Cppgroup Share Chat (CPP)

Nobody ever votes against these type of deals look at OPG power ventures, the investment firms all sold out before the delisting happened, took there losses and moved on

You need a Hero who's willing to take a punt by buying up 25% of the stock, and Bruce Wayne doesn't buy shares on the London Stock Exchange

What people can do is make sure they do vote against the proposal. Who knows, perhaps Phoenix or Schroders will also vote against. The company sits at an inflexion point where we are reviewing year end ‘26. This year will be the first clean set of figures since inception and the first positive consistent newsflow in 4 years. Visibility today is recurring revenues this year of at least £5m (company wording 3 months ago. They must have sight otherwise they could not have reported ‘in line’ on 20 Jan). There is no debt and a known small amount of legacy policy holders approaching expiry. Blink has gone from zero to £5m recurring revenue in quick succession, near doubling year on year. The problem has been all this has been lost in everything else, along with an out of kilter cost base. That’s also now disappearing. This is a very attractive imbedded pure tech play with growing recurring revenues in a growth market. Make sure you vote against and hope that Phoenix do the same.

To respond to previous posts - I wouldn't worry too much about how small shareholders will operate within a private environment. More likely we will get an offer at a small premium to the dismal current price. The major shareholders will flush out the small shareholders for a very small sum.

How is it right that this management team has been allowed to burn through so much cash with so little thought for the positions of minority shareholders? Pretty disgraceful actually and there are some that should feel some considerable shame for all of this.

“A decision hasn’t been made yet” blah blah blah

“Shareholder circular / 75% majority” blah blah blah

Be in no doubt that this is going to happen. They wouldn’t have put out this statement unless they’d already got enough votes.

Death by 1,000 cuts is an understatement with this lot.

It’s undoubtedly the right decision for the business given the state they’ve got the company into over the last few years, but life as a minority shareholder in a private company will be even less transparent than it is now.

Depressing.

Nearly buy price. Is it good. Could it go back to 80 p?

Been happening more and more where insiders /directors/founders own 40%

At least 20 last ywar too

Watching

Its a smart move by the founder, he owns like 40% he knows he's gonna get the business cheap with lots of cash

However if someone with money and balls could buy up 25% of the stock they could block it

But very unlikely

Wow didn’t see that coming. This could hit 1-2p

Let's face it, the incompetent management team and board have run this business into the ground over the past 3 or 4 years. They've sold off the family silver and, rather than distribute anything to shareholders, have effectively used the proceeds to prop up absurd remuneration packages (given the tiny scale of the diminished business) to directors, senior management and non executives, whilst also supporting the continuing losses of Blink; the supposed core of the business now, which probably won't ever amount to a row of beans given the length of time it's been trading. No matter how good the initial idea was and is, how many tiny sub-businesses like Blink have been given the luxury of trading for almost 10 years at such a minute scale, while racking up substantial losses year after year?

After implementing such a brilliant strategy, those who have benefitted most are departing, leaving we loyal, small shareholders holding the proverbial baby. The major shareholders don't seem to mind too much - probably just too small now to be bothered about.

Chasing the always receding rainbow of a huge trade sale of Blink much further probably isn't worth it for a small shareholder, but what can one do but hope for the best that something happens before the money finally runs out when the share price languishes at the current level?

This company has had its fair share of dramas over the years, but this is a really messed up situation.

We’ve seen positive actions by management to sell off and realise value from its Turkish and Indian assets - yielding c.£15m in cash. Alongside this we’ve received news of a proposed investment in Blink to develop the parametric platform and bring in a serious / experienced CEO. We now need to start seeing results from this big investment.

We’ve had a restructure that just didn’t go far enough, still leaving the company with a massively inflated cost base, and a Board who just can’t seem to manage the basics of marketing the business to new shareholders and fixing the huge liquidity problem that exists and is at the heart of the problems. There’s a steady stream of selling going on - historically this has been from Phoenix - which is destroying the value, which now stands at below £8m. How ironic that one of the company’s long standing and major shareholders is tanking the value of their own investment.

