Just had a look through the 3DP AGM notice and saw resolution 8 on p21 for 12m Options granted to Lynx for Corporate Advisory Services...

https://www.marketindex.com.au/asx/3dp/announcements/notice-of-annual-general-meetingproxy-form-6A1234217

AGM is 5pm Fri 29th Nov - the last possible moment (and no virtual option for those without easy access to Subiaco), but that shouldn't surprise, the best ones always go last ...

This resolution is to place with Lynx 1.5% of Share on Issue. Exercisable at $0.06, so effectively raising $720,000 (and then spending it straight away) if the price gets there (20% uplift from here).

It's a lot of capital to be paying away for 12 months of advisory services (that's already started), so what do shareholders get for it?

"The advisory covers investor awareness, investor engagement, introductions, strategic capital advice and other general advice."

"The Company agreed to reimburse Lynx for all reasonable out-of pocket expenses incurred in connection with provision of services under the Mandate, with approval of the Company required for any single expense in excess of $500."

My thoughts

This seems a little desperate to me.

They must fear another damaging cap raise around the corner - App 4C due out tomorrow, after close most likely.

So they just paid 1.5% of the company to (among other things) get connected to cap markets players for a potential equity raise - which will then pay Lynx a further 6% of any such raise.

So 3DP is aware of the potential need to raise capital and this will cost 6% + 10%? of any amount raised. They're effectively taking about 85c in the $ of any Cap Raise on this basis.

Didn't they get a vulture capitalist on their board who should be across this sort of thing - or are these his cronies?

A reminder of the importance of management in smaller companies...

Disc: No longer held

Bevan Slattery has left the building.

Just lodged a "Ceasing to be a substantial holder" notice on the ASX.

Took 11.5m 3DP shares out this month at around the $0.11 mark.

So that will have been behind a lot of the selling.

He would have to be across the ACV numbers and other behind the scenes details.

So that may be behind his selling.

He's also just parachuted into the MP1 CEO hot seat after Vincent English left it still warm for him last week.

So that could also be a factor, we may never know.

Maybe Strawman can get him on the red phone - I assume he has a direct line to the higher ups for big issues like this?

Airovant seems to be value enhancing (complimentary as Pointerra has the platform, Airovant has an analytics-based solution approach, also Pointerra is 3D focussed, Airovant more 2D focussed) but has not been price enhancing – herein lies the opportunity?

Airovant provides customer ‘solutions’ via data analysis and insights for risk, compliance, and optimisation of physical infrastructure.

Pointerra has had 3 broad strategies historically – 1) 3D Data storage and retrieval, 2) 3D Data analytics, and 3) 3D Data Marketplace.

From inception, the 3DP platform appears to have been optimised for data storage & retrieval, being cloud native. The ‘3D data marketplace’ was and still seems to be a longer-term aspiration.  So the analytics has likely been a recent area of focus for Pointerra – most probably led by customer feedback. So Airovant seems to be a ‘buy vs build’ solution to plug this analytics value add gap.

This is probably why Ian Olson refers to Airovant as being ‘solution focussed’. It should allow the combined entity to be more value enhancing for clients than just a 3D data storage and retrieval facility.

If this is correct, it’s a vertical integration of sorts that takes the data mining (client data source) to storage and retrieval (Pointerra today) to data processing into information (using Airovant functionality) to solve bigger customer problems.

If this works, it is likely to lead to broader use cases and deeper customer penetration / stickiness if the analytics component can be better delivered by Pointerra.

Risks - I would expect some potentially significant integration risk because: 1) Pointerra haven't done an acquisition before and 2) their complementary nature (2D solutions vs 3D platform) might not be very plug and play. 

Disc: Held