Coming up to two years ago I sold short in Weir Group (WEIR) with a market cap of £2.4 billion at 2,094p.
I quickly covered the short about a month or so later at around 2,300p. I closed in the midst of a sharp run up in Weir's price, driven by spurious bid speculation and a short squeeze; short interest at the time was 12%. The market then was also fairly unforgiving for shorts, still being juiced by QE, statements of "whatever it takes" and all that.
Good article, Tom. As we know, paid promotion is always a bit of a red flag, and while I was aware that Medpal had paid spivs like Richard Gill and for research reports and had done a couple of interviews with Zak Mir, I wasn't fully aware of the extent of their engagement with the loathsome Mir. I also wasn't aware that Medpal was engaging Twitter rampers, who have presumably either taken undisclosed payments or potentially own the stock, as you mentioned. However, the biggest red flags to me are the history of the Drummond Brothers and the company's reluctance to provide meaningful updates on its cash position or (presumably lack of) profits. I see that Jason Drummond is happy to blather on about revenue growth in the pharmacy arm, but from what I can see, there has been no update on operational cash burn since the March annual report, where cash burn was allegedly £4 million/year. One would assume that cash burn is now significantly higher, considering the company has seemingly burned through approaching £8 million (perhaps £7.5 million net) raised through the April and July placings, hence the latest placing. I cannot say I can remember many other companies which have raised funds on 5 occasions in 10 months, almost immediately after floating.
Hey Tom Genuine question , I’ve been looking more at PBX and am more inclined to want to have a bit of a decent position here -> not large enough to warrant an individual approach to opti but I wonder if there were enough on this board who could offer some liquidity to opti for some cheaper PBX stock vs what I imagine will be a hefty discount if placed out through Reynolds Is this something that’s possible if we had enough interest ?
