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-------------------------------------------PART 1-----------------------------------------------
ExclusiveNews by Education Investor who in this article calls [Capita Plc ESS] division an antiquated software system in comparison to iSAMS now owned
The [ IRIS Software Group]
Global published on 20th October 2020.
The link below is behind a paywall
https://www.educationinvestor.co.uk/iris-software-group-acquires-isams-confirming-educationinvestor-global-exclusive/
[ IRIS Software Group acquires iSAMS ] published on the [20th October 2020]
Private equity-owned school software supplier IRIS Software Group today announced it has acquired iSAMS, the private school MIS provider Private equity-owned school software supplier IRIS Software Group today announced it has acquired iSAMS, the management information system (MIS) used by a third of UK private schools.
As previously published by Education Investor Global two weeks ago that Private equity-backed trade buyer closes in on iSAMS as posted on the 6th October 2020
--------------------------------------------------------------Part 2-----------------------------------------------------------
--Education Investor Global published on the [6th October 2020]--
[Private equity-backed trade buyer closes in on iSAMS.]
A private equity-owned school software supplier is close to signing a deal to acquire iSAMS, the MIS used by a third of UK private schools. This publication has learnt from two sources that IRIS Education, part of IRIS Software Group, which is jointly owned by buyout houses Hg Capital and Intermediate Capital Group, is on the cusp of taking over iSAMS. A well-placed source was this week “100% confident” that a controlling stake in iSAMS will be purchased by IRIS Education, which sells a range of accountancy and administration products to more than 11,000 UK education institutions. A final agreement between IRIS Education and iSAMS is imminent, it is understood. When contacted by this publication, a spokesperson for IRIS Software Group said it was unable to comment on any market speculations. A deal, the value of which is unclear, would create a liquidity event for iSAMS’ shareholders – Alastair Price, founder and managing director, and Gregory Pakes, technical director, who earlier this year appointed Grant Thornton to explore sale options. Meanwhile, it would present to IRIS Education an opportunity to expand the organisation’s footprint in the in the UK school MIS market, which is undergoing significant change as a result of the auction of Capita SIMS and a merger between Arbor Education and The Key – competitors to iSAMS. In acquiring iSAMS, IRIS Education may see a unique chance to snag market share from rival providers amid an unprecedented shake-up of the sector, in which Capita SIMS is the largest player, servicing around 80% of UK state schools. Despite being a minnow in comparison to Capita SIMS, iSAMS has an advantage over the market incumbent: its suite of management tools, which is used by 30% of British private schools, is cloud-based, whereas Capita SIMS runs on antiquated in-school servers.
---------------------------------------------------Part 3------------------------------------------
IRIS Software Group Executive Chairman, Kevin Dady spent 18 years with Capita, during which he had oversight of SIMS. By purchasing iSAMS, IRIS Education would also gain a large slice of the UK private school market, in which the organisation has has limited reach, as it sells chiefly to state funded multi academy trusts. iSAMS, whose profit has been touted at around £1 million by corporate financiers from Grant Thornton, claims to be the first ever cloud based school MIS provider. In the year ended 30 September, 2019, the company recorded turnover of £8.4 million – up from £6.9 million a year prior – and profit of nearly £632,000. Sources suggested that iSAMS would be a “good fit” within IRIS Education’s cloud-based product portfolio, which spans several budgeting, payments and administration software platforms. It makes sense; iSAMS would fit well with their [IRIS Education’s] accountancy product,” commented one source. Another said: “It makes sense with IRIS’s other bits and pieces. An acquisition of iSAMS by IRIS Education would also see London-listed Intermediate Capital Group deepen its foray into the UK education sector. Intermediate Capital Group bought a stake in IRIS Software Group in 2018, in a deal that valued it at around £1.3 billion – which, at the time, was the largest-ever UK private equity software buyout. Hg Capital has held a stake in IRIS Software Group for over a decade, most recently through its Saturn investment vehicle. Hg Capital knows the UK school MIS market well: its co-founder and former chief executive Ian Armitage is chairman of The Key, which is merging with rival Arbor Education, in which Armitage personally holds a minority stake. Armitage orchestrated the tie-up between the two organisations, it is understood,in which buyout group CBPE Capital is poised to acquire a minority stake as revealed exclusively by this publication. A source familiar with Hg Capital strategy told this publication that the group is highly motivated to grow IRIS Education because it is in comparison to the parent group.iSAMS is a good opportunity for them [IRIS Education], though they have to be careful they do not apply the normal IRIS buy-and-cut-costs model to drive up margins towards the 60% average that IRIS generates elsewhere, the insider added. I don’t think there are easy opportunities to share costs without damage to product or service.
