DroneShield shares slip after defending CEO share selloff, false contract announcement
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More news: Shares in DroneShield slipped in morning trade after it responded to an ASX query defending a move by three of its directors, including CEO Oleg Vornik, to sell all their stock, including $8.76 million on the day an incorrect contract announcement was issued.
At 11:51am AEDT, shares in DroneShield had slipped 2.8% to $1.92 and were up 155.3% in the year to date.
DroneShield also filed change in director’s interest notices that indicate Vornik, chair Peter James and director Jethro Marks sold a collective $8.76 million on the day that DroneShield issued a false contract announcement on 10 November that lifted the share price before being retracted.
On that day, Vornik sold more than $6.5 million while James and Marks sold more than $1.6 million and $613,000 respectively.
DroneShield defends CEO selldown, axed contract announcement
The news: DroneShield has defended the selldown of shares last week by three of its directors, including CEO Oleg Vornik, and said that the withdrawal of a contract announcement was due to a correspondence error from a US counterparty.
The context: In a response to an ASX query, DroneShield said it was not aware of any agreement among the three directors regarding the sale of shares. The directors also informed the company they did not have an agreement to dispose shares.
DroneShield said it immediately disclosed the information to the market upon the disposal of the shares.
Vornik sold $49.5 million worth of stock, his entire holding of ordinary shares, while chair Peter James and board director Jethro Marks sold a combined $17.3 million in shares.
Regarding the $7.6 million contract announcement, which occurred two days before the selldown, DroneShield said there was an error in the correspondence from the US counterparty, which marked the orders as new purchase orders.
The company was forced to retract the announcement, telling investors the contracts were “inadvertently marked as new” due to an “administrative error”.
What they said: "The DroneShield US representative failed to perform the necessary manual check on the orders, and as a result marked the orders as new contracts rather than revised contracts, before distributing the order to the DroneShield team," the company said today.
DroneShield said it plans to engage external advisors to undertake a review of its continuous disclosure policy and make appropriate actions once advice has been obtained.
The company announced on Wednesday that its US chief executive Matt McCrann has resigned from the business, effective immediately.
The source: ASX
