Member Info for bobbyaxelrod

I guess they were always going to have to raise more capital and the fact that institutions are backing the raise is a positive sign. I think they will most likely need another raise in 2027.

I haven't decided on the retail offer (most likely not taking part), because the pipeline, sales cycle, and conversion rate seem very much unknown. But based on total pipeline and average deal amount, they could be looking at 30-40 prospects. Even if they convert 10% this would be great, but who knows how long it will take. I don't think this pipeline figure has been announced before, but a growing pipeline was alluded to in October results release. I don't think pipeline was mentioned in the admission document either.

So yeah - possibly waiting to see some execution and more commercial traction before adding here.

What news would actually make a difference here?

- Successful move to Ingenuity

- New deals for BB and NC

- Operational profitable across Q3

I'd say only the latter really changes anything, but this would have also been during a period of (presumed) lower restocking and advertising.

I think only Q4 trading update/results can really make a difference, in particular if they show that the topline growth story is still intact alongside improving profitability. Of course the share will move around, but I can't see the information that is needed becoming available until Jan 26.

And also - it may be fair to say that a strong Q4 is expected. Based on current stock breadth (may have increased depth making this point irrelevant) it still seems lower than would be expected in the run up to major sales and xmas.

I found your message hard to understand... but definitely got me think about how Quantum Base's solutions might do quite well as the world evolves further in quantum computing.

Yes the lack of growth in stock breadth (again no comment on stock depth here) so close to the sale and xmas period was disconcerting for me.

For me, the company - given its margin profile - is stuck between pursuit of growth and pursuit of profitability. So far all they have proven is that cannot do both. They either pursue top line growth, burn their cash as slowly as possible, and then raise more money late next year (I think this is a better strategy for an investor). What they've done instead is neglect top line growth in favour of profitable business and cash conversion (also a wise approach from a company director perspective).

The reason I say this is because structurally low margins require scale to make the business work. Furthermore, declining revenue (Q2 - Q3) is extremely concerning for outside investors, regardless of profitability. I they were better off without the Channel 4 documentary, but only time will tell.

The full year growth story is still intact and this still remains an interesting stock at £8m market cap with £2m cash and improving profitability. However, top line growth would need to return to make it interesting to the market (and cause share price to rise). Just my two pence.

BBN, I appreciate the management comment - however, I hope you will not take offence if I state what you've said is mostly unsubstantiated and too vague PLUS management have shown there is constant potential for changes in plans (warehouse optimisation, move to Ingenuity, equity raises, etc) - and it may be that we are 6-12 months away minimum from really seeing the fruit of their labours.

In particular I'd push back on these:

"the picture being painted is one of a much better story developing than investors are currently able to understand."

"The feedback I have received is that the team feels it is better to get their heads down and push the Q4 business plans forward" - do their Q4 plans not involve having more stock to satiate increasing demand?

" but as a management team, they are also potentially stretched right now." - very concerning given they are shedding the warehouse to free up capacity to focus on other areas and also may indicate more costs are required (lower margins).

If they turn a profit without continued topline growth, the shares may re-rate to reflect lack of concern about the business needing more capital. But I think the growth story (topline and profit growth) needs to be firmly intact for a re-rate - and it's not clear they can do this without losing profitability (due to small scale and low margins meaning additional costs are more meaningful against low cash generation, additional costly hires to help stretched management, etc).

Terrible share price investment. Think key catalysts coming up could be: announcement of new deals for Boop and NC, black Friday, Cyber Monday, Xmas period. Most of these trading updates won't be received until early next year, so I've sold quite a significant chunk (at a loss) to redeploy elsewhere (whilst letting me get more clear about how I think about the Huddled investment). On reflection, I was definitely at best early but too overweight.

I notice that stock levels (breadth, cannot comment on depth) have not picked up across any of the brands. With sale days and xmas period coming up soon, this MAY be concerning and dampen hopes of a bumper Q4.

On another note, the Chan4 documentary was quite disheartening to watch (as an investor). Hopefully it has served well as an advertisement to get new businesse. However, I do feel there was too much emphasis on the novelty of DD's products, like oreo coca cola and monster munch mayo, rather than really shouting about how useful it is across the whole weekly shop for potential customers.

It's also made me reconsider Wise's decision to list in the US, which really has many reasons for making complete sense (e.g., capital market access, possibly less chance of further US fines, CEO being able to retain control, US backing would heavily support Wise's business, etc) and likely will enhance chances of challenging SWIFT, or at least taking healthy chunks of SWIFT's business. Likely to re-invest here over coming weeks.

Find this company quite interesting to follow. Business metrics consistently improve QoQ, and, in the most recent update, the growth in business was quite encouraging and there could be quite a fast ramp up here.

