Greg Baynton has offloaded a whopping $8.15m worth of stock in his Brisbane battery tech firm
A surging share price for a Brisbane battery firm has helped the founder, who has just offloaded $8.15 million worth of stock.
City Beat
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CASHED UP
Greg Baynton has offloaded a whopping $8.15 million worth of stock in his Brisbane battery tech firm Novonix.
With the company’s stock price shooting to new highs since June, Baynton sold five million shares over five days last week at an average price of $1.63 apiece.
As recently as March, it was trading at just under 16c.
It’s the first time he’s got rid of stock in Novonix since launching the firm in 2012 and floating it in 2015. But he’s still got plenty of skin in the game with 25 million shares.
Baynton, who also oversees State Gas, told City Beat on Monday he needed the money to settle the purchase of a grazing property and cover some related expenses.
He was reluctant to provide further details of the deal, but said it was part of some investing he’s done in the agricultural sector over the past 12 months to diversify his holdings.
“I’ve been trying to spend less time in the corporate world and get a bit more balance with my working life. I’ve had some pressure from my family and advisers to slow down,’’ he said.
At the same time, he’s extremely bullish on the prospects for Novonix, which announced a breakthrough in June on efforts to create an ultra-long-life battery for electric vehicles.
That, along with speculation the company was poised to announce a deal with Tesla, put a rocket under the share price, which soared 76 per cent in just one day.
His fellow directors, including Tony Bellas, Philip St Baker and former Dow Chemical boss Andrew Liveris, have also done very well out of the surge.
Although Novonix continues to post annual losses, it managed to raise $58m in May to continue its research and manufacturing around the world.
“I’m very excited about the opportunity we have in front of us in the US and further afield,’’ Baynton said.
OUT OF FOCUS
A former financial adviser on the Sunshine Coast has been charged with 10 counts of fraud related to the alleged misappropriation of nearly $1m of his clients’ funds.
Brett Andrew Gordon, who previously operated now-defunct Refocus Financial Group and Diverse Capital Management at Maroochydore, allegedly withdrew $502,000 from the super funds of six clients between 2015 and 2017.
ASIC also claims Gordon redirected $473,600 from super clients who invested in a Diverse property development to settle personal debts and expenses, as well as Refocus expenses from 2016 to 2018.
Both companies collapsed in 2018, with Refocus going down at ASIC’s behest owing nearly $930,000 to 17 unsecured creditors.
Creditors chasing $2m appointed liquidators to Diverse, which acted as a speculative home builder.
Gordon, who launched Refocus seven years ago, could not be reached for comment on Monday.
He has not yet entered a plea in the case, which returns to Maroochydore Magistrates Court on September 25.
BLUES BE GONE
A day trip to Hamilton Island for a spot of golf is one way to ease these pandemic blues and get rid of that damned cabin fever.
City Beat spies tell us that Alliance Airlines top guns Scott McMillan and Lee Schofield hosted a planeload of about 100 bizoids up to the island late last week.
Among those kicking up their heels were Wagners chairman Denis Wagner, Morgans trio Tim Crommelin, Peter Evans and Geoff Voller, legal eagle Nick Stevens, two-time MotoGP world champion Casey Stoner and InterContinental Hayman Island executive Scott Downes.
We hear the entourage, featuring plenty of loud Hawaiian shirts, put quite a dent in the supply of Alliance-branded golf balls, with nearly 600 apparently going missing in the rough.
To help take the edge off, Schofield and his senior managers served as flight attendants on the return to Brisbane, handing out gin and tonics made with firewater from local distiller Sunshine & Sons.