The next focusIR Investor Webinar takes places on 14th May with guest speakers from Blue Whale Growth Fund, Taseko Mines, Kavango Resources and CQS Natural Resources fund. Please register 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.
Agree with your comments lemonade311, have now exited my position completely at a painful loss but will live to fight another day
Also they are now talking about transitioning to a tech first company in the update which means their current model isn't working.
But they don't even have a CTO?!
This is a deceptively bad trading update imo.
New clients have only grown 5% which is where future revenue growth comes from. Which means next year trading update will have low growth + lower margins as they have hired more people.
AlphaFX beat expectations with insane growth. This means they are taking AGFX market share and beating them.
No solid numbers on international growth either is a red flag. Just a weird sentence on 'half-on-half' growth in netherlands office whatever that means.
I guess we will never know why they got rid of Numis. I don't think rebasing expected revenue growth to a more achievable and lower level is really what the market wants. Growth of 23% sounds ok but its peers AFX and EQLS have both done around 50%. And AGFX has needed to increase its headcount 44% from 69 to 100 to do so. I think that the combination of these two factors means that profit will be below the 2020 level. I liquidated most of my holding this morning, this result has proven the company lacks operational leverage
I'm reading plenty of waffle in the TU, presumably because there hasn't been much progress to report.
As others have said here, in order to increase revenue they seem to need to increase costs (staff hires) almost as fast... which is not ideal in my view.
I couldn't find anything re the dividend.
All-in-all, underwhelming.
The additional hires will hit the bottom line in the short term but you would hope it would pay dividends in the longer term.
I guess that's one of the reasons they've replaced Numis with Singers...Numis's forecasts were unrealistic....now they've got a chance to get ahead of the market..great news.
I wouldn't say that 34.5 v expectation of 36.3 is broadly in line. That 31 in additional hires will hit the bottom line
Last year performance broadly in line with expectations, margins and looks good, record clients number, Netherlands delivered 50-50, Australia starts this year. All good, hopefully rerates in the coming weeks, months. GL
News hits the markets imperfectly, hence the ups and downs of a chart. Something tells me people are expecting a fairly good trading update. Time will tell of course, may have got this disastrously wrong, wouldn’t be the first time, ha!
Argentex doesn't seem to post RNS's often, they had the same timeframe in 2019 interim -> trading update.
I wouldn't read too much into it.
But yes I am also hoping for good results. Considering AFX has amazing results I expect big things from AGFX here and if not I will be questioning why.
Well timed , lots of buying today , I presume we will get an update soon I don't think I've ever seen a company go so long with no RNS . I just hope no news is good news!
Topped up around 73p today, target 86p, not long to wait in my opinion. Risk management in place of course, nothing is a certainty in this game.
But yes I agree volume is definitely significant today, I spotted a few chunky trades and today is the highest day of volume since the negative reaction to the interim results in November. Perhaps anticipation of a decent update? EQLS and AFX were both received well, the sector has some tailwinds, but AGFX sales growth has proven far inferior to peers. Feels like some basement prices here but I'm not adding until I see some numbers
Nothing goes down in a straight line
Some uptick in volume today. Make of that what you will.
Miserable looking chart!! Don't think we can even blame the Jani overhang anymore. Last year there was a trading update first week of April so news may be expected soon. Its been 5 months since we've heard a peep. I don't think even Harry can be feeling enthusiastic about the last year
Awful looking chart for Argentex. Co-founder's share sale at 80p, rather than representing an overhang is starting to look like a good bit of business (for him). We need some good news. When is old Harry updating us? Is he brushing up on his thesaurus of superlatives??
Cheers ragnar, you made me chuckle on a dismal morning!
i think Harry must write it. Perhaps he is looking at the chart upside down
I'll take that sentence with a pinch of salt. Actually I've rarely come across a company with more rampy language in their RNSs - everything is 'strong', 'surging' 'market leading' and the management's focus 'robust', 'unswerving', 'tireless', etc etc. Who writes this stuff? Puts me right off .
Hoping exactly that Wiseys. Then perhaps we will see margins approach those of AFX... in 2024?
Key difference between the two that I have noticed is the customer base. The most recent AFX number of customers was 754 versus AGFX 1241. So AFX has much larger customers and more revenue per customer. And industry breadth is also greater at AFX, which has only 18% exposure to financials compared to 40% at AGFX.
this sentence is key ..."The Group's unswerving long-term strategic focus has technology at its core and it will continue to evolve its proposition, products and footprint to meet the growing needs of its client base and the changing way they interact with Argentex. ".....if they can re-position themselves as more tech orientated as AFX have done they should re rate..underneath they are v.similar businesses and don't warrant such an extreme valuation differential IMO
The year end is 31 March and last year the TU was early April, one can only assume the same for this year. 10.5 months through the year I wonder if they have any idea what the full year number will be? Peers which are performing better, are better at updating and have premium valuations gave us this info...
- AFX TU 3 weeks before their 31 December year end confirmed expectations to be exceeded, now that is class and speaks volumes about their ability to manage the business. The update in January confirmed a 67% increase in revenue
- EQLS TU 3 weeks before year end confirmed a 51% increase in revenue and confirmed 52% in January
So in the current market every company should be nailing it but based on expectations (which the company never confirmed are appropriate in their last update) AGFX revenue is expected to grow 29% and that seems to be in doubt given the H1 miss indicating some stalling momentum. And that 29% is after a significant increase in costs: new office, new IT and a 35% increase in headcount but only a 27% increase in client numbers... makes you wonder how scalable is this business and when they truly generate a return on new staff investment
As a reminder of the most recent 'outlook' this is what AGFX posted... hints at a warning not to look too short term because they will continue to increase costs now for longer term revenue growth
"As the macro-economic environment continues to improve, the Company's confidence in a sustained return to growth increases. The Group's unswerving long-term strategic focus has technology at its core and it will continue to evolve its proposition, products and footprint to meet the growing needs of its client base and the changing way they interact with Argentex. "
"Are we sleepwalking into a horrible result?" As you say, market confidence is low that we aren't. They posted interim results on 8th November, does anyone know when the Trading Update might be?