Full disclosure I'm no longer a shareholder - I bought at 696p and sold recenently at 1059p and 964p for a roughly 50% overall gain. But I'm keen to get back in, although I think there is a chance the share price moves lower due to: (i) Interest rate cutting cycle continuing leading to lower net interest income, (ii) Relatively "high" (this is up for debate - see below) valuation, (iii) Telegraphed continued large increaes in admin spend related to hiring - this not only reflects a cost now but years to come, and a higher cost base can create extra pressure on execution and increase execution risk, (iv) the resulting lack of profit growth, (v) the uncertainty about the implications for future profit growth (the investment in admin may take time to pay off - and to me speaks of a strategy to secure more business customers).

But what really captured my attention is the discussion on here about Wise building a competitor to SWIFT. This is a really interesting thesis. I'm not 100% convinced yet, but even if this is only 10% true, the market size here could be phenomenal, even larger than their stated TAM of $32tn. The fact that SWIFT is working with Wise suggests that this will only grow and also that Wise already has some competitive advantages that SWIFT cannot compete with and recognises are better in some/many instances.

The reason I'm not convinced is due to lack of understanding about competition. I believe there are direct competitors to Wise, but Wise seems to moving ahead (maybe because I'm familiar with it) and is more focussed on demarcated niche. I believe Wise's paragraph on stablecoin in their recent update seemed measured and gave some arguments in favour of Wise's current approach, but came across as a dismissal.

No idea, likely to be free (to both sides), but mutually beneficial as you say, and will definitely improve trust, although the brands' trustpilot ratings have been consistently good.

On underlying structural growth drivers, I believe that UK population growth and numbers offer a significant tailwind. Discount shopping, especially for non-discretionary goods (e.g., Aldi/Lidl) but also in some cases for non-discretionary (e.g., Shein/Temu/Action in Europe/B&M in UK) have seen continued growth - I believe people will always love a bargain. Furthermore, they have the online shopping tailwinds, plus the whole ESG/surplus recycling angle. It's a win-win-win business.

I hope they manage to increase stock levels at Boop ahead of the documentary starting next week.

I'm a (very) small holder here, thanks to a previous holding in EKF. I've not followed the story at all until recently.

I find it fascinating that this company, a software company, raised c£40m in 2021, and has almost nothing to show for it... and yet still good be an asymmetric risk-reward set up.

Posts on this board have made really important points about the app improvement and optimisation, and the sign up of "leading" customers representing an early step onto a large global pipeline of future contracts.

However, it is worrying that the new contract does not extend their cash runway further than the previously given December 25. This is especially worrying given the contract contains "upfront" payments. The lack of concrete numbers given or even quantification of the TAM/size of the opportunity were missing from the recent RNS - I read this as the contract was very disappointing financially (caveated by the fact is their first step potentially into a larger future piepline).

They may have posted the contract win expecting a share price they could conduct a raise into. However, they misplayed it by leaving these details out (even some excitement around "size of the potential opportunity") suggesting a lack of capital markets ability by management (or some integrity). The fact they are in this position and did not raise earlier suggests it is the former.

The fact the contract signed did not extend their runway, we can expect that a second contract would extend the runway either. Which means they will likely have to raise at these share price levels, because I can't see the "financial" picture, not "early-stage commerical pipeline" picture, improves late 2026.

And yet, at £1m market cap, it does seem like its worth a punt. Still undecided on this one.

BBN,

Thanks for the intel. Did management give indication of whether they paid/received payment for the documentary (or featured pro bono)?

The outcome of moves like this can be hard to predict. I see it as positive... but Approved Foods did appear on Dragons Den and had some media coverage many years ago.

Just in time for Xmas!

Forgot to say - think they came first in the "operationally profitable" index

Hopefully this catches some eyes and deep pockets.

https://huddled.com/huddled-group-plc-secures-third-place-in-national-retail-growth-index/

Thanks all.

THX's AISC is obviously a huge advantage. I think this is driven by a mix of factors, such as using more CNG (rather than diesel, although diesel still used for fleets), Naira depreciation, and the open-pit nature of the mine. Another aspect is low "sustaining capex" because Segilola has a short life of mine. We will have to see how much MLE costs... but I'm agreed on this aspect.

Re PFS to DFS - while this is important for Douta, as most likely there will company cash plus AFC financing to build it - for Segilola, my understanding was there is no plan to do a proper PFS/DSF/economic assessment, as there is no need for external financing. Instead, I thought the plan is to produce an updated MRE with MLE plan for the company's own benefit. A few things I'd flag here are that Segilola has turned out to be much lower grade than expected and the nature of the deposit requires small interval exploration drills to be more certain of how much gold there is - so I already will be discounting whatever MRE they provide.

