UK 15:42 Monday, 26 October 2026
Breaking news and expert analysis on fast-moving AIM and LSE listed shares
Disclosure: I have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from ShareProphets). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.
Earlier today I stated that Motive TV (MTV) was set to raise £400,000 at 0.1p and was passing the hat around. Well almost right, I guess I forced the company’s hand as the shares started to crumble and so it closed the book early and after hours announced that it had raised £350,000 at 0.125p. Given that the shares closed at 0.185p (but were trading at 0.22p as the placing was being done until I ruined the party) the discount is still enormous. This is a 22 billion rum ‘n coke – the statement published shows that someone is avin a bubble.
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Comments
Daz
Worst company on AIM , but which deluded fools still buy the stock?
MTV Mug
Shareholder value destruction on a monumental, industrial and pre meditated scale.
To make matters worse, Len Fertig clearly doesn’t give a shit about small shareholders, the very people who have so stupidly kept him in a job.
I took the trouble to email him direct to express my concerns and disgust and was appalled by the flippancy, rudeness and downright evasiveness of his response.
He has used the RNS system and proactive investors interviews relentlessly to peddle misleading bullshit. Mondays RNS headline was a classic meant to somehow imply that MTV were working DIRECTLY with Apple!
In the run up to the launch to Tablet TV he specifically stated in RNS that the product would be available “on store shelves” implying it would be sold at Argos, Curry’s/PC World etc but a year later and its still only available by mail order with zero promotion (despite having raised millions to support the launch).
He’s a lying, grasping, greedy crook and has no place leading a public listed company supposedly at the cutting edge of tech (not being ageist but the man is nearly in his 70’s now).
I invested on research of the opportunity but when that research is skewed by misleading statements by the CEO it is rendered worthless.
He should be strung up!
MTV Mug
Forgot to add – the shares in issue doubled again yesterday but they are going to double AGAIN very shortly as Bergen will be converting the next tranche of shares soon.
Anybody buying this toxic stock is utterly certifiable.
Fertig dresses up the fact that they have been forced to take part of their salary in shares AT A FUTURE DATE as an “investment”! What utter bollocks! I would guess that it was a condition of the placing going ahead that the disgraceful troughing by the directors be moderated. In other words, they have been dragged kicking and screaming to this point as, when pressed on whether he would be prepared to accept a salary sacrifice in a proactive investors interview he baldly stated “that isn’t going to happen” – see comments by pissed off MTV investor attached to Steve Moores article here with link to the interview in question http://www.shareprophets.com/views/14618/motive-television-part-two-2015-interim-results-the-extraordinary-litany-of-failure-continuing
Fertigs attitude is clearly “yes, I’ll take shares at some stage in the future but I know that I plan to dilute existing shareholders into oblivion so there is no way I am taking shares NOW – why should I align myself with shareholders when I know what’s in store for them”?
The man is a duplicitous cunt! I don’t often drop the C bomb but he deserves it!
Woody44
Can someone please explain how the flippers can make money in this situation? MTV opened today at last night’s issue price, set by the market makers, which means nobody would have had the opportunity to take advantage of the whopping discount, especially considering the spread. I can see how the “institutions” / bucket shops make money as they’ll get a commission (I hear it’s more than 5% for these kind of placings) but why would their clients bother getting involved if they can’t flip for a profit, unless of course they are genuine investors? If you can’t take advantage of the discount, and you’re a flipper not an “investor”, what’s the point in even having a discount? It could be 5% or 55% and you still wouldn’t make money unless you hold longer term for the eventual upside. It’s the same for most discounted placings whereby the market price at 8am is the same as the discounted issue price in the RNS at 7am, leaving nothing on the table for the flippers. Surely there’s a limit to how many times the bucket shops can play this game with their clients?!
wildrides
MTV long since stopped taking your piss …………… they moved onto sucking your blood a good while ago , and injecting a parasite that will eventually hatch and eat you from the inside .
Woody44
P.S. Just to be clear, in no way am I suggesting that last night’s investors in MTV are anything other than flippers!
Drunken Sailor
To answer the question how do the flippers make money – by illegally forward selling while the placing is still going on and under wraps. They can do this easily by taking short positions which they repay with the shares they get from the placing. How many shares got sold yesterday as mug punters were buying on the ramp. I doubt enough PI holders of MTV read Tom’s article in time to sell themselves and the price drop from 0.22 to 0.185 would have been flippers forward selling / shorting. A similar thing happened with the NEW placing a while ago where before the placing shares had been authorised by an EGM they were sold. The news that blocking the placing would create a massive short squeeze sent the SP rocketing, some people made a lot of money out of that fiasco and a lot of mug punters lost a lot. The LSE don’t care about running an orderly market and are on the side of the flippers and crony capitalists.
No doubt the death spiral funders like Bergen also short or forward sell into their conversions.
Woody44
Thanks Drunken. It seems so commonplace that I’m amazed the authorities are unable to do anything about it. Looking at MTV’s vol just ahead of the placing though, there doesn’t seem to be a big increase.
As for Bergen, I’m fairly sure Bergen don’t short sell as I recall from their RNS that they agree not to. I’ve just checked this and it is indeed in the RNS on 13 May 2014. Also, if they short sold their conversion, they wouldn’t have a disclosable holding post-conversion, which they did last time, so I’m afraid that sounds like scare-mongering Drunken.
DUCK AND DIVE
Agreed Woody44. With Bergen converting over 12% of the issued equity and the placees pre-flipping even more (allegedly) it can’t have happened post the ramp as the volumes are nowhere near high enough.