The proposal to flip the entire board of Redbubble’s parent company Articore Group was voted down in an EGM on Friday last week.
Articore is also the parent company of TeePublic, another print-on-demand marketplace, focusing on clothing items.
The stoush was brought on by Redbubble founder Martin Hosking and former chair Richard Cawsey, which called for the removal of the entire four-person board and four new appointments to match.
All eight resolutions were voted against. All resolutions garnered around two-thirds majority against all resolutions, with some hitting 40/60.
The proposal to appoint Cawsey as director had the second-highest positive vote, with 40.24 per cent calling for it to happen.
The highest ‘for’ vote was noted in the proposal to oust Robin Low as director.
The highest ‘against’ vote was noted in the proposal to oust Robin Mendelson as both director and chair of Articore.
In a signed letter to fellow shareholders shared in June, Cawsey and Hosking noted that fundamental issues of delays to take action, and persistent concerns regarding governance, accountability and credible execution of strategy “remain unresolved”.
The correspondence with fellow shareholders also included a five-point roadmap.
“Articore’s share price has collapsed from a high of $7.04 in January 2021 to around $0.22 today,” the note read. “This destruction of shareholder value has been, in our view, overseen by a board that has too often been reactive, inward-looking and slow to act in your interests.”
Since the resolved EGM, Articore’s share price has bumped up to 28 cents.
In recent ASX releases, Articore confirmed that 90 per cent of the group’s revenue is generated outside Australia and approximately 60 per cent of employees are based in the US.
“Since its renewal in June, your new board – with deep Australian and North American corporate and e-commerce expertise – has acted with urgency and a clear focus to stabilise the business and accelerate our turnaround strategy in lockstep with the group’s new CEO and managing director, Vivek Kumar,” Mendelson told shareholders on Friday. “We are seeing the benefit of our disciplined approach.
“The group has just delivered its best fourth quarter in five years. Underlying cash flow for the quarter was $2.5 million, a significant improvement of $6.0 million on the prior corresponding period.
“This strong result for the last quarter was due to a 430 basis point improvement in the Group’s gross profit margin and a 16 per cent reduction in operating expenses versus the prior corresponding period.
“We are confident that we can build on this momentum going forward. In FY26, the group is guiding to an EBIT range between $2 million to $8 million, alongside underlying cash flow between $5 million and $12 million. This is significant as the group has not achieved positive EBIT in five years.”