Founded in 2005 after Price had been inspired to solve the frustrations of his teachers at the illustrious Rugby School, which he attended alongside business partner Pakes, iSAMS is used by more than 950 schools in over 75 countries and has more than 500,000 daily users. In addition to its core school MIS platform, iSAMS also offers three mobile applications geared at teachers, students and parents, which it launched in 2015, as well as data compliance functions and a school software marketplace
-------------------------FINAL PART 4 - of the Education Investor post 20-October-2020----------------
iSAMS is a web-based MIS used by people involved with a school, including data administrators, staff, students and parents, offering a range of reporting and engagement tools, covering admissions, academic reporting and tracking, examinations, wellbeing, communication, HR, fee billing and accounting. IRIS Software Group chairman Kevin Dady said: “As part of our growth strategy, we continue to identify opportunities to expand both domestically and internationally. Domestically we are seeing a growing need for schools to not only move to a SaaS environment for finance, HR and payroll, but increase their engagement with parents, provide more detailed reporting, and create more efficient, paperless administration systems. IRIS’s heritage, combined with its 11,000-plus school customers, investment in cloud technology and sector expertise will help iSAMS in the next phase of its growth. Alastair Price, managing director of iSAMS, added: “IRIS shares our vision for the next stage of growth. Its track record in the education market makes it the perfect partner. The support for management and its culture complements the next chapter of the iSAMS story. We are excited about IRIS investing into the business, reinforcing our commitment to service excellence for our customers worldwide. Grant Thornton oversaw the auction of iSAMS.
Thanks all for your attention. GLA.DYOR. Happy Weekend all the long Capita shareholders.
I'm still holding my Capita £20k shares at 31.5p average. Smile.(*__*).NoFear
NOfear....Iris Software acquisition of ISAMS....is a response to the threat of Capita pending sale of SIMS....probably to Francisco partners....Francisco, a school management rival also uses a Cloud based system rather than Servers ....Conclusion....this deal is a defensive move by Iris Software to Capita SIMS sale....IMHO Capita will need to respond quickly....by sealing SIMS deal....Great post NOfear....Reg
Antiquated and not cloud based is not an immediate issue in the education/school environment imo. Schools are cash strapped and to some degree depend on their IT autonomy to maintain every day school life. I for one, are sometimes helpless at work due to IT downtime because of cloud based services and I'm in the construction industry.
I think most schools, at least for the time being, won't fix anything that isn't broke. As contracts end, things will start to change over but it will be slow.
My conclusion to this is that it won't change things for a few years but will bring Capita's ESS 's market dominance to people's attention.
Before I retired, I did a fair amount of work with schools networking and at the time (only 2 years ago) most schools had nowhere near an adequate network for cloud based services least of all primary schools..
Hi NoFear here.
How are you all doing today ?
Are we ready for the coming MagicMonday?
@Regvarny, @Moksha, @Mrcautious.