The share price has fallen from £1.60 when the news of the Indian and Turkish divestments was announced a short few months ago, to half that value as of today. And not a word from the Board as to what is going on, a trading statement, or indeed any words of comfort or reassurance for ordinary shareholders. Perhaps there is no good news. Either way, silence is not acceptable.

Unfortunately a reshuffle isn’t what’s required here. It’s good that the central overhead is reducing, but with Blink now as the single source of ongoing revenue and profit for the Group, these changes haven’t gone nearly far enough.

That’s a bit of a reshuffle!

I like your optimism, and I agree that even at £2 this is still significantly undervalued......however, the remaining / ongoing business is not profitable. Far from it. Independently, Blink currently has a much higher operating overhead than it generates in top line income and is very much cash negative. Success here is all about whether Blink can get to a place where it can stand on its own, and is both EBITDA and cash positive, before the funds run out.

Cash now around £17 million. market cap £13 million... ongoing business now profitable... this is a no brainer to 200p

Recieved $15 mill cash... market cap £12 mill.... so cash equals market cap.. sounds like this is cheap

Good that the vote went through at the AGM the other day and that the disposal of the Indian business was given the go-ahead by shareholders which in turn paves the way for a much needed (if not distributed) cash injection into the coffers. However, this was achieved no thanks to Phoenix who seemingly withheld their vote. Shameful lack of support for what was clearly the only viable way to generate a sustainable go-forward position. They’ve continued to destroy value in recent years by their ongoing slow sell off - death by a thousand cuts. The sooner they get rid of their holding altogether so that the board actually receives the support of all of its shareholders, the better.

Here’s hoping that the upcoming structural changes to be announced next month yield further significant cost reductions and rid the group of its top-heavy executive and board, including the Phoenix representative who is clearly a thorn in the side of progression.

Also hoping for more good news from Blink - the new CEO has been in place for a few months now - enough time to have made some progress and tangible additional changes. Onwards and upwards.

This is good news from the business, and not a bad price given the declining nature and the single partner dependency of their India operation. The final piece of the jigsaw should come at the end of September when the previously signposted restructuring of the central cost base is announced alongside the interims. This will hopefully address the top heavy structure of the current Executive and Board and leave behind a streamlined, Blink focused management structure. Given the lack of shareholder distributions, it is then a question of getting Blink profitable and cash generative in its own right before the money runs out. I'm not sure how much I subscribe to the much repeated line about tech / platform businesses driving a higher multiple, or even a revenue multiple, in terms of valuation, but I'd be happy to be proved wrong! Basic valuation principles must still apply. The key will be to maintain partner renewal rates, extend reach across Travel / Insurance, get the Cyber product market ready, and drive monthly subscription revenues. Then the shareholders might see a price close to where it needs to be.

:)

Now seriously undervalued!

Depends when you measure the drop from - it's down 60%+ since the start of this "Transformation Programme". It's even grimmer reading if you look back beyond that for those long-standing holders.

I don't expect to see any further upward movement in the short term. In fact there may be some drift downwards as short term investors take their profit out and Phoenix continue their very unhelpful offloading. A successful disposal of India may buck that trend and give another short term boost, but I'm not hanging my hat on that....although I would love to be proved wrong.

The next change will come - and hopefully it's another upward one - when the signposted cost restructuring is announced in September. Hopefully that will see material changes to Executive and Board costs at the Group level which is long overdue.

Then the final piece of the jigsaw.....the main 3 shareholders simply need to reduce their holdings so that this becomes an investable stock. Maybe another external "Insurtech" investor who sees the potential in Blink? - something needs to break the current deadlock that has been in place for years in order to move this forward and deliver some decent returns.

I needed Chat gbt to do my research and afterwards jumped in with 1k shares. Will build to 5k on any drops but this tool is quite a gamechanger for the industry if it saves on costs.

……but still 57% down! Hopefully see a steady climb now

Agree completely with the last 2 posts. As a relatively small investor in the business I can see no thread of strategy, other than to pay ridiculously large salaries to the executives and other board members until what used to be a large pile of money finally runs out. I can't understand how and why the majority shareholders are tolerating such dismal performance with seemingly little chance of any return now. Yes, Blink is/has been a potentially good and innovative business, but to have spent 7 or 8 years getting to a point where it is generating only a vanishingly small revenue and still very significant losses is a woeful position. If this is the great hope for the future of the business then that really doesn't bode well. The business is simply not being run in anything like a competent fashion and those drawing the large salaries while achieving pitifully poor results are doing so at the expense of shareholder value and need to be shown the door before it's finally too late, if we haven't already reached that point. The small shareholders are, of course powerless to influence matters.

