (GNP-HP) integrated into a polymer masterbatch by Neill Rickett’s great British Company. But the RNS did not spell out the value. And doing his, almost, weekly ramp on Justin the Clown’s promotional limp dick podcast he again refused to say. So here is some hard maths: I suggest this order may be a spoof.
Since I last wrote about Versarien (VRS) in November last year the stock had fallen around 20% until yesterday when it ripped 20p on news that it had completed the US-based Graphene Council’s “Verified graphene producer” programme. This gives it a market cap of £187 million. That is a lot of hope value for an enterprise that seems to do little more than announce vague MOUs with various named, and more often unnamed, entities...
Writing on graphene-based products company Directa Plus (DCTA) in September, I reviewed do road test & CEO share purchase merit the shares soaring? – concluding by noting “recent half-year results from the company showed a €1.75 million loss on revenue of just €0.57 million, with net cash down to €4.6 million. The shares have though currently spiked to circa 70p, capitalising the company at more than £30 million. Caveat emptor. Avoid / sell”. At 11:30am today, “Proposed Placing to raise a minimum of £3 million”…
AIM-listed purveyor of all things graphene, Haydale (HAYD) has been on an RNS Reach-fest, the latest of which came this morning. Of course, RNS Reach announcement are by definition immaterial and are best viewed as free advertising. But the market has bought into the ramp and the shares are markedly up on the 12p low point they reached when it emerged – along with proft warning No. 3 in six months – that Haydale had been unable to raise loan finance it had planned to. The stock is now up at 36.5p – still a long way down from the 78p at which I wrote about the company last June.
When a share price suffers a setback, often it is the evil cabal of short sellers who are blamed by retail investors. In the case of Versarien (VRS), even CEO Neill Ricketts is at it.
Versarien (VRS), “the advanced materials engineering group, is pleased to announce that it has signed a collaboration agreement with Advanced Insulation Limited”. Any financials with this one? And any update on how other collaborations are coming along, Neill?...
A couple of months on from the well-received annual results of Versarien (VRS) on 19 July, the share price has risen to even higher levels from when I initiated coverage (HERE), now valuing the graphene part of the business at well over £200 million so I thought I’d pose a simple question to CEO Neill Ricketts – how are those collaborations coming along?
Having stuck my todger in the hornet’s nest as Tom so eloquently put it with my first ever piece on Versarien (VRS) (HERE), I thought I would dig a bit deeper into the products as perhaps one can make a case for a £200 million business after all?
I’ve been following darling of the bulletin boards, Versarien (VRS) for some time finding the ever-increasing share price more and more incredulous. I thought I would use today’s results to take a closer look and come up with a considered valuation. In short, this appears to be the in the top 5 most overvalued shares on AIM – get out while the going’s good!
Hello, Share Mixers. In the Autumn I agonised on this sumptuous website over whether to sell shares in the computer bits firm IQE (IQE). Fact is, my mind pulled one way, then the other. I could not make up my mind. Now similar factors are in play for another multi-bagger.
Despite the scepticism previously exhibited on this stunning website, I would not be in a rush to sell shares in Versarien (VRS). Even though yesterday’s leap was approaching 35%. That’s normally a signal for this old punter to trouser the profits. But this is one of those mystery shares which could go either way, and I don’t welcome the pain of maybe selling too quickly.
I was a little surprised by the abuse I copped from recommending Versarien (VRS) as a short at 80p last week. I had failed to spot that it now regularly occupies second place in the ADVFN bulletin board rankings behind charlatan oil promotion UK Oil & Gas (UKOG). (Thankfully I have heard that rumours of a name change to UK Oil and Blockchain are wide of the mark).
Hello, Share Riflers. Having written recently on my occasional dabbles in momentum trading, I thought it only fair to mention a share I’m trading at the moment. This share is rocketing along this week.
Hello, Share Peekers. Like some of mine, your shares are probably making some real money in this continuing bull market. But will it keep going? My own view is that it will, bolstered by the fabled Santa Rally. But watch out for the New Year Party hang-over. And even then, selected penny shares will keep on rising, as they often do when the Footsie carnival falters. Here then are some of my favourite small cap jewels, one of which has already boosted my bank balance big time. And I believe that it, and the other two selections, have further value waiting in the wings.
Hello, Share Twiddlers. At the famous UK Investor Show on April 1st, the legendary pizza hardman, Darren Atwater, tipped Versarien (VRS). We later chatted about one of this company’s products, graphene, which is the revolutionary material which attracted Darren’s interest.
Hello Share Swiggers. Those of you lucky enough to attend the big UK Investor Show last weekend will have been treated to the first-time ever stage appearance of the Pizza Hardman, Darren Atwater. What was remarkable about this event is that the share he picked in his 'Dragon’s Den' session has put on 20% in the first few days.
Graphite play Stratmin Global Resources (STGR) has clinched a £2 million farm-in agreement with Aussie-listed explorer Bass Metals for its Loharano graphite mine in eastern Madagascar, which chief executive officer Brett Boynton argues ‘will be pivotal,’ despite an unenthusiastic response from AIM punters. Under the deal, Bass is taking a 25% stake in Graphmada Mauritius, the holding company owning Loharano, with an option to take its holding to 35% by mid-December.
It would appear that Graphene is something of a miracle substance. In the end it will be surprising if at some point in the near future this material which apparently is an allotrope of carbon, did not help cure everything from the common cold to baldness.
Manoli Yannaghas, onetime debt recovery expert and former operations chief at the now-unloved Red Rock Resources (RRR), is celebrating his first year as managing director of graphite play Stratmin Global Resources (STGR). The company is on the cusp of the long-awaited move to commercial production in the south-east African island state of Madagascar. This could prove the catalyst for a positive move higher from this beleaguered stock.