Also a big shout to:
Dave_1, DisabledMan, Eatstocks,Eegaisie204,Club1967,Zedmans,Supermanny11,Samb69,BenFou86,Night_Watch,EspecialC,Gotitwrongagain,Michaelgrogan,Scrambler,HeresHopin,Investing101,AimMaster2018,eviking,NewSid and everyone that is still a holding long position with Capita Plc. Don't worry because only the brave ones like yourselves will have survived the past week MM's heavy shaking of the Capita shares tree. We won't be fooled in selling up. What goes down must also go uP...uP.. and uP.
Thanks for taking your time to give your opinion on my recent 4-part post. I don't get the fact that we're still getting very nasty negative remarks from the likes of [OWLS and Bertles] who don't add any useful supportive information in support of the Capita future share price. Nothwithstanding the fact that I've never made any claims that my twitter campaign was responsible for Schroders selling a very small amount of their Capita investments, this does take away the coincedental fact that my campaign started on the 16th October 2020 and since then many odd changes took place between Schroders and Capita Plc removing that section from their website quarterly newsletter which they used the proper regulatory RNS channel, they would a great difficulty to remove what was posted on the 14th october 2020.
Anyhow, I'm also of the same opinion that the Francisco Partners could be the last bidders left to negotiate with the Capita ESS sale as they were the ones that would had paid the most out the four and then three selected bidders with F.Partners being the most likely to succeed as was mentioned in my 1st October 2020 3-part posts [Capita’s Education Software Solutions (ESS) unit and the private bidders UPDATE.
I would advise everyone to re-read my 3-Part post 1st October 2020 found in page 9 of this forum. Moreover,after you've read it, go and read my yesterday 4-Part posts on page 1 about the IRIS Software Group buying out iSAMS which today regvarny kindly said that the IRIS iSams acquisition was to compete with Capita ESS unit who has insofar kept the most dominant position in the eductional software UK markets. Smile.(*__*).NoFear and GLA,DYOR. Doom & Gloomers can take a dump.Hahahah.
CORRECTION:
It should had read as:
Nothwithstanding the fact that I've never made any claims that my twitter campaign was responsible for Schroders selling a very small amount of their Capita investments, this does take away the coincedental fact that my campaign had only started on the 16th October 2020. Since then, many odd changes took place with Schroders selling and Capita Plc removing that section from their website quarterly newsletter where it said they would had sold the ESS unit by end of year 2020. Had Capita used the official and proper regulatory RNS channel, they would a great difficulty to remove what was posted on the 14th october 2020 without a valid reason. They chose not to issue that quartely update on their website newsroom section but did not followed it up with a RNS. In future, I will pay more attention to Capita Plc RNS rather to their newsroom updates.
thanks no fear
Great post by NOFEAR. Owls/Bertles I’m struggling to understand your reasons or ambitions to be posting on others opinions or research on Capita in such a negative way? What is gained by this?
All I can say is we have held tight so far and aiming to make profit in which we all aspire to do so. Can’t tell if your both invested or not with the negative comments but yet so much interest on the Capita BB?? Or maybe just keyboard warriors either way enjoy the weekend all and let’s get ready for the blue Monday. Peace out Z
Quote by No Fear.....
"Since my twitting campaign took off, I've managed to get a silent reaction from Schroder Plc by reducing a small amount of their major position in Capita"
Errrrrr yes you did.....they are your words and utterly laughable too
Ridiculous comment. LOL
Bertles
Your quote:
"Errrrrr yes you did.....they are your words and utterly laughable too
Ridiculous comment. LOL"
Part of my quote:
"I've managed to get a silent reaction from Schroder Plc by reducing a small amount of their major position in Capita.
Don't you know that when asked, investment funds like Schroders Plc, would never admit to rumoursor markets speculations that nowdays it's easily and ften disseminated by the financial media news channels with neither of the involved parties denying or admiting to the published media rumours.
Unless Schroders Plc publicly discloses their reasons for closing a very minor position in Capita Plc, nobody will ever know the truth behind such tiny downturn move especially when they were almost on weekly basis increasing their Capita Plc major shareholder. This constant increase of Schroders positions, was making it look more like they were planning to defend their substantial investments in Capita Plc from the other Capita major holders and have more of a control over the company present and future operational decisions.
