asic should investigate report, page-36

rabid rantings takes a hit Today's Age


Pulse rate upbeat for the inscrutable Cellestis

By Fleur Leyden and Rebecca Urban
May 5, 2005



Cellestis shares have rebounded after that Rapid Ratings report - or Rabid Rantings, as some shareholders have taken to calling it in recent days - sent the stock south for three subsequent days after suggesting the company was seriously overvalued.

The catalyst for the 4 per cent recovery appears to be a reassuring newsletter authored by Cellestis managing director Anthony Radford, which outlined the progress made by the medical diagnostic company over recent months.

The now infamous report, released by the ratings agency on Friday, also cops a mention.

While Radford says the company doesn’t, as a matter of policy, comment on external reports or valuation issues, he goes on to do just that.

"When making its assessment it did not in any way consider the qualitative factors including the company’s products, addressable markets, market sizes, competition, intellectual property and patent portfolio, customers and human capital, general industry support and acceptance, it did not have any contact with Cellestis; it made its assessment on the basis of past reported financial information only," Radford says.

We hear Rapid Ratings has been inundated with calls from peeved but apparently fiercely loyal Cellestis shareholders. In between dealing with the backlash, Rapid Ratings might want to deploy its information technology department to fix the blip that has allowed recipients of an electronic version of the report to view earlier drafts of the document - including chunks of deleted text.