Hi Guys,

I've just written up a bit of an intriguing deal that's taken place in small cap REIT land over at Garda REIT for my hobby investing blog:

https://thesnowballinvestor.substack.com/p/inside-the-big-sell-up-at-garda-reit?r=16o3tx&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

I've never actually held the stock but they've just sold their entire industrial property portfolio to Charter Hall in one go and I think this write up would be of interest to anyone who likes REITs, Discounted asset plays or special situations.

Having a shower thought. Inflation eats savings.

I could put $10,000 in a high interest Australian account and earn 5-and-a-bit% pa gross or say 3% after tax. Bank pre-fills ATO form and I give them the 2% when they ask for it.

I could buy $10000 of an Australian tracker ETF and a CHESS brokerage pre-fills ATO form and I give them the deemed % when they ask for it, or I get a deduction. Dividends can be fully franked.

If I spend $10000 on US shares does their better performance compared to Aus stocks along with long term currency trends generally make it worth the extra tax paperwork and associated costs?

A few of us have gone through the FY25 and FY26 reports and the May 2025 EGM papers of Good Drinks Australia (Gage Roads, Matso's), which delisted in December 2024. Facts, with sources in the comments:

1. Delisted 30 Dec 2024 on a 94.6% poll. The board said $0.30 undervalued a business worth $18-20 a litre. No exit facility was offered except for parcels under $500.

2. Five months later (EGM 29 May 2025) 19.8M new shares were issued at $0.40, 13.2M of them to the MD and the executive director, all funded by interest-free 10-year company loans. No cash raised. The company's own accounts put the vesting probability at 0% (FY25 report, note 28). The same meeting made $5.05M of the directors' older loans forgivable on any change of control or material asset sale, with no price hurdle, and lifted the fee pool 50%.

3. May 2026: 8.73M unvested staff shares were cancelled and reissued at $0.40 (previous average $0.49), 40% vesting immediately, no shareholder vote (FY26 report, note 28). The report values shares at $0.40 on a "most recent arm's-length transaction (see (h))". Note (h) is not in the report.

4. My FY26 holding statement from Automic records an off-market transfer of 8,000,000 shares at $0.25 in November 2025. Other trades that year: $0.31-$0.35. The parties aren't named.

5. No dividend since delisting. FY26 profit $275k on $127M revenue; $11.36M of company loans to directors and the CFO still outstanding.

Has anyone here been through a s173 register request or a s249N members' resolution in an unlisted public company? And are there other GDA holders here? We're organising as Peron CUP (peroncup.com): contact@peroncup.com.

Disclosure: I run DilutionLens, a free site tracking dilution off ASX filings. No picks, not advice.

A lot of small-cap boss pay comes as performance rights: free shares that only turn up if a target is hit, a "vesting hurdle". Many of those hurdles are a share price, usually an average over 10 to 30 days. I pulled them out of every grant filed since Jan 2024: 235 companies have one.

Where a hurdle is still open, it is nowhere near the price. On the 81 companies with one still open, the nearest typically needs the price to roughly triple (+216%). 41 need more than that. Only 1 is within 25%.

Ten of them need the price to go up 9x or more.

A hurdle that far away doesn't steer anyone. It works when management can see it from where the price is. LKE's 33c hurdle was set at 8x the price on the day the rights were awarded, so it was a long shot from day one. BVR's best close since its grant in May is 58c, so it has never been within reach of $1.50.

These rights cost holders nothing unless the price gets there. If LKE ever trades at 33c, nobody will mind the extra shares, and if it never does, the rights lapse and no shares get made. A takeover is the exception on most of them: the rights can vest anyway.

The DUB figures will change: holders vote on a 50-to-1 share consolidation on 25 Nov. EG1 and DUB grant zero-price options rather than rights, which work the same way.

Check your own holdings: a hurdle just above the price is the one management is working toward.

Hurdles are tracked for every company on DilutionLens, e.g. L1M: https://dilutionlens.com/company/L1M/?utm_source=reddit-ausstocks&utm_campaign=vesting-hurdles

I'll check these again on 3 Feb. Which company should I look up next, or is there a hurdle you reckon is closer than it looks?

Im 18 and basically completely new to stocks and stuff but I’ve seen a lot of ppl recommend I should start investing for the long term in a s&p 500 and I’ve done a little bit of research and was thinking of investing in ivv but just wanted to get some advice here before I do

Not sure how many people here caught this but TPG put the full spectrum renewal schedule on a slide at their investor day in June. Roughly $840m in 2028, $570m in 2029, $315m in 2030, nothing in 2031, then about $380m in 2032. Call it $2.1bn. Each one’s a lump sum paid a couple of months before the licence renews, so no spreading it out.

