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Newgate's staff page shows a new executive hired for Newgate Engage. Rosie Abrahamson. Seems to have a Westminster background. Also political/ marketing comms at a previous public affairs agency. The buyers and sellers are cranking up the action in the background in last few days. My view is that HH/Ruffers or another are buying up stakeholders shares. Long term many of these stakeholder might not want 10-20 million Porta shares. They may just want the cash. Such as EK has shown before. Good support to keep SP above 3p today. Overall many here happy to buy up the sold stock including director and Hawks Holding company.
Only updated the director's buy. So it makes you wonder what is really going on. Guess we will find out in April. None of the other figures have changed. All holders still listed. My guess is the other trades were not directors. Otherwise they would of waited for these. Suprised they did not update Hawk Investment Holding for the trades in December. Guess any changes will be on the offical results which are released a few days after the preliminary report.
Assoc partner hire. Jessie Hsieh https://www.newgatecomms.com/who-we-are/jessie-hsieh/ 'Before moving to London, Jessie spent most of her career in Asia (Hong Kong, China, Taiwan and Singapore) and has extensive knowledge and contacts in the financial industry and media in the region. At Newgate London, she serves as a key liaising point for clients operating across Asia and Europe who can benefit from Newgate�s unique integrated approach. ' Another sign that the Asian business is starting to take a larger role in Porta. Porta currently has a few vacancies on their site. I think another senior hire could follow based on these job listings.
Like I said, below 3p is a bargain! The directors are buying in at 3.5 and 3.75p here. (Previous buy.) Looking at the pattern of trades there is still a seller in the background here. Guessing most of the trades today are either directors or stakeholders selling or existing major shareholders buying in. Results in April will tell us who the other mystery buyers are. People seem happy to mop up all the sold stock here. A good sign! Given the trading update I was suprised to see the SP dip. The seller is clearly not worried about what price they get here. Overall this seems to be a firm in the recovery stage. The fact a director is buying means SEC are not in discussion to buy this firm. Otherwise they would all be locked out. Knowing Porta they will time the RNS to best effect. Not all on one go. Some of the 100k buys could be someone like Steffan? It's a shame he has not got any shares here. Directors have some time before the 2 month lock out on results. First 2-3 weeks of Feb?
I can think of a few things on my wish list but that is a nice start. �164k is clearly not a trivial or nominal buy. The guy expects to make money. Perhaps he knows he will. There is also another 4m buy, assuming it is not another fat finger entry, so perhpas another director buy to come.
You asked! Any other requests? Lol Huge director buy.
Good God; https://www.investegate.co.uk/porta-communications--ptcm-/rns/director-dealing/201801311245234985D/
It would be nice to think some of our esteemed directors have invested some of their ample salaries
43m trade was in error. Someone taking out a stakeholder. I think there could be many wanting to takeover porta. The company is making money. Ignore these paper losses. Asian businesses could make 3m profit? That is huge. Below 3p is a bargain.
Let's hope something positive is about to happen - other than today's 5% drop to its lowest price in years!
Some big buys seem to be going through. Perhaps something is happening at last
Well there are people in background exchanging shares. Looks like they are trading from 2.8p to 3.15p. Not sure how long this is going to go on for. If they have millions of shares this could take a while. Especially if they have stable market conidtion on selling them. This is the problem with issuing shares to stakeholders.
Why?
Redleaf have moved into Porta's HQ. So this should reduce costs in future years. Not sure what rent Redleaf was paying elsewhere. Can only add to the bottom line here.
It means they have matched h1 numbers. Gross profit is after cost of sales but before operational costs. The 2.5m figure makes sense as no 300k banking facility costs. Adjusted means a loss. Will be costs from closing Summit. So H2 has been slightly better as no revenue from Summit. I expect revenue to be circa 39-40 million. More write downs too on brands etc. Gross profit up 3m compared to last year. Not bad.
my small buy showes up as a sell
h2 gross profit 33m or do they mean revenue ?
Porta (AIM:PTCM) is pleased to announce that, following a strong first half performance, the Group's trading in H2 has continued ahead of the comparative period in 2016. The Board expects Gross Profit to be in the region �33 million and Adjusted EBITDA to be in the region of �2.5 million for the full year to 31 December 2017.
Just to bring this back to reality I meant value of deals in H1 and H2. Clearly Porta does not have revenue in the billions.I would still expect revenue in H2 for Porta to be stronger than H1 based on these numbers.
