Member Info for CHEQUEMATE

There has been a trading update for NET around 18 July for the last 2 years, wonder what the chances are of one around that time this year?. That would mean a RNS possibly by the end of next week. Very slow but steady progress so far. Regards CM

Good evening all. Some time since anyone posted here, so here goes. Like most here I guess, I am a little frustrated to see no advance in GBG share price over the past weeks/months. I have checked and rechecked the fundamentals and the RNSs and can see no reason why the share price is not over 100p by now. It is a company that seems to keep its' light under a bushel. Maybe, just maybe the market has been disappointed with its' organic growth not being higher than what was reported in the last results. I had thought the latest acquisition would give GBG a boost but it seemed to go right over the markets' head or they weren't impressed enough. I see absolutely no reason for selling up and moving on. I remain confident with the company but need to keep my patience with the belief that longer term this will prove to be a solid investment and not judge its' performance by comparing it with other more high flying shares at present with no where near as good fundamentals. What thinks others?. Regards all CM

The last 2 years have seen a trading update at the end of June or the beginning of July. Both times it was stated that results would be ahead of market expectations. Could we get a 3rd consecutive positive update?. The recent retrace in the share price has been disappointing. We have seen it before on a number of occasions but the share price rallied on each occasion. The fundamentals remain strong and RNS have been positive. Another good RNS will boost the share price. TRCS share price tends to re-act both up and down by more than one would expect to any small volume due to the few shares in free circulation. Additionally, TRCS is not immune to the general market volatility at present, even though there is no obvious reason why the share price should fall. I remain optimistic. If I had the funds I could make the case for increasing my holding, but sit reasonably confident with what I have. Good luck all. Regards CM

GB Group ADD 03/06/2013 Harriet Russell Reduce text size Increase text size Print article Share this article Email article to a friend GB Group is a specialist in identification GB Group is a specialist in identification Identity management specialist GB Group (LON:GBG) reported that pre-tax profits had leapt 40% to £3.5m on revenues which saw similar growth of 24% to £39.4m for the year to March. Cash was up at £6.3m (2012: £4.8m) and a 9% increase in the dividend to 1.5p was proposed. Since the period end the group has launched a complete refresh of its brand, renaming several divisions. For example its data authentication division is now known as 'identity proofing' and data services has been renamed 'identity solutions'. The rebranding effort was initiated as a means of 'unifying' the business, the group has said, as growth accelerates both domestically and internationally. GB launched new solutions in five more geographies during the period, including China and Argentina. This has brought the number of countries the company operates in to 20. Looking ahead, the group has noted the role that online commerce will play in the future growth of the group and has therefore said it plans to direct investment into its international verification network. Given the group's strong cash position, and double digit growth both at the top and bottom lines, its hard to dispute progress here. Furthermore the progressive dividend continues to be a sign of confidence in its prospects. Add.

Gardengirl?...........Gardengirl?...........err...........let me see..........Gardengirl!. That name rings a bell from somewhere. Gardengirl!. Wait a minute.....Gardengirl!. No, it's gone, can't remember. Now, where did I put that chocolate?. Wait a minute!....chocolate, Gardengirl......Gardengirl.....chocolate!. It's Gardengirl!, yes, now I remember, it's my long gone friend from Oxford!. No, that's wrong, I mean Cambridge!. Yo!. Hey, where have you been?, must have been one heck of a hen night!. Great to have you back. I'm just back from a week away so pretty tired from a 10hr drive. Yes, I'm still in ECK although I did consider selling out to invest elsewhere. Still in most of my other holdings, upped GBO a little and bought into NPT with a small holding. Portfolio has done little over the last month or more. Disappointing GBO fell back this week but with a trading update on Monday it may advance again. Agree it is less stressful with less holdings. Believe market had got ahead of itself so not surprised to see a fallback, think it was looking for an excuse. It isn't such a bed of roses out there as some may think you only have to look at my field of employment, retail to see folk are still not spending. However, there are and will be opportunities out there to make a sound investment. Glad the move is now complete and you are hopefully settling in. Will catch up with you again shortly. Take care and don't let the monkeys swing from too many branches. Regards CM

Expect a RNS in the next day or two regarding holdings in GBG. There were a couple of very large trades today, which although shown as sells may well not have been and may have been buys. Often it would appear institutions can trade at different prices to us mere mortals. I would be surprised if an institution would want to sell out of GBG with the good RNSs and fine fundamentals and should that be the case then I would expect the market to have fallen more than it has today. Then again, what do I know?!. Interesting though, especially with a trading update likely on 3 June. Good luck all. Regards CM