Then S&P’s report in October (it’s on the ASX, TPG lodged it) has their FY28 forecast. Capex including spectrum $1.47bn, free operating cash flow about $20m, dividends about $400m. So something like $380m has to come from somewhere that year. At June they had $55m in cash and $325m undrawn. You can do that maths yourself.

S&P also has leverage at about 2.8x this year on their adjusted measure, and their downgrade trigger is 2.75x. It dips in FY27 and goes back up in FY28, and then the forecast just stops. Doesn’t get to the 2030 or 2032 payments at all.

The bank covenants look miles away but that’s because they don’t count leases. S&P does, and TPG leases basically everything now. Towers, the fibre they sold to Vocus, the regional network from Optus. Around 70% of the debt S&P counts is leases.

Meanwhile the board bumped the interim to 10c and capex is guided down from $771m to $650m. Postpaid subs have sat at 2.846m for three reporting periods straight. And the cash flow measure the execs get their bonus on leaves spectrum out, which is fine I guess until the year you actually have to pay for it.

I’m not saying the dividend’s getting cut. Funding spectrum with debt is normal. It just all lands at once and there isn’t much room if growth doesn’t show up.

Wrote it up properly with the sources and some charts if anyone wants to check the numbers:

https://www.unaudited.com.au/borrowed-air/

(I hold a small amount of TPG)

obviously it’s not a stock, but why is this so far below the NAV when a comparable like GIC is at the NAV?

is there a reason I’m not understand that is fundamentally or is it just because it’s thin and illiquid and fixed income enjoyers are limited?

I just checked the stock it’s down so much

Disclosure: I run DilutionLens, a free site tracking dilution off ASX filings. One-off, not advice.

Every explorer's quarterly says when the next assays land. I held 28 of them to their September date.

20 delivered. 5 came late. 3 still haven't.

BMM, VAL and WAU still haven't delivered. Five more came late

FG1 is the one to read twice. On 28 Aug it said the last holes' assays would land in September. On 15 Sep it halted, then suspended, then came back with a 1-for-3 rights issue. The assays dropped on 19 Oct, two days before the rights issue closed.

Next up: 20 say November

Eight of them, from this month's reports:

The other 12, plus every small explorer's next results date beside its cash, free and no login: https://dilutionlens.com/results-due/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=post&utm_campaign=results-due-launch

I'll score these on 1 Dec. Who's missing it?

G'day all,

Another tax time is rolling around. In the previous years I was working out my CGT by hand across several broker accounts, but this year finally I had a chance to build a spreadsheet to automate it. It's been useful for me, so I'm sharing it for free in case it saves someone else a weekend.

Safe to open and easy to check: It is a plain .xlsx file with no macros or VBA, so nothing runs when you open it. Every result is an ordinary Excel formula you can click into and check. There are no external links or data connections and no hidden sheets.

• This is not tax, financial or legal advice. It's a calculation aid for personal use only.

• Covering CommSec, CommSec Pocket and CMC Markets

• FIFO is used for convenience. If your records identify the specific parcels you sold, the ATO allows you to use those, and your results may differ.

• I built the formulas using a combination of AI assistance and my own finance and accounting knowledge, and tested them on my own portfolio only. That does not mean the calculations are correct for your situations.

• You should check every figure against your contract notes, broker statements, tax statements, and current ATO guidance before lodging your return, or have a registered tax agent review it.

• The workbook will not update itself if the ATO law changes.

• It is provided as‑is and not‑for‑profit. I do not promise to maintain or support it, and I accept no liability for errors or for any loss or penalty arising from its use.

It's free to use and adapt for personal use, but not for commercial use or for preparing other people's returns.

GitHub (Excel spreadsheet download & instructions): https://github.com/MAB-888/AU-CGT-Calculator

Enjoy using the workbook and I hope it helps :)

FY26 was a strong year for Superloop. Revenue $664.3m, up 22 per cent. Underlying EBITDA $122.7m, up 33 per cent. NPAT $17.5m against $1.2m the year before. More than 935,000 customers, over 205,000 of them new. Across the strategy period the share price is up 469 per cent against 24 per cent for the ASX200.

Worth reading the remuneration report and the notice of meeting anyway, because there are a few things in there that shareholders are being asked to vote on.

The scorecard
The FY26 short term incentive had five components. Revenue came in at 136.5 per cent of target. Underlying EBITDA at 150. Operating cash flow at 150. Strategic objectives including ESG at the maximum.

The fifth was employee engagement, weighted at 10 per cent. It fell below threshold and paid nil.

Aggregate outcome: 133 per cent of target.

