Member Info for BlahBlahDoh

Hi Nige-W,
in July you suggested that builders offered better value than Sage because of their relatively low PERs.
Over the two months since then Sage has proved more valuable, and now you no longer see value in builders, despite their continuing low PERs, and think they will go down. So it seems your own actions are not really driven by PERs, but by some other factor which has changed in the last two months?

You still downplay Sage based on PER however, with a separate point claiming that their high PER is a market hangover from when they used to be a more dynamic company. That is arguably an outdated viewpoint itself, ignoring the turnaround of the company in recent years, it's improved performance, and it's brighter prospects. For the PER to change significantly would require a dramatic change in the market's perception of this, and you seem to be forecasting such a change imminently? If so, when do think this is likely to occur (roughly) and why?

My actual point was that this particularly volatile period is a great time to have a huge buy back program in place.
It is now less clear whether you agree or still disagree, but perhaps you are wavering a bit with your abandonment of the relative PER argument in favour of the "too high" PER one.

Can't find any mention of it. Royal London reportedly spent about £100m developing the platform, so possibly in that ball park.

"The Russian vaccine seems to be hailed a success and to be safe"
The only remarkable thing about the Russian vaccine is that it was "approved" before they started testing, rather than afterwards. It's about as successful and safe as their olympic medal winners.

Investors Chronicle also tipped this on 27th August at £17.35 - saying "we’re inclined to view the premium valuation as a price worth paying." They seem to think customers will have delayed some actions due to the pandemic, causing a likely effect in full year results followed by a rebound next financial year. This sounds plausible as regulatory compliance cannot be delayed indefinitely. Expensive but interesting: one for the watch list

Penalise them for what, handling stolen dots? Even if IP theft is eventually proven, why should anyone else face penalties for Samsung's secretive technical shenanigans? It is true they may have profited, but not at Nanoco's expense, because any profits would come from licencees. Odd that wholesalers somehow dodge your bullet, but it was a blank anyway.

Tenner's previous company, Renold, employs about 2500 people, yet their market cap is a mere £20.5m, compared to Nano's £52m. They are on a relatively small boat for such a large crew. All this salty talk is making me thirsty, Brian get the teas in would you? Alright, grog then.

You possibly also have to factor in politics: Kaist was a domestic victim, and a lot of Samsung crimes seem to involve involve bribing politicians. If Samsung end up being in serious trouble internationally, it could be a whole new kettle of whale meat.

Regarding comparison with Barratt, it's not strictly relevant, as value in Sage is neither coupled with, nor mutually exclusive with, value in Barratt (or other builders). Yet since you have repeatedly suggested it, it may be useful to explore that. Their SP performance is more or less equal over the period since my comment, but it should be noted that at that date (18th March) Barratt had suffered a spectacular collapse, losing more than half their value, so they were starting from a relatively low base. Or from another point of view, they also offered good value! However, since the time of your comment (10th July), Sage have outperformed Barratt substantially.

There are still a few months of the buy back program to run of course, but they look like being volatile months, even by current standards, with both the US election, Brexit compromise, and possibly COVID-19 vaccines. The program continues to offer a hedge against that volatility, which arguably equates to superior comparative value over the period.

Before being promoted Brian Tenner was performing three roles: COO, CFO and company secretary. It feels like Nano are really down to a skeleton crew now, on a raft, trying to harpoon the great white whale Moby Samsung. Tenner does hold a law degree from Edinburgh, which may give him some degree of familiarity with the process: a telescopic view of the waves.

ME leaving seems long overdue, although some criticism on here seems overly harsh. He landed some big deals, and if Samsung are guilty, then Nano's struggles can be largely laid at their door. The Apple peel-off, in particular, was desperately unlucky, rather than blameworthy. However, surely the exact proximity of his sudden departure to the counter-claim is somewhat worrying? It is hard to place this conjunction in a positive light. If the CC was purely a delaying tactic then you have to write off the timing of his departure as mere coincidence.

As I've said before, unfortunately that possible solution requires just a smart device, and precisely zero OO databases.
It is also unproven that such inaccurate measurements can produce useful results, as this article (from the same publication) points out: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/blood-oxygen-spo2-covid-wearables
Nevertheless, that doesn't mean the data concept (or maybe just algorithms) can't be sold to someone.