Newgate did 16507M USD in H1. Full year 38980M USD. So revenue compared to H1 2017 - 16507. H2 22473. Suggests revenue in H2 up 36% compared to H1. Should be am interesting set of results come May if these figures hold true. Of course we don't know what deals below $5m they did.
http://www.mergermarket.com/pdf/MergermarketPRLeagueTableReport.Q42017.pdf In Asia/Pacific Newgate are 3rd with an 86.5% value change from 20889M to 38980M. They were 6th the year before. 23 deal count compared to 19 last year. Brunswick had 68402M USD in first place. Brunswick is a much much bigger firm. This fits in line with Newgate Australia advising on some big government projects worth billions. The Japan table is disappointing down from 6641m to 952m USD. From 5th to 10th. Probably 1 large deal here from previous year. Samsonite maybe? 2 deals same as last year. Global League table has Newgate at 19th down from 14th. The value is up 16.8% compared to 2016. I can't find Redleaf on the 2017 UK tables. They were 19th last year on the deal count. Small compared to other firms. All transactions are over $5m USD. So it only tells part of the picture. I think we can expect to see profits in Australia to surge ahead for 2017. Profit on continued operations for Asia was 1.5m in H1. So we could see 3m in H2. 62% back to Porta in H2. Uk operations made loss of 2.6M in H1 but write downs, loan costs and the new banking facility accounted for over half of this. Reduced loan notes to 8% in H2 will also help. Plus increased ownership of Redleaf and Aus to 62%. Issue might be costs relating to Summit. The above is where a deal with SEC could help. They might be able to arrange cheaper loan deal with Hawk Holding. They can certainly reduce costs by sharing Porta's HQ for their UK operations. Plus cost savings from cutting out management. At some point the write down in assets has to come to an end as Newgate is becoming a global brand. Just needs a bigger footprint in Europe which it will have with SEC. Maybe not so much in America yet. Not sure what offices SEC has there. Africa/India can wait for another day. Still no RNS for January. Quiet month I guess. See what results in May? bring. GLA.
http://www.gorkana.com/2018/01/the-playbook-appoints-andrew-baiden-as-managing-director/ Looks like Andrew Baiden has moved on. Hopefully he has not taken too many clients with him. The Newgate UK staff page has been falling in number. With Andrew Baiden the only senior hire that left. 5-6 of the other staff have moved on. Albeit it appears Newgate are looking for new staff. Including one senior hire. So looks like they are planning to replace some of these staff. Most of the assoc partners still seem to be there. Overall these UK staff movements make little difference as Redleaf, Publicasity. CAG, 2112 and the other businesses such as Australia make up a large proportion of their staff. Wonder if we will get an RNS for a TU in next few weeks or so? Been very little RNS news in last 2-3 months. They normally do 1 a month. Maybe they will mix it in with some other news. If a SEC deal is on the cards they will likely say very little. Pends if they want to influence the share price or not. Director buys would indicate no discussions happening. See what happens.
I agree it's been very frustrating ride with results that continually write down value of assets. Plus continual large losses for Porta but not for it's third party shareholders such as Newgate Aus. That being said they will soon get 100% of all profits from Redleaf. Eventually 70-80% from Australia. Albeit that could take a few years. Asia-Pacific in 2017 H1 made 1.5m profit compared to 600k in H1 2016. 900k increase in profit in 1 year! Porta needs cash to sort out it's debt, ownership issues and expensive loans. Even at 8% I consider the loans expensive. Better than 13%. So things are slowly moving in the right direction. The 6m loss in 2016 included a lot of write downs. So was very misleading. H2 results will looks slightly better with lower debt costs and larger ownership of Redleaf and Newgate Aus. Plus no 300k due to banking facilities. Lower costs too due to the new loan facility at 4%. So it's not all doom and gloom. It won't get better over night. I am hoping SEC will take this over and use some of it's monies to help reduce the debt. They have 6m cash equivalents and are raising 4m more. It would take at least 4-5m+ to buy up to 50% of Porta. Leaving 4m or so that could be used to manage debts. Unless they can convince Bob to reduce the cost of the loans. So far none of the major shareholder funds here have really been selling. Someone is buying up the sold stock on a weekly basis which is encouraging. I am holding firm here. I don't think this is a strong sell as I think the share has been marked down as much as it will go. If anything it is in a recovery situation. A takeover here could turn this around quickly. I won't be buying more as I already have a large holding.
Can’t see this going anywhere in distant future same as last year and the year before that. For that I’m out good riddance