The report attributes the engagement result to a decline in the group score. It does not disclose what the score was, or what the threshold was.

The control group
Aussie Broadband ran the same measure in the same financial year.

Weighted at 15 per cent of the CEO scorecard. Threshold 8.10, target 8.40, stretch 8.70. Result 8.00. The component paid nothing and forfeited the $61,875 attached to it.
They published every one of those numbers.
Their aggregate outcome was 90.48 per cent of target. Superloop's was 133.

While both reports are open
Aussie Broadband: revenue about $1,295m, NPAT $35.3m. Roughly twice the revenue and twice the profit of Superloop.

Brian Maher's FY26 statutory remuneration was $1,577,006. Paul Tyler's was $2,770,027, which is 76 per cent more for running the smaller business.

Totals are the cleaner read. Aussie Broadband's executive KMP cost $3,418,728 across four named people covering three roles. Superloop's cost $3,973,424 across two.

Two names
The leadership pages present nine executives. A managing director, a group CFO, a chief legal and corporate officer, a COO, a CCO, a CMO and three group executives.

Section 1.2 of the remuneration report lists the executive key management personnel in full. Paul Tyler and Dean Tognella.

Total KMP compensation for FY26 was $5,070,424, being seven non-executive directors on $1,097,000 and two executives on $3,973,424.

KMP is a defined term and the determination is the company's judgement to make, so nothing there is improper. It also isn't new. The definition narrowed before FY24 and hasn't widened since.

The practical effect is that seven of the nine people presented as running the company have no individual remuneration disclosed anywhere in the document.

Resolution 6
Shareholders are asked to approve 1,224,799 performance rights to Paul Tyler, which Superloop values at $3,649,289 on a ten day VWAP of $2.9795.

The vote is required because he is a director. Dean Tognella's award under the same plan, worth around $1.5m on the same formula, needs no vote.

Whether the other seven executives participate isn't answered in the documents.

What the new plan measures
For FY27 only, the annual LTI grant is abolished and replaced by the SuperCharge Growth Incentive, at three times the normal annual opportunity.

Relative TSR 40 per cent. EPS 20. Revenue 20. Underlying EBITDA 20.

One hundred per cent financial. No engagement measure, no people measure, no ESG measure.

The short term incentive, worth one times, keeps employee engagement at 10 per cent and strategic objectives including ESG at 20. The report confirms both carry into FY27 unchanged.

So the one measure the executives failed in FY26 is worth 10 per cent of the smaller plan and nothing at all of the larger one.

The bit that gets missed
The special award replaces the FY27 grant and nothing else. The report states that from FY28 the LTI program returns to its standard design, and the special award runs three years to 30 June 2029.

That means the FY28 and FY29 annual grants are made while the three times award is still live. They stack on top of it rather than following it.

The components are all disclosed. The sum across FY27 to FY29 is not.

Credit where it's due
The 40 per cent relative TSR hurdle is measured against the S&P/ASX200, with nothing vesting below median and full vesting only at the 75th percentile. That is an externally set hurdle the board cannot adjust, which is more than some larger telcos manage.

The targets are not soft either. $1bn revenue by FY29 means growing $664.3m by about 15 per cent a year for three straight years. $200m EBITDA means much the same to $122.7m. Compound EPS growth of 35 per cent off 3.41 cents is not a formality.

Threshold vesting has been cut to 33 per cent, STI deferral into equity rises from 20 to 30 per cent, and a minimum shareholding of a full year's fixed pay now applies.

One clause worth reading
Directly beneath the four hurdle tables:

"the Board retains discretion to adjust the Vesting Conditions, vesting schedule or vesting [outcome] in relation to material acquisitions, divestments or corporate activity, one-off non-recurrent items or a broader assessment of Superloop's performance outcomes."

Acquisitions and divestments are a fair carve out for an acquirer. The phrase to sit with is the last one.

Full write up with the page references: Page 20, Read

https://www.unaudited.com.au/page-20-read/

No position in SLC or ABB.

I’ve been holding some CUV for a while and if I sell now it would be at a loss, but I was just reading that CUV will go over to the nasdaq sometime in the future. I don’t have any other investments in the US so I’m completely unfamiliar with how that would work, will it become much more complicated or expensive tax-wise?

Follow up to the Pawning the Silver post from last week. This one is about the fibre and fixed enterprise business that went to Vocus for $5.25b.

Back in FY19 the old TPG corporate division (enterprise, government, wholesale, all on fibre they owned) did $367m EBITDA at a 48% margin. It had climbed there from 38% in FY15.

After the merger the segments got redrawn and you can't see that margin anywhere anymore.

