Looks like a recent mini-pump may have driven some retail...

Looks like a recent mini-pump may have driven some retail punters into the stock from its 1.3c bottom last week. Now the down trend looks like it's slowly creeping back again if the 1.5c support level is nothing but a bunch of fake buys.

The bigger game in town is still more or less the same:
- Patersons took up ~100m shares in April 2012, of which ~73m at $1.5c each, and more recently took up the CR shortfall of ~45m shares at $3c each in April 2014. Taking a wild guess plus factoring in some possible shorting from past 12 months, and average entry looks to be somewhere around $1.7-2c if not lower.
- With 3 months to go before expiry, it's possible that Patersons could/would have sold out its ~22m $3.5c options for a grand sum of ~$50k way back when. At this rate it looks like everyone else who is still holding the oppies get either absolutely zilch or worst a tax loss by end of July.

Why still rambling on this stuff about Patersons to this day? It's because SHP still is arguably on its backside without these guys playing to the same tune.

Simon's cash balance has come down after eStore acquisition and factors in some outflow when the next 4C comes out shortly. He was hoping that share price and hence market cap goes up, and therefore helps his chance of landing some more investment money. Sadly it hasn't turned out that way (no prize for guessing who's behind the persistent sell-down at $1.7-2c since last year). He's called out that he needs at least $30m revenue a year to have a fighting chance of squeezing out a small free cashflow. He won't get much cost out from another small acquisition which is all he can afford with cash he's got at the moment.

To break the cycle he needs another ~$2.5m to pick up another YHD-type bolt-on. And this depends on whether:
- Patersons have made decent dough from their trades in the past 18 months (~500m of SHP changed hands since 24 Feb 2014), AND
- Patersons choose to play nice with Simon and Domenic (and soon Lorenzo), and agree to give some back by underwriting the ~60m options at $3.5c a pop post July expiry.

If/when that happens and stating the obvious that Patersons would then sit on a paper loss (delta between tomorrow's share price and $3.5c entry), which can be recovered later on if/when share price goes up (when there's a will there's a way haha). Simon will get a decent cash injection and can go on his merry way to pursue another big scalp and have a go at taking this company forward. Otherwise, only thing he can do is continue spinning his wheels.

With Patersons hanging around, any half-decent insto or private equity would look at this, smell a rat and go "no thanks".

The only other possibility is unless Domenic, Mark and Lorenzo are happy to sign off on having their holdings heavily diluted from a low-ball CR at close to today's price.

One way or another, it looks like this company is going nowhere in the meantime, and small players are still sitting ducks getting jack all.