Member Info for ART123

My sources are Pages 96 and 129 of the IPO Prospectus and Page 29 of the Annual Report.

This substantial drop in revenue for the same admin costs seems to have escaped shareholder's notice.

I'm going to challenge whether Yield Management for restaurants even works and is a viable alternative to the discount card system. The revenue figures do not make this look to be a profitable option, certainly at the low end of participating restaurant numbers.

The IPO document gives historical revenue figures for both Big Dish Asia and Table Pouncer in the UK.

Big Dish Asia had revenue for year-end 31st December 2015 of $165,000 (about £125,000). That was as a discount card company. When they converted the restaurants to yield management the revenue fell to just $6000 for the year ended 31st Dec 2017. For the year plus 3 months following that the revenue fell to less than £4,000. That was using the same restaurants but with the different system and to my view the change to yield management just didn't work at all.

Table Pouncer also ran a discount card system prior to takeover by Big Dish. Their year-end was 31st March and their revenue figures according to the IPO document are as follows:
Year ended 31st March 2015 - £223,725
Year ended 31st March 2016 - £201,636
Year ended 31st March 2017 - £164,813
9 months to 31st December 2017 - £118,452

and then for the period 1st January 2018 until 21st March 2019 - and this was the period when Table Pouncer changed from a discount card scheme to yield management - revenue of £28,472. This shows a substantial drop in revenue set against similar business costs and does not look to be a positive change of business by anyone's calculations.

According to these figures, yield management for restaurants does not produce anywhere near as much revenue as the previous discount card scheme even though the costs are about the same.

There are directors earning big salaries in cash or shares while they are stringing shareholders along with this loss-making idealism.

Draw your own conclusions.

monty5662's post at 7.50am on Saturday was more false information and deliberately to suit his ramping agenda.

The actual loss was £3,634,940 of which I agree £1.3 Million was an impairment loss, £423K IPO costs, £1 Million administration coast (ie. salaries, etc) and £795K Share-based payment charge.

With regards to the £1.3M impairment charge the breakdown according to Page 31 of the Annual Report was:

Intellectual Property - Philippines ............£278,159
Intellectual Property - UK............................£54,077
Goodwill - Big Dish Ltd (Hong Kong).............£5,531
Goodwill - Big Dish Inc (Philippines).........£260,977
Goodwill - Looloo (Philippines).................£161,766
Goodwill - Big Dish UK Ltd (UK).................£562,633

So the biggest chunk of the impairment cost was a write-down of the UK assets (which at that time were only the Table Pouncer restaurants). Maybe at £1M for 110 restaurants the Big Dish management and auditors considered they had overpaid for them!!!

Of course the impairment loss isn't an actual loss of cash. It is only a paper loss and doesn't affect the cash balance in any way so the cash was still spent in one way or another. That is £1.7 Million from August 2108 until the end of March 2019 which is 8 months.

1 more restaurant in Birmingham but 3 have now gone missing from Basingstoke. (Maybe monty and Aidan have a theory that restaurants also take themselves off the list in the winter as it's not busy enough to give disccounts!!!).

Using Late's post of last Tuesday as copied below:

Basingstoke - 9
Bath - 6
Birmingham - 20
Bournemouth- 37
Brighton - 5
Bristol - 12
Exeter - 3
Leicester- 9
Newcastle- 4
Southampton- 18
Swindon - 1
Taunton - 4

Total 128 - 01/10/2019

New Total 126 - 7/10/2019

I was actually horrified when the Annual Report came out and showed the company only had £43K left at the end of March 2019 out of the £1.8 million IPO placing. With only 1 or 2 TM's during this period and the directors not taking a salary I seriously didn't think they'd have got through more than a few hundred thousand. How wrong I was. This company literally p*ss's money away.

And on the revenue side, posters here were expecting a pessimistic few hundred thousand pounds but instead all we got was a few tens of thousands. That was for 8 months of the Table Pouncer restaurants plus the new signings in Bristol and Bath. This is just not generating revenue.

Poor show.

Another added to Birmingham making 3 added this week and that's the lot. 3 for the whole company for the whole week. Can't really call it anything except really slow progress.

Posters are still on about what is to come but if it's the same as the last 5 weeks the company is going nowhere slowly.

Newcastle - North-East territory - launched with 4 restaurants a month ago and nothing has happened since. Very odd.

Finally how many restaurants want to join a platform run out of the Philippines. The sensible answer is none. UK fine, USA is okay, most parts of Western Europe are good but Manilla in the Philippines - I think not. This country has no affiliation with the Philippines at all.

BigDish need to close their failed BigDish Asia app and website and close down operations and move the management and tech and all the rest to the UK as soon as possible.

Yes, it was a nice surprise when the last placing came in at 7.2p but nothing since has justified that placing price.

The next placing, and there will be one sometime because the company spend cash like it's water, may also be at a higher price though equally it could be down at less than the current 3p. There is no guarantee that it will be at some 'pie in the sky' price like the last one.

Another worry is that Open table were recently bought out by the Priceline Group who also own and run bookings.com which is one of the biggest yield management companies on the planet.

How long before they work out that a simple change can bring in far, far more revenue?

It would be different if the idea was thought up and started by BigDish but they have only copied the idea from some other company and now anyone can also copy Eatigo, or BigDish, or Discoeat without any comeback or worry.

This is now a high risk investment with the added risk of failure. So many here have been lured in with all the talk of the nationwide roll-out and hypergrowth starting in September just for it to be just another damp squid (squib for the fussy ones).