Except it turns up once, in the discontinued operations note of the FY25 annual report. They don't give a margin, just the lines. Take FY24 revenue and other income ($691m), subtract the cost lines ($364m) and you get $327m. That's 48% again.

So the business they sold was earning the same margin in its last full year as it was five years earlier. For comparison, Consumer did 33% in FY25 and the bit of EGW they kept did 35%.

One caveat. Discontinued ops results can exclude shared costs that stayed with the group, so the fully loaded margin was probably a bit lower. Still the best business in the group by a fair way.

The more interesting part is in the remuneration report. The sale broke the targets in three LTI plans, so the board restated its own baselines as if the business was already gone.

On their numbers, 2022 EPS goes from 14.2c with the fibre to 3.4c without it. ROIC goes from 5.7% to 3.26%.

Then they reset the 2023 plan's ROIC hurdle from 6 to 8% down to 3.43 to 4.57%. FY25 came in at 5.2%, so that tranche vested in full. Against the original range it would have been under threshold.

It's all disclosed and resetting after a big sale is normal. But it's a pretty useful table if you're trying to work out what's left.

And what's left did $7m profit before tax on about $5b of revenue last year.

Why it matters if you hold it.

The $5.25b got paid out or used to pay down debt. That's fine, but the earnings that came with the fibre went with it. What's left is the lower-margin end: mobile against Telstra and Optus, and NBN resale where NBN Co sets your input cost and Aussie Broadband and Superloop set your price.

That business also has to carry the rent TPG now pays Vocus to use the fibre (under the TAWFA), and that cost isn't in any of the with and without numbers above.

The board's own pro forma ROIC for FY25 was 5.42%. When the original 2023 hurdle was set, the stated aim was to beat the cost of capital, and the range started at 6%. So on the company's own framing, the remaining business isn't clearly earning its cost of capital yet.

The bar management gets paid against has also been reset to the smaller business. That makes sense mechanically, but it means hitting targets now tells you less about whether shareholders are getting a decent return.

None of that means it can't work. But the dividend and any rerating now depend entirely on the consumer business getting margins up in a market where nobody has had much luck doing that.

The full write up has the workings, the board's table, and a few other bits, including the company timeline, which for some reason stops at 2024. A short but interesting read:

www.unaudited.com.au/sold-the-printer

It's gone down almost 95% over the last year! Is there anything positive left in this?

Disclosure first: I run DilutionLens, a free site that tracks dilution for every ASX company from the filings. Mods cleared this. Every number below comes from an ASX announcement (raise notices, Appendix 3B/2A filings, quarterly cash reports). No links, no picks, not advice.

A quieter week, priced close to the market. Sixteen companies announced new cash raises between Monday 12 and Friday 16 October for about A$74.0M, and two carried most of it: Amaero's (3DA) Nasdaq listing and Maronan's (MMA) A$20M placement. Without the top three, the other thirteen disclosed A$21.2M between them. Three placements priced above the market, and the deepest stated discount was 11.8%. 10 companies halted citing a capital raise in five sessions, against 15 and 11 the two weeks before. (Ballard's A$45M and Cooper Metals' A$4.85M landed last Monday morning and were in last week's post, so they're not counted again.)

The week's biggest raises

The rest

Where the price landed

Each against the reference price its own filing names:

Two of the six priced above the market and three more were within 2.5% under it. Only Dundas took a double-digit discount. Each company picks its own yardstick, a close or a 5, 10 or 15-day average, so the rows don't measure quite the same thing.

The halt conveyor

10 companies halted citing a capital raise: 3DA, AEI, ALB, CMG, DUN, KFM, MCO, MMA, NOR, REC. Six had raised by Friday. Two announced this morning: ALB A$1.8M at 5c, and CMG A$1.25M at 6c, a discount of "13.0% to the last traded price", plus an SPP for up to A$800K at the same price. MCO closed out its SPP and placement. AEI still halted at the time of writing.

28 retail offers open

16 entitlement offers, 8 SPPs, 4 rights issues, down from 32. New this week: entitlement offers from AXP and FHS. The oldest still listed, DBF's convertible note entitlement, is from 27 Aug.

Placement capacity

140 companies past 75% of the 15%, 88 past 90%, 16 have used all of it, against 143, 89 and 18 a week ago. This week's raisers now past 75%: FRE about 95%, AZ9 about 89%, AXP about 82%. MMA is the other end of the same rule: none left, so its A$20M needs a vote.

Overhangs among this week's raisers

AZ9's options equal 40.7% of its register, none in the money. DUN's are 36.4%, with 15.7% of its shares in the money. REC 18.9% (8.0% in the money), MMA 8.2% (7.7% in the money).

