We continue our call for governance change at Bidstack. The share price continues to languish while the Board remains silent and ineffective. We highlight our view on what they should be doing right now to restore some semblance of trust with investors:
- They have an enormous and unnecessary board for a £25m market cap business – there are 8 of them! Donald Stewart has an unenviable track record of huge value destruction and he should be removed from the Board with all options forfeited. Glen Calvert appears to just be friend of the CEO adding no discernible value and should be removed from the Board. With a founder CEO and a new, experienced COO, why does a £25m market cap company need a CSO? That reduces the Board by 3 and is worth £100,000s savings to extend the cash runway.
- Take some of those savings to add a director with an understanding of per share intrinsic value as well as corporate finance, cash flow mgmt. and investor comms experience. If it were us, we would refuse to take cash fees and instead take them in shares based on the 2.85p last raise price until the business is cash flow positive. We would suggest the other NEDs follow this example.
- Restructure all the mgmt/advisor options to align them with shareholders and have targets (disclosed to SHs) that will drive SH value rather than handing out opaque, nil cost options.
- Name a CFO. In this case, being different to the crowd of every other listed company isn’t cool.
- Change the NOMAD. We would recommend one that doesn’t let mgmt. selectively circulate inside information and provides useful advice, like how valuable it is to have an informed shareholder base.
- Reign in the new tech investment project and ensure cash goes to extending the operational runway until cash flow positive i.e. start walking before the sprint.
- The Azerion deal clearly wasn’t working financially for Azerion or why would they try to get out of it? They have enough of their own problems. Forget about the $30m optics – why do they matter now the market has valued the contract at zero? Restructure the deal, possibly at a lower headline value but beneficial to both parties, ensure historic invoices are paid for cash in, even if made up for partly in short term lower rates for Azerion, avoid legal fees and provide clarity to the market.
- Organise a detailed update to the market and a real presentation by James, Jude & Camilla with where the business actually stands. Just be honest about demand, pipeline, publishers, economics and timelines so that for the first time the market can value the business on its fundamentals rather than speculation around the governance circus.
In our opinion, the enormous potential of this business has been obscured by the ineffective Board for too long and we believe that change is now urgently required to secure its future success. The support of 5% of shareholders is required to requisition an EGM for the removal and appointment of directors.