Where are you my friend?. Hope your move went smoothly and all is well. Did you get the broadband sorted?, if not, guess you can't read this!. How are your investments doing?, if you are still in BLNX then pretty well I think. I have been thinking of re-arranging my portfolio to invest elsewhere and ECK was top of the list to move on, or at least part of it. Then, finally today we have some positive movement. wonder how long it will last and how far it can go?. Take care; look forward to hearing from you again. Regards CM

You're welcome. Good to see you posting again. Not always nice to be proved right though C8. I sold out of QPP at a tad under 14p with a small profit, before the last 2 RNS and the results, felt uncomfortable and had a premonition of what may happen, although not to the extent. Way too much pride on their board too, and you know what pride comes before....!. Lesson for us all with QPP; if something looks too good to be true then it generally is too good to be true. However, I wish all over there well. As for GBG, well, I can rest far better here and I hope you can too. Looking forward to this breaking 100p again; it may sustain it this time with it approaching it at a steadier rate. How different any RNS are released here. Remember the reply to my e-mail to GBG re. not releasing RNS when there was news about?, something to do with if the company couldn't put figures to the outcome of the news to the market, then the market may take it badly and have the opposite effect on the share price to what we would want..........now........where have we seen that played out right now?. Oh, and GBG don't have a CEO who uses his twitter account to announce to all and sundry RNS before they are released to the market. Take care, and good luck to all. Regards CM

Good evening folks. Sometimes we just have to wait, wait and wait a little bit longer before the fundamentals rise to the surface. The share price has been ticking up nicely for a little while and has nothing to do with the Naked Trader in my opinion. Nice to have a quiet share performing well. I have checked the GBG web news page, nothing new on there; so just enjoy, relax, pour yourself a drink, put your feet up and sleep well. Let others tear themselves apart elsewhere. But of course, keep our eyes open in case the story should change (not sure you can do that when sleeping!, but you know what I mean). Good luck all. Regards CM

Article from todays Growth Company Investor A niche finance specialist with considerable potential. The company operates in a niche area of the finance sector. Financial services will always be a sector that remains insulated in times of crisis because in short - people will always want a way to money. That said, alternative sources of lending are coming increasingly under fire for exaggerated and irresponsible terms. Cue this month's pick, Ultimate Finance, which proves that self-regulation and a sensible approach to independent financing can go a long way. An AIM constituent since 2002, it is also important to look at who Ultimate Finance lends to. Its primary recipients are small to medium size businesses (SMEs) and its main offering is cash flow solutions - an issue close to the heart of many of its clients. Solutions include factoring, invoice discounting, asset finance, trade finance and debtor protection and the service is underpinned by a robust risk management IT system which also provides clients with internet-based access to their account information in real-time. In terms of keeping the business responsible and bad debt levels less than 1 per cent of total annual lending, the business has to undertake stringent risk assessments on all its clients before committing to an aver lend of £95,000 per SME. Key sectors for the group to work with are recruitment, manufacturing, transport, printing and technology. Lending is a risky business but as of 31 December 2012, the group's largest client exposure - reportedly £1.4 million - only represented five per cent of the company's total lend for the calendar year. Chief executive of the group is Jeremy Coombes who brings 27 years of experience in financial services to the table. Previous roles include founder and operations director of Bibby Factors, international new business co-ordinator of HSBC Invoice Finance and senior client manager at NMB-Heller. Speaking to GCI Coombes shared his opinion about the impending crackdown on irresponsible lending. He was confident that the group "won't be the type of business targeted by the regulatory initiative". However, he added that the company would "welcome outside regulation" as it would only "enhance" its own "internal code of conduct." For the six months to December, the group posted pre-tax profits of £560,000 (2011:£329,000) on revenues of £5.8 million (2011: £5.4 million). The dividend increased 12.5 per cent to 0.5 pence per share. With a dividend that has "little intention" of slowing down and growth "across every business stream" this looks set to be the kind of company craved by businesses nationwide. Buy. Always good to read something positive. Regards CM

Good evening folks. For what it is worth naked trader yesterday wrote: GB Group reported great results ahead of expectations and went up nicely that continues as a long term cracker. A quid is the next target. Maybe his confidence will rub off onto other investors. Good luck all. Regards CM