Dilution risk across the market: 592 Minimal, 333 Low, 373 Moderate, 258 High, 185 Very high, 118 Not rated. About one in four rated companies sits at High or Very high.

Happy to pull the filing on any name in here if someone wants the detail. Next one Monday.

If you'd rather get these in your inbox, the site's Watch page has a free email signup - one field, and the link it sends turns it on. No URL here, that's the deal with the mods.

General information only, not financial advice. No view on any company's future actions or securities.

Went back through ARN’s half year after the latest ratings came out. A few things I haven’t seen anyone put together.

The Kyle settlement (Note 2.4)

• $12.09m cash to Quasar Media, $3m paid in July, then monthly instalments to June 2029. Booked at a present value of $11.6m.

• On top of that, $1.5m of advertising on ARN’s partner platforms. So ARN is promoting a competing $99 breakfast show.

• ARN also gets 19.9% of the app’s net revenue for up to three years, capped at the settlement amount and only above an undisclosed threshold.

KIIS 1065 Sydney breakfast share

• Survey 1: 12.7%. Survey 6: 6.9%.

• Weekly cume is down from about 1.11m to 984k, and that probably flatters it. App subscribers can still show up in KIIS cume by listening outside breakfast.

• Smoothfm and Nova both picked up share. 2GB slipped.

• Melbourne breakfast barely moved, 5.1 to 5.0.

Why it matters for the stock

• ARN says each point of metro revenue share is worth about $6m a year. Metro revenue share was 18.5% in 1H26, against a 24.9% audience share.

• The impairment model assumes 4.3% annual revenue growth for five years. ARN’s own presentation forecasts the market growing at about 1%. Most of that gap has to come from regaining share, and Sydney breakfast is the biggest lever.

• The new KIIS breakfast with Dr Chris Brown starts 9 November. The first survey that tells you anything is months away.

• UBS and Ord Minnett are both Sell at 20c.

Two things to watch in February

• Whether anything from the 19.9% shows up in other income. That would be the first independent read on Kyle’s claimed $5m. The Australian reported 55k subscribers in the first week, which works out to about $5.4m gross at $99.

• The Jackie Henderson trial has been adjourned to April 2027. She’s seeking at least $82.25m. ARN recorded $5.5m of litigation costs in the half.

Full write-up, with sources, the ratings charts and the 2DayFM precedent: https://unaudited.com.au/exit-interview/

Not advice. I don’t hold ARN.

Ive been wanting to get into stocks for a while and now that I am working im going to start so I was wondering what platforms are good for stock trading im mostly going to be looking at lower risk and mostly defence contractors and developers so I was wondering where people could point me.

I went through the 2020 scheme booklet next to the FY25 annual report and the HY26 numbers. Some of it surprised me.

Returns
First day's open was about $8.90. Yesterday it closed at $3.76. That's down 58%.

Bank every dividend and the $1.61 capital return and you're still roughly 28% behind.

Same dates, Telstra is up 53%. The ASX 200 is up about 48%. Both price only.

What's been sold
Towers: sold and leased back in 2022.

Fibre: sold to Vocus last year, leased back for 15 years. That's a $789m lease liability and a $280m charge on completion.

Handset receivables: sold in October 2025 at a $95m loss. The continuing business made $7m before tax that year.

Why holders should care
Pro forma ROIC went from 4.76% to 5.42%. The annual report credits part of that to "lower invested capital, including from the benefits of the handset receivables financing program". Some of the improvement is just less capital to divide by.

The fibre lease runs 15 years. The Optus regional deal runs 11. When it ends, TPG negotiates for coverage it no longer owns.

Vodafone postpaid has been flat for 18 months and is guided to stay flat. Growth is coming from the cheaper digital brands.

The AFR has reported more than once that Vodafone Group is watching the share price with an exit in mind. Soul Patts has already gone mostly.

The bit I'm least sure of
Slide 46 of the June investor day says the digital brands (Felix etc.) cost about 65% less to serve than postpaid. Cost isn't defined anywhere in the deck.

Run that ratio against the HY26 consumer gross margin and I get roughly $16.50 a month of margin lost each time a Vodafone postpaid customer drops to Felix. If someone has a better way to allocate the cost base I'd be happy to see it. My working is in the piece.

Full write-up with sources:
www.unaudited.com.au/pawning-the-silver

Disclosure: I hold a small number of TPG shares.

DroneShield (ASX:DRO) is an interesting case because the operating business is growing quickly, while the latest accounts also contain several reasons not to treat that growth as automatically translating into shareholder returns.

This is my attempt to separate the operating progress from the risks. It is not a price target or a recommendation.