Been one-way all the way over past 2-3 years. Absolutely nothing in evidence to inspire investment nor confidence in this shower.

Director remuneration given achieved performance/results is obscene.

Needs a major shake up before company slides into a point of no return.

Been one-way all the way over past 2-3 years. Absolutely nothing in evidence to inspire investment nor confidence in this shower.

Director remuneration given achieved performance/results is obscene.

Needs a major shake up before company slides into a point of no return.

- Revenue down from last year.

- EBITDA largely flat.

- Margin from volume business in India continues to be squeezed.

- Positive gains from Turkey all but swallowed up by currency devaluations.

- Net cash burn, despite divestments in Globiva and Kynd.

- A growing Board and Executive overhead adding no tangible value.

- Blink making progress but not quickly enough to justify its positioning as ‘leading the Group’.

- Continued erosion of shareholder value.

- Annual Board executive costs remain unjustifiably high - CEO £500k+, CFO £300k+, full year of COO £250k+.

- Annual Board NED costs of £300k+.

- Shareholder value eroded by 75% over the last 3 years (£3+ to 85p per share) with no dividend.

- Market cap of sub £8m from £25m+ 3 years ago with £5m+ being spent on Board overheads over that period.

- Blink looks to be a good business which is being mired with all this corporate / non-relevant cost.

- Similar sized Technology / Software businesses with half of Blink’s customer base and roadmap potential are being invested in giving valuations of multiples of what we see here.

The major shareholders need to get rid of this half-witted Board and get some people in who know what they’re doing.

My view is that this Board are very unlikely to pay a dividend. The only chance of getting some return here, obviously dependent on the average price of your holding, will be in price appreciation, which unfortunately has been going in the wrong direction in recent years.

However, the Blink business has shown good traction of late - see news release this morning which mentions a few recent deals / business wins including Axa Partners - so it’s hopefully only a matter of time before these deals translate into revenue / profit / breakeven such that confidence in the longer term prospects of the business then translates into demand for the stock.

Management have stock options that are effectively worthless until the price gets above £3/£4, and they only really start to be worth something to them at £6/£7.

I’m holding until this time next year to see where this could go.

As someone who believes you - and a long term holder of some shares - will this ever give me a dividend and a profit for investing??

Credit where credit is due - diversifying the Board composition is a good thing.

However, adding more cost to an already very weighty Board overhead does not seem like good value for shareholders.

An iNED has been recruited with an insurance broking background who has recent experience of parametric insurance. However, Blink is not a parametric insurer, it is a SAAS business which, amongst other markets, services the insurance industry by providing parametric capability. The business needs more credible individuals at the most senior level who have an in depth knowledge of these relevant environments.

The other Executive appointment of the COO to the main Board is also strange, unless she is being lined up as a successor to the incumbent underperforming CEO. There seems to be an ongoing habit of rewarding failure - this COO has been in role for a while, during which time the share price has fallen by 70%.

It’s all a bit deserted on here these days, but I had a spare few minutes to go through the interims the other day - a summary and some thoughts as follows:

Positives

- Completion of the change programme. Now only a small element of UK legacy remains.

- Successful exits of KYND & Globiva giving positive cash injections.

- Exits from all non-core / legacy markets.

- Individual parts of the business now also free from legacy systems.

- Turkey is performing well despite all the adverse macroeconomic factors. It’s still a small and volatile part of the business, but is currently additive which is a positive.

- Bajaj has signed a contract extension to 2027, albeit at tight margins and with a restricted product set. But this agreement generates a decent positive cash flow.

- Continued new business progress with Blink as well as renewal of existing partnerships.

- Continued reduction in central overheads in line with a reduction in the geographic footprint.

Negatives

- Slower progress than hoped for with Blink, and a continued investment requirement. This business is now carrying a hefty overhead and the EBITDA position is still going the wrong way. It’s not clear when EBITDA break even will be achieved.