4 new restaurants added last week and just 2 this week. No extras added in Brighton or Newcastle since these locations were launched. Hardly 'hypergrowth' - that was just more talk from a company that are happy to string along the shareholders with a lot of talk and false promises but who are very slow to deliver.

One problem is that the management here don't realise how competitive the UK is compared to places like Manilla. There is already another company offering yield management in London and there will soon be others opening in other parts of the country and then it will be curtains for any sizeable company.

BigDish only copied the yield management idea from Eatigo when they changed from a discount card company to the current system and other discount card companies such as Tastecard could equally change their whole business overnight. This would leave BigDish practically worthless.

There is far to much risk here for any big investment.

Repeat of a post from 18th April 2019. Set the posts per page to 100 and scroll back for 64 pages:

"That's better. I would always rather my posts be positive but then that needs a marked increase in the rate of signings.

Bath now at 16. Assuming B'mouth is still 49 and Bristol 40 and Southampton at 17 that makes a total of 122".

I think they are riding their luck at the moment with placings. They might get another one off at 7p or 10p but then equally they might get one done at 2p or 3p. Their "luck" won't last forever and any decent placee who actually looks at the Annual Report figures instead of listening to all the bull**** will be loathe to pay too much over the top for this sort of performance.

monty5662

Are you really that desperate? You're beginning to sound like Aidan or Sanj with your ramping fibs. Your post is clearly a pack of lies and it just shows how desperate some of the shareholders are getting at the moment. You could not have done what you claim - visit restaurants to get them to join the Big Dish platform and even less to leave Discoeat.

Shareholders do not have any right to represent a public listed company and if you do so you are clearly breaking the law. You are clearly misrepresenting Big Dish and also possibly risking actually losing potential customers by butting in and interfering when you have no right. Shareholders could quite easily sue you for misrepresentation, pretending to work for Big Dish or to be an affiliate - which you clearly are not - and even for making such claims.

As for thinking and telling people that Big Dish Last Minute yield management for restaurants.co.uk is a good idea you must be raving bonkers. It is a dreadful idea. The only thing to come out of it is the "No Seats Available - view other dates - There are no seats available for this restaurant. Please try again in a couple of days - (or weeks or years if you can be bothered)". Big Dish have invented this message situation and have got all to themselves even though it just makes them look just a bunch of idiots.

Aidan has disappeared, maybe never to be heard from again, Sanj is clearly completely out of his depth and has long forgotten even what the company set out to achieve, and you are just a ramping liar. You're worse than Beebopalula.

I'm afraid the brutal truth is that the London restaurants are never going to sign up to BigDish with Discoeat offering a much better package. The Discoeat website is more attractive and the Discoeat app leaves BD for dead. Better photos, alternating photos, and a booking page that is a joy. It's simple but brilliant. How many people, when (any day up to 2 weeks in advance) and what time/discount. BigDish app is slow and unappealing.

Posters who are expecting big numbers in Manchester and London are the same people who expected 200 new restaurants in September. It just hasn't happened.

126 total so there must have been further dropoffs. Just 12 left in Bristol out of 40.

Discoeat hits 100 restaurants in London today.

With Sanj's new strategy I'm not expecting more than a few restaurants in either London or Manchester. Certainly less than 10 in each. And not for a while either.

It's quite worrying how the shareholders can be led astray by the management here. Sanj clearly stated that we would see 200 restaurants added in September. It is still on the podcast of 1st August. Instead we have 31 new restaurants added in 3 territories with 1 more working day to go. Assuming Manchester and London are not added on Monday then he has missed target by miles. There have also been at least 5 delisters this month so the true amount added is 26. We had better months in March and May with only 1 or 2 TM's. Very poor.

Be warned Sanj clearly states at 5.50 on the latest Proactive interview that he has "adapted his strategy" and from now on they will be concentrating more on the quality of the restaurants than the quantity. Large quantities of restaurants uploaded in one block will no longer happen.

This explains why the latest restaurant in Birmingham that is in Lichfield is described as "Filling the gap that lies between casual Bistro & Michelin standard". They are obviously still looking for restaurants of such a high standard in Leicester and Newcastle but so far have blanked.

No new restaurants added in Leicester or Newcastle in 2 weeks now. Still the original 6 and 4 respectfully. I wonder if these are good TM's or bad TM's in Sanj's view. I think the restaurant figures answer that. Maybe the lack of restaurants means he has sacked them already.

1 added in Birmingham area last week and 1 added this week. This is Sanj's star performer without doubt and this TM must surely be 'blowing Sanj away' with his/her performance over the last couple of weeks. This is someone who really understands BigDish and what they are trying to achieve.

The figures talk here as this is so transparent. Make what you want of them.

It is a complete false economy running the tech from Manilla. They aren't up to the job and do not have the skills to keep up with a fast moving environment as in the UK where users are a lot fussier about speeds and appearances, etc. They should close down the Philippines tech operations and move it all to the UK. If they can't afford to do that they shouldn't be in the business.

And the sooner BigDish Asia is shut down completely and the £350K costs per annum are eliminated the better. At that point they might as well move the whole company to the UK anyway.

I can see this ending up like Big Dish Asia which if anyone has looked at it recently is a complete embarrassment. Nothing works on it and it takes several minutes to load a page - that's if it loads at all. Link below. Try it out yourselves.

https://bigdish.ph/