Looking more closely at the data available in that FT link, it appears that three of the top five institutional investors have been net sellers of XPP over recent months, with only Henderson adding. The information is incomplete, but there does seem to be scope for considerably more institutional interest if the company can keep growing it's business and prove reliable with it's dividend.

By the way, my understanding is that the Oxford vaccine could be stockpiled but unreleased in the UK this month, in other words manufacturing is ahead of testing. The US govt. has second access, as major funders, and may well have a similar stockpile soon afterwards. Therefore, unscrupulous Trump could conceivably be tempted to release an UNTESTED vaccine, maybe a day or two before the election? Not likely, highly speculative, slightly unhinged, but an interesting possibility?

This thread seems to be confusing the phase 1 human trials of GSK/Sanofi with the much more advanced phase 3 final human trials of Oxford/AZN? Also, the US currently refuses to co-operate with the WHO, and most vaccine groups are anyway fast-tracking, thereby abandoning anything not regarded as essential. Meanwhile, Trump is asking vaccine distribution centres to ramp up for early November, obviously based purely on the likelihood that a vaccine will be ready by then, nothing whatsoever to do with the election. He is probably basing his hopes on the two leading candidate vaccines from Oxford/AZN and the BioNTech/Pfizer alliance, but even they are much more likely to be available in January 2021 or beyond, and even that is assuming their trials are successful (most are not).

OO's challenge model still has value though - more than one vaccine will probably be needed, and money will likely still flow into research for years, especially if another coronvirus jumps.

One plausible reason for the dip is that investors in the sector are focusing on COVID-19 stocks. Another factor is that new devices like CREO's require extensive hands-on demonstration and evaluation which lockdown restrictions make difficult. Hopefully positive earlier exercises may have generated considerable potential for adoption by demonstrating improved outcomes for patients, doctors and bean-counters, but realistically there is probably a lot more sales work to do.

Hi Nige_W,
It seems that you still disagree that the share buy back program offers value here? Not value as compared to builders, which is an interesting but slightly eccentric angle, but inherent value over the buy-back period, like a hidden asset on the balance sheet. The money could have been used in a different way, but you don't seem to be advocating more R&D spending judging by your surprisingly negative comments about "adoption of new tech". Perhaps you would have preferred a special dividend? That certainly would have lifted the share price in the short term! The buy back program should have the long-term effect of gradually reducing the PER by steadily reducing the number of shares in issue, so perhaps it offers the best value as measured by your builder-centric assessment criteria?

My original "value" claim was in response to RK11's comment noting how hard Sage were hit by COVID-19, and I was highlighting the serendipity of a massive share buying programme coinciding with a period of potentially very low share prices. In fact the share price has, as usual, not behaved as expected! Whether the underlying business justifies this remains to be seen, as many Sage SME clients will be struggling. We remain in the grip of extreme uncertainty, about the disease, the economy, and life in general, so thanks very much for the luck, I'll need it, and good luck to you too.

Share Magazine features a piece on XPP. It's behind a paywall, but the extract on their website says:
"We believe that XP Power is an electronics engineering gem. The shares may be close to all-time highs but we see long-run, well managed upside more than capable of outperforming current single-digit earnings growth expectations."

So, what sort of gem do they mean? Midget gem? Iced gem? If they are actually comparing XPP to jewellery, they should wear a brooch of shame: XPP is more like a miner than a sparkly gewgaw.

I think CF muddied the waters by associating the rare diseases databases, which OO was founded on, with the quite different wearables opportunity, which, as you say seems to be based distinctly around specifically hVivo datasets and disease focus. Presumably he is equating the two because they are enabled using the same software/data analysis techniques? I'm skeptical about how low-quality heartrate monitoring can interact with a database to produce such apparently magical predictive qualities, but judging by the number of people here who accept it without question, it is certainly saleable.

Probably Samsung, not ME who stole the glass? ME was acting suspiciously though: took several big gulps, diluted the remainder, and left it "patently" less than half full.

With the interesting recent UK Supreme court ruling on patents against Huawei, I wonder what the prospects are of a follow-up case in the UK for a global license, if Daddy Gilstrap can swing it for us in cactus country.

"covid gives out an irregular heart beat"
That's not one of the typical symptoms, such as loss of taste, and if that's all there is to it, why would wearable companies need a database at all?