If and I say it again... If I had or will have any positive or negative response from the Instituional Investors due to my on-and-off directed twitter campaign, it will most likely never be acknowledged as most ii would rather keep silent and await the right moment for when to let markets officially know with an RNS.
So, here we are I'm finding myself trying to explain to your two brain cells that struggles to keep switched on as I overload you with 'apparent nonsense'. My question to you... Why it bothers you so much what I've been posting about the bidding for Capita ESS unit, and Schroders possibly reading my twitter posts and then maybe or just maybe, they decide to 'silently' close a small Capita position? Frankly, you will never know my twitter campaign activity results.
I can today confirm in this forum that I got a very good result with thousands of impressions and clicks received over my posted tweets.
So please Bertles and OWLS, take another DUMP.
Smile.(*__*).NoFear
NOFEAR, well done mate.
Do you really think the MM are holding down the SP for a possible takeover?
I went through all this last month with ITV and Goldman Sachs .... (all rumours may I add so If anyone in itv can back me up here it will be appreciated) Goldman sold some shares as strong rumours were circulating that they were orchestrating the takeover, rumours of takeover fizzled out so they sold some and the SP rocketed 50% in 2 weeks.
Do you think we have the same scenario here with Schroders?
Nofear.... also add no one could understand the buy to sell ratio answers the SP wasn't moving regarding itv...Very similar to what we have experienced this week
@Zedmans, Owl bought his shares at 1.4£ (I believe) and been dropping ever since for all the reasons out there continuously. Basically, it's a lost cause for him and he will not make his investment back anytime soon even if Capita is back on course with their restructuring or whatever that is Capita wants to give reason for.
If Capita reaches 60p on Monday (Which I'm not saying that it will happen because I'm not a ramper), most of us here will make quite a good profit but it will still be more than 50% down for Owl. So it's all about your average share price you're holding. I'm at 39p.
Same goes to dividend. Though i might not be invested the same amount as owl, my average price can fetch more number of shares with lesser amount of investment. So depending on how much we are invested at what average price, most of us will be getting the same amount of dividend as Owl.
Also, not saying there will be dividend cos we all know it's clear as day, not dividend anytime soon.
Good Evening Dave_1 Thanks for your kind support
"Do you really think the MM are holding down the SP for a possible takeover?"
I've got that inner feeling that Capita would like to asap sell their most valuable asset [ESS division Unit] to avoid perhaps not only for replinishing their cash balance sheet, but also to stop any potential hostile take over bids which would often back off it their intended takeover target were to sell their most valuable family silver or better said their ESS unit.
So what are Capita Plc planning to achieve from possibly selling their ESS unit ? If I dare to speculate, perhaps after the publishing of their August 2020 interim results were they said they would be looking to sell their ESS unit after making losses, this course of action would had been taken since they knew they were at risk from a hostile takeover bid and by anticipating such hostile bid risk, they put the word out that their family would be put for sale and therefore kept the hostile bids out of the way.
Perhaps, once they managed to sell their ESS, if any hostile bid did indeed came along, they would not get to have the ESS unit as it would had been sold and therefore Capita Plc would had gained a higher market capital with more room to negotiate any potential welcome or hostile bids.
[Crown Jewels]
This is the tactic of selling off certain highly valued assets of the company subject to the bid, those that are of greatest interest to the raider.
UK Defences against hostile bids and Strategic defences
https://kfknowledgebank.******.co.uk/financial-management/mergers-and-acquisitions
So, Dave_1,
Which of these possibilities would apply to Capita Plc ?
Will they want to sell their ESS and put the cash on their balance sheet to keep anyone from targeting them with an hostile bid knowing that by selling their family silver this would keep off
the possible risk of a takeover as whoever was interested in a takeover would shy away and
Capita would then continue to operate as a going concern company with a stronger balane sheet ?