I have done some research this morning into DSG. It seems a reasonable company with reasonable fundamentals. EPS have risen over the last 3 years, the PE is ok, PEG is low, it pays a dividend and management have a substantial holding together with institutions, equating to around 84.3% of shares issued. With such a high percentage that can mean the share is rather illiquid where trading in shares can result in greater movement in share price than in other more liquid stocks. That isn't necessarily a problem; I am used to that with my holding in TRCS. Remarkably few shares in issue, happier with that than investing in a company with billions of shares in issue and constantly issuing more to acquire companies. Looking at the fundamentals on the LSE site I am not sure of the ROCE for the previous year but will not get hung up over it. Haven't looked at the share price chart yet, need to have a look. I have read through the latest set of results, paying particular attention to the Chairman's and the CEO's report. On the whole the comments are positive, just one comment by the Chairman concerns me a tad; that is "Despite these positive trends, in what remains an unpredictable economic climate, we remain cautious". However the CEO states "It is the view of the Board that as the economic environment improves the strength of our products and services will create a strong opportunity for further organic growth". Hmm. I am a great believer in studying what the Chairman and CEO say, looking for positives and being extremely wary of anything negative. Being cautious is one thing, remaining cautious?, well, maybe not a bad thing; better than saying everything is milk and honey when they know full well it isn't. So, on the face of it, things look ok and the company has the confidence to increase their dividend, very good. I have put DSG on my watchlist, no hurry to invest but certainly open to the possibility. If a company is worth investing in today, then it will be tomorrow. I sold my holding in QPP yesterday because I felt uneasy with the amount I had invested in the market generally (and also uneasy about QPP ((milk and honey?)), so don't want to rush into anything right now. However, this does look like a good prospect. Good luck to all on here; I may be joining you at sometime. Regards CM

Article from todays GCI: Supplier of recruitment software Dillistone Group reported pre-tax profits of £1.7m (2011:£1.4m) on revenues which grew 29% to £7.1m for the year to December. Cash funds totalled £1.6m (2011:1.6m) after an acquisition payment and the group remains debt free. A final dividend of 2.5p per share has been recommended, making total dividend for year of 3.7p (a yield of approximately 4.8%). Dillistone Group is a leader in the supply and support of recruitment software. It has two main trading businesses: Dillistone Systems, which targets the executive search industry and Voyager Software which targets other recruitment markets. Both divisions are said to have made a valuable contribution to the financial results whilst also delivering on important operational milestones. 2012 represents the first full year of ownership of Voyager Software, and the integration of Voyager Software into the group has been said to have progressed well. The group's strategy is to grow the business both organically and through acquisition. The acquisition strategy entails consideration of firms offering products that would further increase market share in the group's core makets, legacy applications where clients could be transferred to our modern suite of products of complementary applications which may be cross sold to clients of the group. The first quarter of 2013 is said to have been the best quarter since Q2 of 2011 in terms of new business wins. Incoming orders for the next generation Infinity product are well up on the levels achieved by the predecessor product, Professional, in the equivalent period in 2012. This has allowed the division to also show year on year growth in new business sales. Analysts at WH Ireland are forecasting pre-tax profits of £1.8m on revenues of £7.2m for the year to December. A strong income earner, the real appeal here is the steady progressive dividend and an order book that keeps growing thanks to sensible software acquisitions. Buy. I am not invested in DSG but I will do some thorough research tomorrow. I do not rely totally on GCI but I do use them sometimes as a starting point to look into potential investments; they have come up with some excellent companies previously. I usually use them to back up my own research. The fact that Ridingwaves has posted on here is encouraging, we know each other from a number of other boards and I value his contributions, we have similar strict investment criteria. Good luck all. Regards CM

Hello my friend. Thanks for the post. I was tucked up in bed so too late to reply. Don't worry about feeling you have to reply to mine, as and when you can is good enough. Nothing of use to say?, I don't think that is the case, just good to hear from you. Thought GBO was going to have a red day today, so pleased and relieved to see it finish blue. Here with ECK it really does seem like it is in hibernation but I wasn't expecting fireworks and remain reasonably confident that come year end it will have been a reasonable investment, at least better than sticking the income into the bank (not difficult). The last RNSs have been good but seem to get overlooked. Not suggesting you invest here GG, even if you had the dosh, and certainly not one to get divorced over!!!!. Stay happy and continue to sit on the sidelines for now, there will always be opportunities in the future, so there is no rush; your priorities are elsewhere right now. GG, I am extremely tired so will keep this short. Too much gardening I fear, but was determined to finish the job. Look forward to you bouncing off with me!. Have a good weekend (I have to work). CM

