RE: Is this a real business?2 Oct 2015 11:19
Hi Stuartman
Before the totally unexpected news of the 30-day site suspension we were definitely heading back to a valuation at cash (around 24p). I reckoned we'd hold around there for a few months, then rise slowly as investors became more confident, the company started to pay predictable dividends an the early stage investors finally exited.
Unfortunately the 30-day site suspension has pushed that whole recovery process back quite a bit.
We first need to get an idea of what the cash cost is, and then an indication of the impact on future advertising sales.
It's quite interesting to make an analysis of future cash flows, assuming that sales resume at -10% of where they were before the site suspension . We might see total revenue of H2 2015 of about 340m RMB (assuming no charge to advertisers while we're offline). At that level the company should still be in the back, but only just. Then in 2016 we may begin to build sales again.
So we might just come out of this nightmare in reasonable shape. But China is a highly competitive place, and whether it's too optimistic to assume a loss of only 10% of advertisers I just don't know.