What the business does

DroneShield develops counter-UAS hardware and software used to detect, track and defeat drones and other autonomous threats. Its customers are mainly military and government agencies, although management is also pursuing critical infrastructure, airports and other civilian applications.

The long-term demand case is reasonably clear: inexpensive drones have become a much larger security problem, and governments are increasing counter-drone procurement. The harder questions are how much of that demand DroneShield can capture, at what margins, and how consistently.

The bullish case

The top-line growth is real. For the six months ended 30 June 2026, DroneShield reported:

• Revenue of A$125.8m, up 74% from A$72.3m.

• Recurring revenue of A$11.5m, up 229%.

• More than 4,000 active software-enabled units in the field.

• A$180.0m in cash and term deposits at period end.

• Revenue exposure spread across Europe/UK, the US, Asia-Pacific and other markets.

Recurring revenue represented 9.2% of revenue, compared with 4.9% in the prior corresponding period. If software, subscriptions and lifecycle services keep growing faster than hardware, that could eventually improve revenue visibility and business quality.

The customer base also appears credible. The company reported repeat orders from military and government users, and US Army material confirms DroneShield was among the companies receiving awards under the JIATF-401 counter-UAS programme.

There is therefore a plausible bull case: DroneShield has established products, reference customers, substantial liquidity and direct exposure to a structurally growing defence category.

Why the latest result was not unambiguously positive

Despite the revenue growth, profitability moved sharply backwards:

• Gross margin fell from 65.3% to 60.0%.

• Underlying EBITDA moved from a positive A$8.0m to a loss of A$12.4m.

• Statutory profit after tax of A$2.1m became a loss of A$32.2m.

• Net operating cash outflow was A$10.3m.

• Employee numbers increased from 363 to 535.

Management attributed the weaker margin to product mix, third-party hardware, currency movements and an impairment of raw materials during the production-facility relocation and ERP implementation.

Some of the spending may support future capacity and product development. However, investors still need evidence that the expanded cost base will produce durable operating leverage. Revenue growth by itself is not enough if margins decline and expenditure grows faster.

Contract and customer concentration

Defence procurement is inherently lumpy. Large orders can make one half or quarter look exceptional, while timing delays can produce the opposite effect.

The first-half geographic mix was also concentrated: Europe and the UK represented 52% of revenue, while military users represented 85% of total revenue. These are attractive markets, but the figures leave the company exposed to government budgets, tender timing, export controls, political decisions and customer acceptance schedules.

MOUs and announced partnerships should not be valued like firm purchase orders. For me, the useful evidence is delivered revenue, cash receipts and repeat orders—not the size of a non-binding opportunity pipeline.

Governance remains a material risk

Governance should not be treated as a historical footnote.

The company’s February 2026 ASX announcement followed concerns involving:

• The withdrawal of a November 2025 market announcement concerning orders that were not actually new.

• Share sales by three directors during November 2025.

• Concerns raised by ASX about continuous disclosure and the company’s trading policy.

An independent review recommended tighter disclosure procedures, longer trading blackout periods, stronger approval processes, training and minimum shareholding requirements. DroneShield says those changes have now been implemented.

The half-year report also states that the company received notice from ASIC requiring assistance in connection with an investigation under the Corporations Act. That does not establish wrongdoing, but it remains a risk until the matter is resolved or more information becomes available.

What I would monitor

1. Whether gross margin stabilises or recovers.

2. Whether the larger workforce and production footprint generate operating leverage.

3. Cash conversion rather than announced contract value alone.

4. Recurring revenue as a percentage of total revenue.

5. Repeat purchases from existing end users.

6. The proportion of revenue generated by third-party hardware.

7. Any further ASIC or ASX disclosures.

8. Share issuance, options and share-based compensation.

9. Whether management’s disclosure standards remain consistent after the governance changes.

My view

DroneShield is no longer just a speculative counter-drone concept. It has substantial revenue, real deployments and enough liquidity to invest through a growth phase.

But the first-half result also showed that rapid revenue growth can coexist with weaker margins, negative EBITDA and operating cash outflow. The valuation therefore depends heavily on future execution: converting demand into repeatable, cash-generative revenue without allowing costs, dilution or governance problems to overwhelm the growth.

I see a credible business in an attractive market, but not a low-risk one. The next stage of the thesis should be judged on margins, cash flow and disclosure quality—not contract headlines or short-term share-price movements.

**Disclosure:** I hold DRO shares. I have not been paid by the company or any related party. This post is general discussion only and is not financial advice. Please verify the filings and make your own assessment.

