Trackwise Designs Share Discussion Threads

[timbo003] 01/12/2020 08:18

>>>>amt

Yes, agreed and the first thing that needs doing is to give shareholders who hold their shares in nominees accounts the same rights as those who hold them as certificates.

One big way you can all help with this is to support ShareSoc who are actively campaigning on this issue:


The more members ShareSoc have the louder the voice, so why not join today

Associate membership is free
Full membership is £45/year (well worth it)

[sirrux] 01/12/2020 08:16

The reform might kill a lot of high paying jobs, that's a big obstacle to overcome.

[fez] 01/12/2020 08:15

Yes ShareSoc are great - doing what they can - and raising awareness. Well worth suscribing.

AIM is definitely an imperfect market but sometimes that throws up great opportunities.

[sirrux] 01/12/2020 08:12

I agree, the ShareSoc people have been on about it for years. Little headway, but they've been persistent and have made some good cases.

[amt] 01/12/2020 07:54

It seems that the whole system of investing particularly on Aim is stacked against the Private Investor.
Radical reform is needed in my opinion.

[sirrux] 01/12/2020 07:50

Means he can't see them because the "system" is designed that way, to disenfranchise the small in favour of the big.

[amt] 01/12/2020 07:47

we have about 43 private investors that we know of, mind you some people hide behind their platforms'

What does he mean by "hide"

Private Investors are not hiding, it's just the way the system had been designed. Private Investors have no choice in the matter, if using an ISA for example.

[sirrux] 01/12/2020 07:13

I'd imagine the company was handheld through all of this. The "system" does make it difficult to engage directly with non-institutional shareholders. This is all supposedly for investor protection which is mostly nonsense, it transfers money to institutional who ironically have non-institutional clients but much of the benefit of the discount just gets swallowed up on fees (which is how the discount should be looked at) so non-institutional suffers twice. There's no way you can argue it benefits anyone other than advisers (and some favoured clients) who are supposed to be acting in every client's interests, pension fund holders etc. An alternative way would be for the process to be market driven, just publicise (much easier in the age of information) and issue the shares as a separate class to the market with a plan to convert into the main share class once the funding completes without all of the fuss of a rights issue which is again an institutionally driven process.

[fez] 01/12/2020 06:53

jimbo123elf30

No I don't think that's Trackwise.

If you look at page 12 of the fundraise document you will see a couple of photos.

IHT application in the immediate term is battery modules / packs / EV drivetrain
➢ IHT weight reduction contributes to: smaller cheaper batteries / saves energy / increases range
➢ (very) large number of cell connections are ideally suited to highly precise, highly repeatable flex PCBs


Key phrase above might be 'in the immediate term'.

Another important point is that this fundraise doesn't tie TWD to Arrival (hence not taking a strategic partner).

[fez] 01/12/2020 06:44

74tom

OK so you're annoyed about the price of the offer...get over it.

I suspect any PI's will get all the shares they want in the excess offer. If you don't understand why then watch the video again. It is a shame the price has fallen back so much to give more outsiders the chance to buy at almost the offer price.

Trackwise have a HUGE opportunity here - I'm filling my boots.

[w t tutte] 01/12/2020 00:31

74tom, a spot on analysis and a good catch on the Finance Director comment, that one slipped by me completely.

[74tom] 30/11/2020 17:35

Have just finished the presentation. There were many comical quotes from the CFO but I think the best one was;

"we have about 43 private investors that we know of, mind you some people hide behind their platforms'

I've never heard such naivety from a director of a listed company. 99% of retail investors will invest via the like of HL, ii, AJ Bell etc etc. Does he expect them to send him an email when they purchase a few thousand shares?

He also claimed that the open offer was 'unusual' and more than once alluded to it being quite generous, i.e. 'fill your boots'.

A 1 for 44 offer allows you to buy 2.27% of your current holding. This compares to the near 25% dilution that the placing brought. So you would have to do what Timbo is doing at 10x your allocation to even retain the same % stake. From my recent experience at Verici DX, an open offer of £1m will be hugely scaled back. I got 10% of the shares I applied for in that case, which was hugely frustrating (and pointless). I'll be very interested to hear how many shares people actually end up getting...

I also thought it was telling that Mark referred to himself as a Finance Director when addressing the question about margins. There is a huge difference between an experienced CFO and a competent Finance Director, and never has it been more evident than here. He was unsurprisingly defensive of the placing price, but I think more than anything it evidences that he was completely out of his depth in being tasked with raising proper growth capital. Looks like he should speak to David Dorrans at Mirriad for some advice on how to negotiate with institutional investors...

