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Richard Jennings of Align, sticks knife into his own client, Widecells, wants EGM to oust the board

By Tom Winnifrith, The Sheriff of AIM | Thursday 27 September 2018


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.


Let's be clear here. Widecells (WDC) was a client of Align Research run by Richard Jennings. That is to say it paid Align to publish research. It is thus all the more remarkable that Jennings is prepared to stock the knife in, attack recent actions by the company and is now buying shares in the market to call an EGM to fire the board. Get your beer and popcorn ready, for what it is worth I agree with Jennings on this matter and urge all shareholders to contact him to offer their support. He writes:

It is exceptionally rare for us to make a public statement in the manner we do here in relation to a recent corporate client that we had backed in the case of Widecells Research. However, such is the sheer incredulity at the 3 RNS’s put out today that we are galvanised into action.

In essence, management of WDC have effectively entered into a de facto death spiral with no bottom on the issuance price. The actions of management in even proposing this let alone their lending their OWN shares to facilitate it is without a doubt one of the craziest (at best) or utterly naive arrangements I have come across in recent years. Joao Andrade and his fellow BoD members should resign forthwith. I repeat that it defies belief that they are lending their own stock to facilitate the short sale of shares by the “loan shark” (also known as European High Growth Opportunities) – in essence they are accelerating the throwing under a bus of their own shareholders, particularly those that facilitated the placing in June to bail them out of a disaster of their own making.

We are not prepared to stand by and have been active buyers of the stock this morning with a view to calling an EGM at the earliest opportunity to:

(1) Remove the current slate of directors and

(2) Halt the further issuance of stock beyond the current £635k that they have already taken. Incidentally, together with the raise in June we believe the company actually has adequate capital with the £635k to see through the next 12 months from an audit sign off basis.

We invite all decent sized holders to contact us at info@alignresearch.co.uk at the earliest opportunity so we can call the EGM and attempt to upend this nonsense for existing shareholders. Recall what happened to the stock price of Tern in recent months when this type of financing was terminated. If we are successful in halting this arrangement we believe the upside for existing shareholders could be material but it requires ACTION and not inertia. As stated, email us with your details and holding size so we avoid one of the most tragic situations seen in the small cap arena this year.

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