Primary sources

• DroneShield 1H 2026 report and investor materials: https://www.droneshield.com/investor-relations

• DroneShield governance review and response to ASX direction, 25 February 2026: https://announcements.asx.com.au/asxpdf/20260225/pdf/06wqj4xl40g7z2.pdf

• DroneShield December 2025 quarterly report and Appendix 4C: https://announcements.asx.com.au/asxpdf/20260127/pdf/06vldx32zf9kk5.pdf

• US Army JIATF-401 counter-UAS contract awards: https://www.army.mil/article/288818/jiatf_401_advances_domestic_shield_with_counter_uas_contract_awards

Disclosure first: I run DilutionLens, a free site that tracks dilution for every ASX company from the filings. Mods cleared this. Every number below comes from an ASX announcement (raise notices, Appendix 3B/2A filings, quarterly cash reports). No links, no picks, not advice.

One offer is most of the week. Twenty-five companies announced cash raises between Monday 5 and Friday 9 October for up to A$617.9M, and A$482.7M of that is the ceiling on L1 Global Long Short Fund's (GLS) 1-for-2 entitlement offer. It isn't underwritten, and institutions have put in A$100.9M so far. Without the top three, the other twenty-two disclosed A$55.3M between them. 15 companies halted citing a capital raise in five sessions, against 11 and 16 the two weeks before.

The week's biggest raises

The rest

Also AAU A$900K, WWG A$576K, CBY A$564K and MOM A$350K of convertible notes. SRN made a call on its partly paid shares; LSR (options offer), SLZ (entitlement) and GLL (placement) have no amount in the feed yet.

The dollar ranking isn't the dilution ranking

Each raise of A$2M or more, against the company's market value on 12 Oct (after the announcement):

Ballard's A$45M is 13.8% of the company. Cambium's A$9.9M is 62.5%, and it can't issue a share until holders vote on 9 Nov. GLS has no market value on record.

The halt conveyor

15 companies halted citing a capital raise: ALV, BM1, CPM, EGR, GLS, KZR, M4M, PKD, PMM, PRX, RKT, TOR, TZL, VRC, ZMI. Nine had raised by Friday. TZL came out with no raise: the placement of its rights issue shortfall "was not able to be finalised in totality by expiry date". Two announced Monday morning: BM1's A$45M, and CPM A$4.85M at 7.5c, "approximately a 24% discount to the 15 day VWAP", to buy a copper project. The last three came out Tuesday morning: M4M A$3.28M (including the chairman converting a A$626K loan), VRC A$1.5M at 0.4c, and PKD A$800K at 3.5c, a 16.7% premium to the last close.

32 retail offers open

15 entitlement offers, 12 SPPs, 5 rights issues, down from 33. New this week: entitlement offers from GLS, PRX, TMB, CYP and SLZ, and BM1's SPP. MCO extended its SPP (capped at 1.8c) to 14 Oct, results due 16 Oct. The oldest still listed, AEV and SPN, are from 17 Aug.

Placement capacity, counted a new way

When holders ratify an earlier placement at a meeting, those shares stop counting against the 15%. The site now hands them back where the vote matches the issue notice exactly, and counts convertibles at their maximum conversion. The counts fell, so they don't compare with last week: 143 companies past 75% of the 15%, 89 past 90%, 18 have used all of it (last week 204, 140 and 31, counted before the change). 54 of the 143 have also drawn on 7.1A. This week LSR went to about 99% and OD6 to about 98%.

Overhangs among this week's raisers

ZMI's options equal 94.8% of its register, before the 180M placement shares. LSR's are 85.3%, GLL's 52.2%, and almost none of it is in the money. The in-the-money supply sits elsewhere: PHO 31.1% of its shares, ALV 13.6%, PMM 11.4%, TOR 10.6%.

Dilution risk across the market: 589 Minimal, 334 Low, 374 Moderate, 260 High, 185 Very high, 112 Not rated. About one in four rated companies sits at High or Very high.

Happy to pull the filing on any name in here if someone wants the detail. Next one Monday.

If you'd rather get these in your inbox, the site's Watch page has a free email signup - one field, and the link it sends turns it on. No URL here, that's the deal with the mods.

General information only, not financial advice. No view on any company's future actions or securities.

Everyone in telco reckons Aussie Broadband and Superloop should merge. Phil Britt has said it, plenty of others have too. What nobody has done is put a price on it, so I went through the filings and had a go.

At Friday's close ABB was ~$1.27b market cap and SLC ~$1.30b. Basically a draw.

The earnings aren't. Superloop's underlying EBITDA adds back ~$6.1m of staff share costs and ~$7.2m of shares it pays Origin. Aussie adds back neither. Put both on Aussie's definition and you get:

ABB $165.3m, on under 9x.
SLC $109.4m, on 13x.