Some huge buys early on (assuming they are correct, and why not). Wonder if they are director buys?. If so, then very important and may be worth considering following. Results very good as expected. Of importance is that growth is ORGANIC as well as through acquisition. No mention of news released on own website previously, that may be being held back until the RNS in June when there will be a better idea of the impact on trading. Would be great and very encouraging to see this hit the 100p mark again. For those who have stayed here through the turbulence over the last few months or so, well done, not easy. To those thinking of or who have just invested, this is a good company, well run and with excellent fundamentals. Good luck all. Regards CM

Look!!!.........ran out of space it seems!. It should have said "look after yourself", so, look after yourself. Thanks for posting; I always look forward to your posts, very often much needed light relief and a chuckle!. I'm around if you need to sound off or whatever. CM

Hey GG!, great to have you back, how are you doing?. I really had resigned myself to losing you. Thought you had probably decided to call it a day for at least the time being, knowing how busy you have been with the house and the need for financing it etc. So, really pleased to see your post. Sounds like you still have a fair bit to do on the old or rather new abode, what a job!. Don't think I could cope with it myself, just groan when I look at the state of the bedroom, never mind the thought of having to do the ironing; so good for you. I think I did well replacing the element in the cooker after what?, 6 months or more. Didn't need to resort to scrambled egg in the microwave quite. Well, lets hope for a better week with GBO this coming week. Glad to see it recover somewhat come weekend. Did think about you and your buy at around 40p, had done the same myself, so like you (same no. of shares I think) had seen a good chunk of profit wiped out in just 2 days. Doesn't help at work seeing the price drop; think my attitude to customers varies from "Good morning, how are you this morning, lovely day outside again" to "hello, what do you want?, expect it's p*****g with rain again is it?. What?, you don't want any help?, well b****r off then!". Not quite, try to stay professional even if my thoughts are sometimes not where they should be. Not sure my posts are anywhere near as useful nor informative as RW on this or any other share. I do study and research a great deal, but trying to put the technical details into words is usually beyond me and it's better I leave that to others. QPP!, hmm, don't mention QPP!. Not a very friendly bunch on there. Know of a few investors who have given up posting because they are ridiculed for having an alternative view. Some don't seem to realise or want to realise that you can't just keep issuing millions of new shares without it affecting the share price by dilution. Otherwise you could get the company into the FTSE100 or other just by issuing more and more shares. Then there is the issue of the CEO or Chairman, tweeting on Twitter news of the next acquisition or contract(s) won before it has been released to the market it would seem; not sure how legal that is or how close to the wind he is sailing!. Is this insider dealing by another name?. If it is "bad practise", and I really don't know, I think the market would take it badly and QPP sp could get hit. I don't intend to stay invested for too long; will set a stop loss at some point. In the meantime, their bb can just get on with it; not going to waste my time with them, don't need it. Re ECK (finally); well, it's been a little disappointing. I know it is not going to be a rocket of a share but I am back to break even after a small profit. A little too much selling. Can't see anything to panic over though, so it is probably another share to just let run. Fundamentals not changed. Must go GG Look

Todays 2 RNS would explain why there has been so much apparent selling recently; one institution selling its holdings whilst another has increased theirs. Done over a period of time I would suggest to get the best price and to avoid panic selling by others perhaps. Like to believe that Oryx must have confidence to up their holding. This really is a slow burner. I/we have to be content with that and try NOT to compare ECK with other more racey shares which may be showing evidence of greater and faster growth. I can still sleep fairly easily invested here. Come year end if my investment has grown by somewhere around 20-25% I will be quite happy (share price around 18p or so). Having said that of course it would be nice to see this making better progress. May be talking to myself here, but hey ho. Anyone else out there with a view?. Regards CM

Today's 2 RNS - Holdings in Company Seems like Walker Crips share holding has been taken up by Black Rock. No need to worry then, breathe again folks. Think much of todays downward movement can possibly be explained by poor figures out of the U.S.A. When I looked earlier this afternoon, all indicies were down, although I have to say I haven't looked since around mid afternoon. Sometimes we have to wait, wait a little longer, then wait a little longer again before are patience is rewarded. Nothing stock specific that should worry us here (imo). Regards CM

If the last trade is to be believed, then there is only one institution that has that many shares to sell, i.e Walker Crips with 6,760,750 shares. With good news of late and the knowledge that the results due to be issued are to be ahead of market consensus why would anyone want to sell?, unless it is because someone/some other institution has an interest in buying the shares from them. Either way, the trade is recorded as after hours and I would expect a holdings RNS sometime tomorrow, hopefully at 07.00 to give us an idea before heading off to work. The way the market is at present who knows what effect the trade will have on tomorrows share price!. I can see why private investors would be a little uneasy about the trade. Regards CM