On the remaining ounces at Segilola. I did a lot of work on this earlier in the year (might have posted on here some of it), and eventually decided to give up and treat it as unknowable. Remember you have to adjust the initial MRE for lower-than-expected grade and also further adjusted for the recovery %... this gives a lot less ounces than you think.

I'm optimistic they will announce at least 200-400koz MLE (possibly including satellites and underground), based on lowered cut-off grades. I think they will broaden and deepen the open pit much more before going to underground. Segun may have a minimum threshold in mind that he wants to achieve before announcing MLE - it would make sense that this threshold provides enough years to get Douta built and prove up an alternative near-Segilola project (so maybe 2-3 years of ounces).

Most important is the throughput capacity at Segilola. They really need to find decent grades in the MLE to maintain production. The inventory stockpile remains a red herring, unless they can find high-grade material (Segilola & satellites) to mix with.

I haven't been following the company as much so I may be wrong on many of these thoguhts. I'm still holding some shares, and I believe this company and Segun are a good investment. There may just be material factors to understand. Ultimately the gold price can't be ignored and at this level washes away many of the concerns...

Interested to hear views. Still holding here, but much less weighting, and I sold a portion yesterday.

Key concerns are releated to Segilola MLE. End of Q2 company stated they "aimed" to announce this by end of 2025. Most recent Q3 announcement, there was no explicit mention of the date for MLE. Explicit timelines were given for Douta and Guitry. So are we to assume MLE will likely land in 2026?

My previous concern was that MLE would be delayed and mine would become depleted creating problems for the company (they can't really produce more than 20koz per annum from processing only the stockpile due to throughput constraints and recovery the low grade stockpile and this inventory stockpile is a red herring). Looking at the mined grades for Q3, they are lower than Q2. We need a few more quarters data to get a sense of what is happening with the mine though.

The company is still a good investment - cash is building (although earmarked for Douta), dividends being paid, Segilola MLE round the corner, Douta, Guitry, etc. Segun has to be commended for the job he has done, and he's certaintly made me lot of money.

We will see what the next 6 months brings. They have been figuring things out and making acquisitions while at a very early stage and while already being a public company. Imagine if they were IPO'ing now - I think, based on the growth on Boop and NC, as well as the base sales level of DD, they would fetch a higher valuation.

If they are able to maintain consistent "operational profitability" H2, with some "absolute profitability", then FY26 we should see "comfortable profitability". IF (big IF) the business optimisation (e.g., stock proposition, basket margin, AOV optimisation, etc) is effective, then this sets the business up to really benefit from operating leverage when topline rises.

Note comparing QoQ on a (somewhat) retailer that still has lots of things to figure out may be harsh, but the YoY picture here is great. The extreme re-focus on profitability then growth should pay off. We have no real idea on the limit for all 3 brands, but especially NC and double-especially Boop. I don't like the use of comparators (e.g., 600+% growth).

Now Boop has moved this is great - they really stand to benefit massively just from THG's brands alone. NC, or the "star of the show"/"jewel in the crown", is clearly a good business because the products they sell tend to retail at premium price points and consumers are "intentional" (i.e., protein content per £ spent) in their purchasing and see great value, with regular repurchasing. I think NC has been constrained stock-wise for a while and it will be interesting to see what happens when it gets a push.

Discount Dragon - which may have a name change one day - is still so small (as a fraction of both national supermarket and national discount market) sales that it has plenty of room to grow, once optimised.

So sticking to FY26 £30m in revenues with a rough £20m, £5m, £5m split. If they do not spend to much on marketing and basket margins are optimised, then I could see them making a suprised "absolute profit" in the low single digit millions. I think they will raise again with institutions if they do this, and it will be for strategic reasons once Martin's had a think about the direction.

I have faith in Martin and Mike for now. I can't find any real flaws in Mike's planned approach. I do think there is reason to be concerned about the balance sheet though, and think this will put investors off... even though I agree that, mainly because of short inventory cycles and (hopefully) low accumulation of dead stock, there is little to actually be worried about. Not sure about the short-term debt (taken prior to the raise), but understand why this is beneficial from a working capital point of view and also how it is secured.

They should have RNS'd the Boop move to Ingenuity. They also claimed they had "big, big announcements" coming up re deals for Boop and possibly NC.

Martin also has to be given credit for what looks like a very astute hire, in Mike, as well as the strategic decision to give him the reins as CEO. Hopefully results will demonstrate that they are not only excellent salesmen.

I think the expectations are low for Q4. Q3 revenue was a decline on Q2 (albeit "directionally" more profitable OR less loss-making). They have promised "not less than" Q3 for Q4. Q4 contains Black Friday and the holiday season - Mike stated that they already have a clear plan for dealing with Black Friday. Are they sandbagging? Or giving themselves room for error due to the THG Ingenuity move? I reckon £6m minimum in Q4, but with only operational profitability, as they will likely invest more heavily in marketing.

