The latest Investing Matters Podcast with Jean Roche, Co-Manager of Schroder UK Mid Cap Investment Trust has just been released. Listen here.
London South East prides itself on its community spirit, and in order to keep the chat section problem free, we ask all members to follow these simple rules. In these rules, we refer to ourselves as "we", "us", "our". The user of the website is referred to as "you" and "your".
By posting on our share chat boards you are agreeing to the following:
The IP address of all posts is recorded to aid in enforcing these conditions. As a user you agree to any information you have entered being stored in a database. You agree that we have the right to remove, edit, move or close any topic or board at any time should we see fit. You agree that we have the right to remove any post without notice. You agree that we have the right to suspend your account without notice.
Please note some users may not behave properly and may post content that is misleading, untrue or offensive.
It is not possible for us to fully monitor all content all of the time but where we have actually received notice of any content that is potentially misleading, untrue, offensive, unlawful, infringes third party rights or is potentially in breach of these terms and conditions, then we will review such content, decide whether to remove it from this website and act accordingly.
Premium Members are members that have a premium subscription with London South East. You can subscribe here.
London South East does not endorse such members, and posts should not be construed as advice and represent the opinions of the authors, not those of London South East Ltd, or its affiliates.
Thank you Aunboy and Sonny for taking the time to reply, greatly appreciated for your explanation information and views. Ref the landlord of the hq, they better hope they get another tenant after being unaccomadating to fairpoint, the economy may not be favourable to finding tenants if things roll over, gla
Dadean, Yes, Fairpoint owns 100% of Simpson Millar and the IVA business. David "incompetent" Broadbent together with the Simpson Millar top and Doorway Capital have conjured up a plan here to grab the assets, protect their jobs and screw the shareholders. Doorway Capital are in full control of the entire company since they took over the line of credit. They are very active in everything they hold in their portfolio and they simply refused to provide funding towards the IVA business (Lease issue). The line of credit from Doorway Capital is backed by our assets so when we can't pay they can foreclose and get their hands on all of our assets. Simply holding the assets as it is now still leaves the lease contract intact so what better way than to let the entity (FRP) that signed the lease contract go bust. Best way to get rid of the contract and for Doorway Capital to grab the assets. Normally company assets would be sold to the highest bidder but that doesn't seem to be happening here. Also, most of the company is still running pretty good, it's just the IVA part which is less than 20% of our revenue now. From the company press release: "The Board do not expect this announcement to have a material impact on the planned disposal of the IVA and Claims divisions to a third party, as previously announced on 12 July 2017." That's even weirder, so even after Fairpoint goes bust the IVA business will still be running? How? From a homeless shelter or will someone else pay for the lease? True Master Plan! And a quote from the Simpson Millar team: "It said in a statement: “Whilst we are saddened that this has been a difficult time for Fairpoint Group, it is business as usual at Simpson Millar and we do not anticipate any significant changes as a result of Fairpoint Group’s announcement." http://www.thebusinessdesk.com/northwest/news/2007617-fairpoint-bring-administrators Simpson Millar have more than 500 legal staff and none of them were able to find a way to get out of the lease contract? Anyone who truly believes that is an idiot. So in the end it looks like the IVA part will still be operational and get sold at some point and over at Simpson Millar it's "Business as usual" while they are predicting revenue growth in 2018. The only downside is that Fairpoint shareholders lose everything but i doubt Broadbent, the Simpson Millar top and Doorway Capital really give a $hit! Our only hope is that our major shareholders put up some sort of fight here. Fingers firmly crossed for such a thing.
I don't know how things work but if simpson and Millar was 100‰ owned by fairpoint does that not make us shareholders 100‰ own of simpson and Millar, it was just a couple of years ago that they paid something like 50million for? Or are they keeping that asset and just dumping the shareholders?
Butterry. I'm in the same position just I am sitting on a larger loss. Us shareholders here are being screwed. They have conveniently emptied the PLC for their benefit.
Ambulance chasers? Are you sure you did some DD on these Arsene? They don't operate in that market.
I have about £5000 worth of shares here.. 1. Could we not re-lease the property to someone? And rethink the location.. To satisfy the loan. 2. Are there not enough retained earnings here to resell for investors.. 3. Can shareholders come together and figure out a plan C? 4. Surely someone could be interested in buying the financial part of this company.. Selling off the lease and paying off shareholders appropriately.. I refuse to believe I should be losing this money..
At the risk of sounding smug, I posted on 12 December 2016 "Don't touch this share or any other one in the sector. It's finished". Today's announcement is no surprise. Glad to see the back of these ambulance chasers.
They have already announced they want to break the lease and as the debt side is all winding down what benefit could negotiating with the landlord achieve? There is nothing operational left to require the building in Addlington. It'll just end up effectively going back to being Simpson Millar as it was but with some new people in top roles (the last team having earned healthy payouts...)
Ok - show of hands, who didn't see that one coming? *waves hand in the air*
Sorry, no idea on the lifting of the suspension. I'd be wealthy if I could accurately predict such things!
I agree that SM might, and hopefully will, be worth something after this debacle but what value is there in listing that as a PLC? It's already a trading llp, has some funding in place now and presumably a reasonable book of business to generate income from. Why burden it with the overheads of a PLC - would you invest again? Once bitten and all that...