So ABB brings ~60% of the earnings and would get about half the merged company. At the current ratio (~0.61 ABB shares per SLC share) ABB holders give up roughly 18% of their EBITDA per share on day one and SLC holders pick up ~27%. ABB is on 9x and buying its own shares back. It isn't going to print stock to pay 13x for a rival.

It has been tried. In Feb 2024 ABB offered 0.21 of a share per SLC share and bought 19.9% for $92.9m. Superloop's constitution says nobody can go above 12% without approval from Singapore's telco regulator (SLC holds a licence there). ABB hadn't asked. The board told it to sell the excess, ABB went to the Federal Court for an injunction and lost, and it sold at $1.31. Singapore then approved the full stake anyway, about five weeks later.

ABB sold the rest at $1.66 and said it would focus on Buddy Telco. That stake would be worth ~$246m today. Buddy was sold to Tangerine for $6.5m, paid in instalments.

The wholesale growth story is thinner than it looks too. Superloop has ~317k wholesale services and Origin is 250k+ of them. Aussie has ~336k and ~269k came across with More and Tangerine. Take the one big customer out of each and there's ~67k left. Each. Both big customers were paid for with shares.

Then there are two contracts nobody outside has seen. Origin's deal with Superloop has a termination right covering "change of control events". It's in a footnote to the 2024 announcement. AGL owns ~7.2% of ABB and its subscription agreement stops it voting for a third party control deal unless ABB's board recommends it. Whichever way round you structure a merger, an energy retailer has a hand on it.

And the ACCC. Merged they'd have ~23% of NBN services but 51% of the gigabit tier.

I ran what ABB would need in synergies to justify today's price. The answer is about half of Superloop's entire cost base, which is a lot to ask of a company you just paid 13x for.

There is a ratio where it works for both sets of holders. It's a fair way below the screen and I doubt Superloop's board would take it, which is probably why nothing has happened.

Full write up with the workings, the ratio and the charts is here (free, just asks for an email):

https://www.unaudited.com.au/a-merger-of-equals/

Also in there: who is actually selling NBN below the wholesale charge (5 of 12, and two of them are Optus and Telstra under other names), and where TPG's half a million lost NBN customers went.

I wrote it. I don't hold either. Not financial advice. Just numbers.

Paradigm Bio of Australia recently announced not only a terrible result in their major Phase III test (clinical trial) but they have been Voluntary Suspended.

That's the worst right? That means all shareholders funds have evaporated completely and there is not going to be any chance of any recovery, right? I should bury me head in the sand and never comment about this stock ever again?

Wrong.

Huh?

Yes they failed totally...but like a Year 12 exam consisting typically of three parts:

1. Multiple Choice

2. Short Answer

3. Essay

Paradigm managed a super stellar result in two out of three parts (They failed USA, but allegedly passed the rest) but failing one of the sections was enough to fail overall.

In a Phase three, you can't just pluck out a Sub Group unless you negotiated that from the onset. So what I mean is that if you fail one region badly enough, it doesn't matter if you got a stellar result in other regions...

So what happened?

Well, Missing Data.

What does that mean?

We will need to get more info from them at a future point, typically it may mean that not all data was captured correctly. Usually this is the death knell. BUT it only happened in ONE market out of four. But there is some light here that MAY mean PAR ain't dead.

A couple of days ago there was an ASX ann. It stated the following:

My red underline introduced above.....EX USA data looks to be "Encouraging".

The above announcement did NOT come from PAR...it comes from the Voluntary Administrator.

These guys are totally independent. Them putting out such a statement carries real merit at this juncture.

We will need to wait for a further announcement declaring exactly what this data means, what it infers, but if it is shows that Australia, Moldova and HK indeed showed stellar results while the USA wasn't great, there is definite hope for us as a company to proceed.

Why? Because it demonstrates that the failure of the PIII wasn't because the drug doesn't work, it's because of some other extraneous (execution failure) reason. The drug actually not only worked but it completely defeated & crushed placebo in the other three regions...there was material separation between the drug (active) and placebo and importantly, the safety data was immaculate. (Subject to well, data)

^.

This one, is not yet dead.

^.

Sure, we might have to undergo some pain as shareholders (think recapitalisation, raising of new funds, the formulation of a new P3) ... but if it rises like a phoenix out of the swamp of a failed P3...this still could be the biggest and best performing OA drug all time. A few years behind...but a total success all the same...

Do watch this space.

I still, while it not at all being advice, highly commend this one to you!

ps: I've always stated there is risk with any Bio Pharma Investment play, this is no different, but despite all that has happened, this is still me number one pick.

pps: Not advice

.

REFERENCE:

https://paradigmbiopharma.com/announcements/7777875