- Cash reserves, despite recent injections from KYND and Globiva exits, continue to fall.

- Central management / executive costs are too high for a business of this size. This is both at the base pay and bonus / options level. The CEO and CFO take out £1m pa between them when the business is only making that at an overall EBITDA level. This is not sustainable, nor does it represent shareholder value.

- Question marks over the value extracted from the KYND and Globiva exits. It’s less clear about KYND, but Globiva was certainly showing healthy EBITDA performance.

I’ve not seen the latest Broker note, but it would be interesting to see what their write up consists of, and how optimistic they are for future performance.

As a footnote, the current market cap of c.£13m roughly represents the cash reserves in the business. The lack of liquidity, which has been an issue for some time, does not look likely to be resolved in the short term, and therefore this stock will continue to suffer.

Although Phoenix and Schroders appear to have traded some stock and now hold around 20% each, Ogston’s shareholding hasn’t moved for years. Given the recent allegations against him, his mind is probably on other things, however, this inactivity / uncertainty will make it very difficult for this stock to attract new investors. He’s dogged this company for far too long now, it’s time he woke up to the fact that it’s him who’s playing a large part in holding this business back.

Jambor answer is NO, I'll be long gone before great-grand-kids get any "profit" with this dog here

Another positive update, will this share ever come back to life?

Finally some decent news from the company and some evidence that a sensible strategy is being developed. Whether or not the price represents good value - the Broker saying it represents fair value is about as valid as me saying it doesn’t - is subjective, but at least it demonstrates a positive movement to focusing on the core elements of the business.

It does however highlight the complete failure of management to be able to generate a representative share price / market valuation for the company. If this deal represents a value of a non-core part of the Group - and one which you would think the market didn’t really value at all - at £5m and one which hasn’t been factored into any of the company’s budgets then, even after recent sp jumps, why is the company valued at less than £14m??

Don’t forget it’s got more than that in cash reserves, most of which are accessible, and a business in India with £100m+ turnover and that’s before you get to what the Board keep referring to as the future / core of the business in Blink……management recently stated that it thinks India and Blink could be worth as much as £30m each which would give a sp of c. £7…..they need to get out there and bang the drum a bit more to get the market to buy into this and to get more retail shareholders wanting to invest. Central to this is liquidity and at least the prospect of returning to a dividend flow at some point in the foreseeable future.

We got a little mention!

https://zakstraderscafe.com/weekend-bulletin-board-heroes-november-26/8092/

And greed - Is that Clown, Dunce Morrison still running this SP into the ground?

I can’t understand what’s going on here.

The Indian businesses account for 90%+ of Group revenue and the vast majority of its EBITDA and positive cash generation. Yet all the strategic focus is on an insurtech business which made £0.5m revenue and lost £0.4m at EBITDA last year. Parametric insurance isn’t new and the market is now awash with competitors and unfortunately the days of valuations being based on revenue multiples are long gone. Whilst there is an acknowledged and real partner concentration issue in India with tight margins, at least the margins are positive, and the Indian market still represents a massive growth opportunity overall. Why isn’t the focus here on growing and diversifying those businesses that already have scale and which generate £150m+ revenue with £8m+ EBITDA and growing positive cash flows?

If, as the Board has stated, the focus for future value creation is Blink, then the Group should have a cost structure which reflects that. The current cost structure is far too heavy - and inevitably bloated due to listing / Plc costs. The CEO took over £400k in short term remuneration last year - plus share options now worth another £400k with no vesting / performance criteria. Over £800k in total remuneration is FTSE250 money, and not at all appropriate for an AIM listed micro-cap valued at less than £20m whose main focus business is only generating £500k in top line revenue and loses £400k at EBITDA.

Not sure what it’s going to take to get the major shareholders to wake up and realise that yet another bunch of overpaid and incompetent Board and management are fleecing the company. Completely crazy, but at the same time very frustrating for smaller shareholders who have zero say, who are not represented by a majority non-independent Board, and whose only error was buying in to the BS in the first place. Further change is long overdue before the money runs out.