Must be circa £4m rent and bus.rates liability dodged by early lease exit. That can only be a good thing for the business as a whole, but at the cost of those staff in the Debt part of the operation.
AUNBoy, Of course the £5M is for Simpson Millar, why the hell would a law firm capital provider give millions to support a business they are shutting down and has no future, makes no sense whatsoever. The reason Simpson Millar requires a lot of funding is because part of the restructuring plan was they were also trying to reduce the number of legal staff by as much as 300 people which would certainly be a drain on cash due to redundancy payments and also shows the legal side of the company is not performing well either. The debt at the end of 2016 was only a couple million higher than anticipated mainly due to the restructuring. Debt started building long before the end of 2016 through the purchase of Colemans, Simpson Millar, merging the two and the regulatory impact on the debt business and big fat earn out payment to the legal top brass. If investors were surprised by the year end debt position they should've done a bit more in the dyor department because the debt position could be seen from a mile away with a little dyor..lol The share price nosedived due to the trading "materially below market expectations" and "significantly lower revenues" statements from the company. This is an illiquid share which can cause massive swings either up or down. Our largest shareholder has continued to hold (even added a bit) their position so the drop is mostly down to small private investors selling an illiquid share which caused the sharp drop. "Because the finance deal only relates to Simpson Millar my guess is they are winding down other parts of the business that are unprofitable." You don't have to "guess" on the winding down part. I have already stated they were winding down the non core debt business. This was also stated by the company. Their plan is to continue a legal services provider. As for the capital injection: They had several £M left under the current credit facility and now they have received £5M of fresh cash. Add to that the £5M in cost saving which according to them should be fully visible in H2 2017. If this isn't enough to see them through to profitablity AUNBoy, it not only means they have been/still are burning millions at an alarming rate but also that the turnaround plan is a complete failure and that there is no viable business here. I doubt that Doorway would have provided the extra millions if that were the case. Their return to profitablity should be in sight otherwise the business is doomed and Doorway are just throwing good money after bad and somehow i seriously doubt those guys are that stupid.
The entire line of credit has been transferred and they have received a new £5M injection of capital. The debt problem has been with this company for many years and they should not require a fresh capital injection after the new £5M funding, the only thing they have to do is turn profitable and start paying down debt, that's it. The reason for a credit facility like this is to prevent share dilution. They don't need a new backer as they are currently fully backed by Doorway Capital. DYOR
Given that they have already found a new backer, why did you post that article?
I think Doorway Capital will make sure they pull their fingers out of their @rses. ;) As far as the restructuring plan goes, i would like to think that Dooway presented them with a clear strategy they would need to implement in exchange for the line of credit so we should see some postive news on that front imo. I doubt they would have agreed to fund the business if the company was going nowhere. As for dilution, i would only support a small placing if it was done at around 30/40p. Given the 52 week high of 121p and 52 week low at current levels a placing at today's price would be a kick in the nuts for long term holders. Also don't want to see a dividend with this company ever again, they should use any future profit to pay down debt or expand the business. Given the extra 5M funding they shouldn't require any extra funds at all before turning profitable again!
AUNBoy, this is very good news. The loan has been transferred to a specialist provider of capital to law firms which seems like the perfect fit. The old business only represents a very small portion of our overall revenue stream and Doorway Capital clearly sees potential in Simpson Millar. They should be able to publish 2016 results very soon and the best part is that there will be no share dilution. :)
He started as CFO in July 2016. AIB seems to be having a problem with our 2017 results, most likely our cash burn, so i would say that's pretty much all on Broadbent, both in his role as CFO and CEO. He was there during the entire restructuring plan as CFO so it seems he 's quite the clown. As i have said before, sheer incompetence. Just hope he's also the kind of clown that can put a smile on our faces at some point. :)
Hilarious, from Broadbent's Linkedin page: Current: "Fairpoint Group PLC, I am looking for a Non-Executive role in a PE or PLC business, which presents significant challenge." Perhaps he should consider a role as a stand-up comedian. lol
Broadbent was made CEO in March, prior to that he was Fairpoint's CFO. Maybe they should just look for someone else entirely. ;) Debt was not a big issue because our cashflow was high enough but apparently this has changed, they should have released a statement on current debt and trading to see what has happened since the end of March.
Agreed ; )
Revenue projections on core business for 2017 is only -15%. Not that shocking and they were already rapidly closing down the non core business. I think the real problem why AIB pulled their support is because the whole 5M cost savings program failed, why else would they still require further funding? Management screwed up on the whole restructuring plan (costing many millions more imo) and i think they are nowhere near profitability, otherwise AIB would have given them the extra bit of time. Revenue is not the issue here, it's their way of spending (or wasting) millions and it's also another clear sign that it's better to use profit to reduce debt instead of paying a dividend.
AUNBoy, my below comment was directed at Arsenewenger where i quoted him to get a response to which sector he was talking about. As far as being quietly optimistic, i also think capital will be available but share dilution would have to be minimal because if they are still nowhere near profitability this will just turn into a massive dilution death spiral. They used a banking facility to prevent share dilution so the best outcome would be to find another bank that would be willing to provide a full line of credit although i'm pretty sure those odds are quite slim.
"No surprise at all. Told you to get out last December. This sector has had its day. Sorry for those who have lost." Which sector would that be?
No surprise at all. Told you to get out last December. This sector has had its day. Sorry for those who have lost.