Or once they sold their ESS, they would welcome any bids for a takeover but for a much higher price that would achieved having their ESS unit on the books ? As you know their educational software market value of Capita ESS unit is going down as more competitors are grabbing bigger percentages from Capita ESS ever so reducing monopoly in the school sectors, ect.ect. The sooner they sell their ESS unit the better for Capita.
Hi DIrective22,
I forgot to add you to my previous post list of Capita long share holders.
Please accept my apologies.
Smile.(*__*).NoFear
Nofear. Reg called Schroders involvement from the start too be fair to him.
As my previous posts state the debt repayment obligations of £320 million before half year 2022 will determine this.
If ESS doesn't get a decent return and doesn't sell and the SP drifts low to the point market cap is well below £300 million then the possibility of going to investors to "tap them up" for funds to repay debt won't work. Which will result in more pressure to sell.
Still think H1 results was manipulated in a way to help produce a profit for full year. Just don't think we will have enough time in the event of ESS not being sold to full year results.
Think the vultures will be queuing up and a takeover by spring.
Dave_1
Talking about vultures. Bain Capital would ever had bought Capita ESS divisional unit as they would had offered
at the most 31% of Capita requested priced for sale figure £500 to £700millions.
So, Bain Capital would had paid 31% of Capita ESS £500min-£700max. Millions wanted sale price or £384 and
£537Millions
Bain Capital is not new into buying distressed Companies debts.
On the 15th October they closed two major buyout debt deals:
15th October 2020
Bain Capital now owns Virgin Australia as its creditors voted in favour for the US private equity firm to purchase the airline for A$3.5 billion (£1.9bn, €2.2bn).
15th October 2020
Greece's National Bank in deal to sell bad loans to Bain Capital.
ATHENS, Oct 16 (Reuters) –
National Bank (NBG) , one of Greece's largest lenders, said on Friday it agreed to sell its entire 100% stake in Cypriot credit company CAC Coral to Bain Capital Credit as part of efforts to clean up its balance sheet from impaired loans.
CAC Coral holds a portfolio of non-performing corporate, small business, consumer and mortgage loans of a total gross book value of about 325 million euros ($380.7 million), mainly legacy bad loans.
NBG said the deal was agreed at about 31% of the portfolio's gross book value and would be capital neutral for the bank. Conclusion of the sale is subject to approval by the central bank of Cyprus and Greece's bank rescue fund HFSF, which holds a 40% stake in NBG.
Bain Capital Credit is a global credit specialist with $39.7 billion in assets under management, investing in leveraged loans, high-yield bonds and distressed debt.
Dave_1
Correction, it should read as:
Talking about vultures. Bain Capital would ever had bought Capita ESS divisional unit as they would had offered
at the most 31% of Capita requested priced for sale figure £500 to £700millions.
So, Bain Capital would had paid 31% of Capita ESS £500min Millions to £700max Millions wanted sale price
or better said they would possibly paid between £155min. Millions to £217max. Millions. This is what I think
Bain Capital would offered in the second round of bidding for Capita ESS.
NOFEAR... top research mate.
Thanks for all you do here. Much appreciated
Thanks Dave_1, You're much welcome.(*__*)
If we want understand how the mind works behind those leading investment funds like Bain Capital,
we need to review all their recent investment activities. By knowing how they're operating during those
large and small purchases of distressed companies debt, we will have a rough guess how the rest of
the investment funds would be operating and in particular what they would most likely to be offering for
the purchase of Capita ESS and be knowingly aware how desperate Capita want to sell their ESS.
The most likely as my previous 1st October 3-part post explained that the Francisco Partners would be
the ones who would be offering the most for Capita ESS. The time has arrived to investigate what the FP
are doing as of lately and what is their typical percentage that they would offer for a software asset like
Capita ESS.
I'm off to watch a movie. Take care Dave_1 and everyone long shareholder in Capita. GLA,DYOR. NoFear
No worries NOFEAR