Free sample site PinchMe has been forced to reveal its ‘secret’ new customer, under the ASX’s year-old updated disclosure rules.

A terse two-sentence update to yesterday’s announcement said the new contractee is Nestlé Purina PetCare Company.

In the original announcement, PinchMe (ASX:PIN) breathlessly told investors it had signed its “largest sampling contract so far for 2019” with a “longstanding repeat customer”.

It didn’t add that it was also the only contract signed in 2019, or indeed since they listed in October.

PinchMe not only name-dropped Nestle in the IPO prospectus but in the statement on Thursday even called it “one of the world’s premier pet food manufactures (sic)”.

PinchMe declined to comment on why they didn’t name Nestle in the first statement.

You must follow ze rules

As a result, it fell afoul of the ASX’s crackdown that started in early 2018 around contract announcements.

Disclosure additions require companies to tell their investors basic details such as who the customer is, how much the contract is worth and for how long, what is being sold, and any other conditions that might impact on the deal.

In other words, companies need to have a very good reason if they don’t plan to include this information.

The ASX is prepared to suspend companies which can’t or won’t.

In April last year a company called Connected IO was suspended from trading for a month because it couldn’t get the new, international, customers it had just signed to go public.

Eventually it managed to convince those customers, US telco At&T and cybersecurity firm Netsurion, to go on the record.

Not the only trouble…

PinchMe had to slash its three month old revenue guidance in January for the 2018 calendar year by 13 per cent to $US9m.

It blamed a prolonged IPO listing process for taking its attention away from the business.

It said it had 4.8m members with profiles by the end of the year but not how many active members — those which had used the site within the last 30 days. The company had 1.4m active members at June 30 last year.

PinchMe had $2.7m in cash at the end of December, after raising $8m two months earlier.

PinchMe declined to comment on where the money from the IPO has gone.

The company’s share price has plunged from the 50c offer price to hit 17c on Friday.

PinchMe shares since they listed in October.

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