Quote from the Sunday Times last week:

"David Morrison, the chairman of CPP, the publicly listed insurance giant Ogston founded before leaving in disgrace a decade ago, said he had severed ties with the millionaire. The pair had a secretive agreement whereby he served as Ogston's representative on the board in exchange for £30,000 a year."

Is this on top of the £110,000 he took from the company last year??

For doing what exactly? - apart from overseeing the share price fall by over 50% during his tenure.

He needs to go. A grubby back door arrangement with Ogston which has never been disclosed to shareholders. The FCA should be investigating this.

Ogston also needs to go, and the sooner the better - he is dragging the company down to his level by his ongoing association. The company needs to be free of these characters to be able to get on and deliver value to its other shareholders.

[LINK REMOVED]

To quote from the above article which has reported on the last RNS from the company: "Hamish Ogston left the Board on 28 June 2013 and since that time, and save for those rights reserved for shareholders, has had no involvement in the management or operations of the group."

Strange then that in 2020 the Board appointed David Morrison as Ogston's representative as a non-independent, non-executive Director. David Morrison then quickly went on to become Chair of the Board less than 3 weeks later.

See both RNS announcements below:

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How does that tally with having no involvement in the company since 2013?

See today’s RNS re: LTIPs.

Closing price today = £1.40

Entry level for LTIP = £3.70

Super Max for LTIP = £9.00

As a long time holder, I will be delighted if any of these LTIPs pay out even if I have just been materially diluted, but I think that the line between positive aspiration and fantasy has just been crossed. I will be happy to correct the record if proved wrong.

Https://www.investormeetcompany.com/investor/meeting/investor-presentation-434

Interesting Investor Meet presentation from the company last week.

Some takeaways if you missed it:

Management think that a £6-£7 share price is achievable in the medium to long term (2-3 years) resulting from a £30m valuation of Blink and a £30m valuation of Indian assets. They think that Blink’s revenues could get to £6m pa which, at a 50% EBITDA margin, assumes a revenue multiple valuation of 5x and an EBITDA multiple valuation of 10x. They obviously don’t see much value or growth potential in the Indian assets as they currently generate an annual EBITDA of c. £8m - £10m and this future valuation would seem to reflect an expectation of further margin erosion.

Continued management focus on the Turkish market seems like a waste of time. Economic and political uncertainty causing such an adverse FX environment and high double digit inflation continues to wipe out any favourable local business performance. The current EBITDA contribution could be lost in a rounding error.

Exiting from Globiva, which at present management deem to be a ‘distraction’, could be a good source of value for shareholders in the medium to long term. BPO business has tangible value based on solid industry benchmarks and the business is managed separately from the main Group which would make an exit a relatively straightforward commercial transaction. The Board should be keeping this under constant review as, relative to current market cap, this is material.

The legacy unwind and close down seems to be on track which is good news from a cost control perspective, as is progress on the IT platforms.

Management have been incentivised based on some fairly aggressive share price targets. If you park the excessive base remuneration for management, including the current options-based STIP which has no performance criteria attached, then the achievement of even the entry level to the incentive would see a decent return for shareholders. Again, you need to ignore the fact that the share price has more than halved in the last 18 months……but to get anywhere near the £6-£7 mark again would be very welcome. However, it's got a long way to go from where we are now.

I trust the management are banging the door down at fellow Leeds based company Jet2 to discuss insurance software Blink. Never will there be a better time. Operators should price software into their seat price with a three way relationship between service supplier and insurer. It enables them to add value and differentiate from competitors and makes it an easy sell to customers to use them rather than competition. This week has shown another example of when travel chaos ensues, how pleased we would be as customers to know exactly what can be done with a simple couple of steps. Knowing we don’t have to chase and speak to anyone. Instead, everything is taken care of and giving us the chance to relax rather than panic. It’s a simple sell and needs to be integrated into an offering rather than an add on when you go click through your purchase. If they can’t get traction now then they never will.

Https://www.insurtechinsights.com/blink-parametric-to-double-workforce-headcount-in-cork-by-2025/

Significant investment in Blink announced yesterday - surprised it hasn't been issued as an RNS as it seems to be a fairly big deal from looking at the assembled dignitaries - surely the second half of this year will be the turning point for Blink from a financial contribution perspective........even insurtechs have to make money at some point!!