Traders Cafe with Zak Mir: Open Orphan, Pensana, Pires, Seeing Machines, Tirupati

One of the highlights of the first part of this year was when serial entrepreneur Chris Akers would top up his holdings in some of the go-go stocks of the time. There was an echo of these glory days to start the week, with the revelation that Mr Akers has upped his stake in next generation technology investor Pires (PIRI) from 15% to 16%. This comes in the wake of one of Pires’s investments, Pluto Digital Assets starting to shape up for its forthcoming IPO, by acquiring the assets of DeFi project, Yield Optimisation Platform (YOP). Pluto intends to redevelop and relaunch the YOP platform, as well as supporting the existing protocol, community and $YOP token.

Broker backing is always helpful for a listed company, particularly when it is a high profile broker, and especially when it says something significant. In the case of Pensana (PRE) the Investment Bank sees “significant upside”. The company is one of only three UK Companies to meet the climate leaders gold standard, and the only small cap that it considers climate leaders in the UK and Europe ahead of COP26. This may be just as well given that shares of PRE have retracted from 200p plus in March to 79p currently.

It seems like shares of clinical research services group Open Orphan (ORPH) have been testing for support just below 20p for much of the past year. However, on this occasion it could very well be it is the last chance for dip buyers to gain a sub 20p entry point. This is said in the wake of last month’s fundamental inflection point being achieved. The company revealed a swing to pretax profit of £1.5 million from loss of £6.8 million. Full-year guidance is for £40 million in revenue and Ebitda profitability, whatever the influence of COVID.

Tirupati Graphite (TGR) shares were back in their 85p – 90p support zone, despite the supply chain and power crisis in China. Indeed, the issue of graphite supply, or lack of it, was underlined by last week’s news that that graphite was added to the new U.S. National Defense Stockpile (NDS) Acquisitions List. The latest from TGR is that the revenue generating, specialist graphite producer has entered into a research collaboration agreement with the Department of Material Sciences and Engineering at Monash University, Victoria, Australia, to develop commercial applications for a range of graphene products.

We had a reasonable indication of how curmudgeonly the stock market is currently in terms of its reaction to positive news, from Seeing Machines (SEE). Here the computer vision technology company that designs AI-powered operator monitoring systems to improve transport safety, said it has signed a Global Framework Agreement with Shell Global Solutions International B.V. for the provision of its Driver Distraction and Fatigue Technology, Guardian, to enhance safety across its worldwide operations. Given that Shell has more than 80,000 employees in over 60 countries, it could be said that SEE’s deal is a big one.