I personally, was not a supporter of their tenure, nor impressed with their performance and attitude towards share holders, however that is now in the past and has been done to death.
Our focus is now on their replacements, their ability to resurrect our companies credibility and finally see our world leading technology commercialised, in both the Clean Energy and Life Science markets.
Whilst the reward for success hasn’t changed and is still significant, the associated risk has again significantly increased in my opinion.
Congratulations to those who have had the courage to top up their holdings at the current historically low prices and hope that you are well rewarded.
Personally, I haven’t topped up, primarily because my current holding is probably too big for the risk involved.
Also, I would have to sell some other of my holdings to finance the purchase and it came down to a decision of did I really want to sell them to buy more ADO at the moment, for me the answer is no.
I don’t however intend to sell any of my holdings at these prices and like many of us, am prepared to ride it out to the end, what ever that might be.
Without dwelling on the past managements performance, one of my major concerns however, is the legacy that they have left behind for our new management to deal with.
The current state of play for ADO is the result of the previous managements business strategy, which has been imbedded into our organisation for several years now.
We are in some ways committed to follow it through, that being establishing a binding and financially beneficial agreement with one of the worlds' biggest automotive names - Mercedes Benz (MB).
Whilst it shouldn’t be the case, at the moment, it seems that our survival is based on our securing this deal.
It was always going to be a huge ask, an Australian minnow, with new technology ,establishing a business partnership with MB.
We were never going to be able to establish this partnership from an equal footing, MB were always going to progress things in their way and their timeframe - without any consideration to our “state of play”.
There in lies one of the biggest issues with the previous strategy - aiming for the highest hanging fruit, with the biggest reward, but with a huge risk associated, both from a financial and resource consideration.
They obviously believed that they could progress the relationship much quicker than it actually has progressed - hence the desperate need for the 2 abysmally executed Capital raises in such a short period. To me this was the biggest mistake and in my opinion showed a flawed strategy, along with a distinct lack of experience and judgement.
In hindsight, establishing agreements with some “lower hanging fruit” would have been a much better strategy.
Particularly, if as we were led to believe, we had many other options knocking on our door. They might have been smaller, but they would have established credibility with the market and well as some cash flow.
The new management now has to move forward on a much tighter budget and again IMO, will not have the option of another capital raising - this would be disastrous for the company.
Unfortunately, it is going to be a much bigger task than it should have been and they will definitely need to get some luck on their side (for once!).
Obviously, if the MB agreement is much closer than we anticipate, that would be a game changer, but there are no guarantees.
Additionally, progressing our Life Science business, as well as establishing a number of smaller agreements in this space, will give us some much needed breathing space.
So again, we can look forward with some hope - change always brings hope.
The new management however, will now need shareholder support (and some luck).
I am sure that if they make an effort to engage and communicate with us, in an honest and meaningful way, this will be forthcoming.
Not only because it’s our last option, but the reason that we are still here, is that our Technology and the years and money that we’ve spent developing it, deserves to be successful.
(20min delay)