There was plenty of intrigue around Remote Monitored Systems (RMS) and its anti-viral mask making subsidiary, Pharm2farm, as moves were made to revoke the recent £5m placing / warrants deal. At least part of the issue here was the possibility concerning the key players of the left hand not knowing or being informed of what the right hand was doing with regard to the fund raise. It was also evident that in what is a highly followed retail investor stock, shareholders quick to take sides on a “them and us” basis, with regard to recent events at the company and the inviduals allegedly involved.
The equity market rebounded after an initial decline, on the basis that most investors now understand that the UK Government is set to continue its random walk through the pandemic for some time to come and seemingly ignore any course of action or advice which may ameliorate the crisis.
Perhaps not surprisingly, after being beaten down in the wake of the timely (for President Elect Biden) vaccine discoveries in November, it was time for a little fightback from the COVID-19 testers. Novacyte (NCYT) saw its stock rise 10% as it said it can detect the “new” mutation, and Genedrive (GDR) managed to mobilise itself by the afternoon, announcing that it continues to detect all known variants of COVID-19, something which does not rely on the highly mutagenic S gene which relates to the spike protein of the virus. Genedrive shares rose 3%.
However, the initial stock market markdown made it a good day to gauge which stocks are truly robust in the present climate. Deal of the day was undoubtedly the long-awaited commercial partnership agreement between edtech specialist Dev Clever (DEV), Veative Labs and NISA, the Indian educational governing body. This 5 year deal activates Dev’s B2C model in the vast Indian market on its platform. Shares of Dev Clever celebrated with a 9% rise.
Tech investor Asimilar (ASLR) was in the news off the back of Dev Clever’s announcement. Indeed, the tech investor saw its shares rise 2% as it amended terms regarding the completion of the second subscription of 20,000,000 Dev Clever shares at 10p. The promise here is that Asimilar would raise its stake in Dev from 4.2% to 8.1% by the end of next month, conditional on Dev publishing a prospectus and this second tranche being except from the prospectus.
In many ways the contract won by market newcomer and cybersecurity specialist Brandshield Systems (BRSD) was up there with the best of them, given that doing a deal with US pharma giant Bristol Meyers Squibb is the kind of event that companies of any size would be proud of. Brandshield said that the contract is further evidence of BrandShield’s relevance in a range of sectors that is only becoming more relevant in the recent huge expansion of eCommerce. Brandshield shares rose 4% up to 25p, versus the RTO price of 20p earlier this month.
There was finally the makings of a share price breakout at stock market investor Riverfort (RGO), with the stock pushing 10% in the wake of its quarterly update. This underlined what a good 2020 the company has had, with £3m in the kitty available for further investment, the NAV up to 1.3p versus a 0.96p share price, and over £1.4m generated for the first 9 months of the year. Perhaps not surprisingly Riverfort has just paid its first interim dividend on the basis of a targeted full year gross yield of 7.5%. A highlight of Q3 was a substantial investment in Tanzanian Gold Corporation.
Although its life on the London stock market has barely been a week, and most shares were marked down to start the week, graphite / graphene specialist Tirupati (TGR) continued its spectacular opening run. The share rose another 17%, with the only fresh news in the wake of last week’s Indian flame retardant contract win. Today the company gave notice of its AGM to be held on 23 December via zoom.
One of the highlights of 2020 was the way that bears kept attacking stocks and kept getting slapped down. Part of this was the added liquidity in the small cap market off the back of “punt from home.” But it was also the shorters not accepting that certain sectors have been transformed in the wake of the pandemic, notably renewables and Green Revolution plays. On this basis waste plastic to energy group Powerhouse Energy (PHE) has enjoyed a massive re-rate, one that continued with another 25% rise.
Aquis listed base and precious metals producer NQ Minerals (NQM) saw its shares in focus in the wake of the latest announcement regarding the cancellation of a significant amount of stock options, something which it said would help clear its mooted move to a Tier 1 exchange along with debt restructuring the group has achieved via ING Bank of late.
TR1 notifications are normally a decent tonic for a company when a shareholder has added to their stake. In this case Panthera Resources (PAT) enjoyed a 28% climb up the stock market leaderboard off the revelation that Republic Investment Management had scaled up to 8% from 7.75%. Shares of the West Africa and India focused gold and exploration company have risen from under 5p in October to 22p as the year ends.
While the Bitcoin price continues to churn near all time highs, it is clear we are currently in boom time for crypto miner Argo Blockchain (ARB). Interestingly enough with the latest 10% for the stock to 15.5p, it is less than 2p away from its initial peak on the first day of trading in the summer of 2018 when the price of cryptos was significantly lower than currently.
On the top of the leaderboard was Mediazest (MDZ), the creative audio-visual company, as it advised the market on its top line results for the 18 month period to the end of September. It said that group revenues for the period were expected to be in excess of £3m. Perhaps not surprisingly the shares jumped by 43% on the revelation.
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