[jimbo123elf] 30/11/2020 17:15

If you go to the link hxxps://arrival.com/?topic=technologies do you think the circuit shown is the Trackwise supplied component?

[toffeeman] 30/11/2020 14:36

I think 74tom has it spot on. If IHT is essential, Arrival would not want to be reliant on a single OEM. They want to be able to (at least) dual source and apply price pressure.

I am a small investor via Guinness AIM EIS and they have doubled so far. If GAM sell their stake after July 21 then it's free of CGT. I doubt the price will halve between now and then!

[fez] 30/11/2020 14:28

74tom - I think you're wrong.

Arrival do EVERYTHING in-house. They own masses of IP.

The very fact that they did a deal with TWD shows that IHT is essential.

[74tom] 30/11/2020 14:16

I see this is playing out as I thought it would so far. I've not watched the investor meet presentation yet, but if the CFO thinks they got a good deal at £2 and that they only have 81 private investors then you have to question whether he should be CFO of a listed company.

Also, if anyone thinks for one minute that Arrival don't have another supplier / option lined up for circuit boards in the event that Trackwise don't deliver then they need to give their head a shake! The contract RNS even stated that minimum payments are due in the event of lower volumes - clearly indicating that Arrival have the ability / right to switch suppliers should they wish. Also, if there is no further news due, then don't expect £2 to hold - it ran up very quickly from £1.20 and sentiment has been butchered.

[fez] 30/11/2020 14:11

W T Tutte,

It is evident that the need for cash to provide capacity for the Arrival deal put TWD under pressure. I had (wrongly) assumed that the SCL deal had freed up enough IHT capacity at Tewkesbury but obviously not.

The immense size of this deal (and I think the CEO said he expected it could be much larger than quoted) requires this expansion. Without this money, TWD would struggle to cope with the existing and future demand.

If the largest shareholder, the CEO, is happy with the deal - and he stated that he is more excited about the future than ever before - then so am I.

Remember this is an illiquid share. Today just 47,000 shares traded (just over £110k) has wiped 10% off the mkt cap (£5M). I suspect this is PI's selling to take up their rights. Not much arbitrage there for £11m institutions.

If I wasn't a shareholder I would be seriously interested in buying at the current price.

[jimbo123elf] 30/11/2020 14:04

When he said the medical/catheter OEM came from California I immediately thought of Edwards Lifesciences. I could be completely wrong.

[w t tutte] 30/11/2020 13:39

Fez, I think you are overlooking the fact that PIs were already invested. The unique opportunity they have been given does not, even with oversubscription, make up for an effective transfer of @20pct of the equity in the business from themselves to a few favoured instos, a number of whom, if the shareprice is anything to go buy, were just looking to profit from a quick arbitrage between shareprice and placing price.

[fez] 30/11/2020 13:17

Stopping just short of actually mentioning Arrival, the CEO gave a pretty good description of the unnamed OEM:

'Using microfactories located near end customer'
'2 in UK'
'plus recently announced factory in US'

With the Arrival SPAC Nasdaq listing coming up and Trackwise intergal, I wouldn't be selling but taking up excess allocation.

The hints were there - with the way this is structured, the board have given PI's a pretty unique opportunity to invest at the placing price.

That combined with the aerospace and medical device market potential - this will end up being a blip.

The CEO ended saying he was more exited about the future than ever before!

PS. Anyone know who the 'Californian medical OEM' is?

[w t tutte] 30/11/2020 12:26

If this selling pressure is going to keep up until the EGM next week then we may all be able to fill our boots well below the 200p placement price. What an absolute pigs ear they have made of this process.

[viking24] 30/11/2020 12:19

Brave to sell out.Post vaccine and stocks to chase, EV is the game in town. The Germans are moving production facilities over here and TWD is already known to them.

[amt] 30/11/2020 10:14

Which begs the question, why didn't they debt fund this.
If it was done at the last minute, then that doesn't sound like good planning and makes the discount even more inexcusable.
If the open offer is oversubscribed which I think is likely then why are loyal shareholders being offered so few.
I reckon private investors could have funded the whole thing. Let's see how much it is oversubscribed.

[w t tutte] 30/11/2020 03:53

I have re-watched the presentation and come away with 2 key points, 1) they think that the placement was well done and that Finncap did a great job, using their own words Finncap "broke the back" of the various instos and that the deal was not done until the last minute.Clearly they have never been involved in a book build exercise before out side of the occasional exceptional deal the book is not done until the last minute and guess what if it was done early, you close the book early, Finncap should be replaced as soon as practicable and as a board they need to wise up very very quickly. Secondly and this is a longer term observation it seems like they will need @ 15-20 million of capital for every step up of @ 50 million in annual revenue, but hopefully going forward some of that can be debt funded.