I think we can assume c£20m pa in sales from DD alone now going forward as base case. I also assume that DD is ex-growth (for margin of safety). NC and Boop will both continue to grow (they may not) and will mean that 2026 likely exceeds £30m total revenue across all 3 brands. At this level Huddled should be "comfortably profitable" (maybe Martin's 2026 profitability metric). However, I don't think the market will see a strong balance sheet for a while and this may put off investors.

Full disclosure - after selling c30% of my holding pre-interims, I have been buying back in at these lower levels after re-assessing the company. Hoepfully they are not further "tuition fees".

I'd be interested to know if the change in approach also needs to a higher conversion of new customers to returning customers. New customers themselves would be more likely to "return" if they saw a stock range that appeals to returning customers, and reduce the sense of being a novelty shop (instead they perceive the brand as more useful to them, similar to the "high intent" seen in Boop and NC customers).

We've seen Motato come to the UK and give up after significant losses. I think if Huddled can optimise business procedures now to maintain healthy basket margins, optimise AOV, create profit, and then use this profit to re-invest in new customers... then they will really be onto something (although wasn't this the original plan anyway?).

Management stated current resources are enough to get to full profitability without the need for further cash to be raised. Whether this transpires or not is anyone's guess. I think they should comfortably have enough cash to get to 2027 (so they've guaranteed their salaries at least). They seem to have the right plan - BUT investors like me are impatient in waiting for tangible results - and it takes time to execute.

The move to THG also looms. I note the post below that Boop has now moved. It's been disappointing that the move didn't happen as early as planned - Martin addressed this re 40 articulated lorry loads etc - but that could be argued to have been foreseeable at the time. Perhaps they wanted to operate from 2 sites and wasted time exploring this before realising it was unfeasible.

He has gone quiet on the stock on consignment idea. No mention in the interim nor in the IMC presentation. It will be interested to see how the move to THG Ingenuity works out and whether the integration progress past a customer-warehouser relationship. There could be lots of exploration, experimentation, and dead-ends here.

I like the Mike as CEO and Martin as Chairman combo. I have learnt a lot just from following the company and listening to the management (with the losses on my shares possibly being the "cost of tuition"). Mike sounds like he has the completely correct "formulaic" approach for each of the 3 brands and his diagnosis of the problems definitely resonates with me. We just have to remember that management of listed companies are expert salespeople.

Which is why the balance sheet is incredibly concerning. Mike made intimations that they need to add staff, in commercial and marketing, to the team and that said explicitly that the current team is "stretched". Now that they are optimising margins and AOVs, the next issue will likely be between controlling costs whilst trying to achieve top line growth. The move to THG Ingenuity frees up management time and mind-space to focus on these other areas entirely.

Anagement say that DD and NC reached "operational profitability" in Aug, and all 3 brands reached this in Sept. Given head office costs are c£100k per month, this means we could assume cash burn no greater than £500k across Aug - Dec. We could estimate a higher cash burn of £300k (finger in the air) for July to create margin of safety. This means cash burn for H2 should be less than £800k. The cash balance (excluding Q3 cash burn) was c£2m, so we should finished year end with at c£1.2m in cash. This figure may be different due to inventory cycles, stock orders, debt, etc. But ballpark.

I think the refocus on profitable revenues is a good thing (obv). CEO seems to have a really good handle on what's needed to make this happen, and the "operational profitability" for all 3 brands in Sept may be validation that the strategy is working.

They stated their focus is consistent operational profitability, which means the focus for 2026 will either be to accelerate growth, continue to be operationally profitable, or reach "absolute" profitability.

I don't like the fact that they've taken on short term debt c£600k. This was also taken on prior to the equity raise, so I wonder if they were really struggling at the time that they got the institutional investor on board. Would be interested to hears the thoughts of others on this. The balance sheet deterioration is concerning. Think about YE 2025 balance sheet - without cash generation, i.e. positive operating cash flow - the balance sheet will likely not be any better.

That said, I continue to think all 3 brands have significant potential. This business is early stage, and normally I don't think public markets would get to this initial stage. I think the focus on the consistency and breadth (across categories and price point) of the offering will be key. We saw a significant build up across all 3 brands in stock breadth (no reflection on depth) - this was during Mike's tenure - and may have offered empirical evidence towards what they should sell going forwards. Only NC has seen further growth in range, whilst DD and Boop both have fallen, and NC has always been super-constrained in terms of stock range. On this board we have discussed that they would need to strive towards a consist offering at some point. The key point is that returning customers are the ones that generally make them profit, with the new customers being loss making unless they return (with no certainty). The offering and brands need to be optimised for returning, not new customers, and that means stocking things that keep them coming back.