We would love to hear your thoughts about our site and services, please take our survey here.
Sounds reasonable. My experience of this stuff in the City was that there tended to be relatively high break even costs due to the initial IT and development costs but once you got to b/e the unit profitability soared. That's assuming you avoided stupid losses like Baydonhill!
Great stuff John21. Serious, considered analysis which is most welcome. Well done. One question though - transaction fees in financial services tend to decline due to cheaper IT, competition and higher volume processing. Are you assuming £2.2 per transaction will be stable in future?
Hardly! Read the numbers not their headlines. Pre-tax loss down from £8.7m to £7.2m. Slightly encouraging. But dig a bit and you can see that gross revenue increased by £3.5m but costs rose by £3.2. Plus there's around £8m of something called derivatives gains in there (note 12). Not sure that's easy to replicate year on year. All in all not bad numbers but not great. I see they are predicting cash flow positive in the coming Q4, which is very precise and suggests they are aiming to keep costs flat till then. More waiting for the SP to get back to the 40s I'm afraid.
I would have thought that with the various updates from FDI that the re-start is now all in the price. But if I'm not mistaken we're in closed period anyway so until the annual results come out (sometime soon this month?) the board aren't allowed to make forward-looking statements. But once the results are out there should be some indication in the chairman's report about prospects. The board will also be free to talk to their big IIs and keep them informed.
The problem with profit warnings is they are often a prelude to a dividend cut. One of the redeeming virtues of SNR is the plus 3pc divvi. If that gets tampered with then you'll see even more selling. It all depends on cash flow. But hopefully the devaluation of sterling will help steady management nerves.
According the the last full annual report net cash was £30.2m. If the £5m Baydonhill hit provision comes straight off the cash reserve figure then that still a cash burn of £10m. But it's all a bit irrelevant until we see the revenues and expenditure numbers for this year. Going forward sterling devaluation should be good news though.
I think that's a slightly optimistic view muso. EPO had 30 million cash a year ago so that's 15 mill down this year. Previous year losses were generally under £10 million. So unless there's something more complicated going on which I'm not clear about doesn't that suggest widening losses? I await the annuals with some trepidation! The CVR re-write is good but we really need to see some fundamental improvement in gross revenue, better cost control and some progress towards breakeven. I live in hope - and have been for some years now!
That's more like it. DBS is a decent bank with a Singpore HQ and ambitions in the region. Good customer for EPO. More like this please.
By whom is PPG 'not allowed' to disclose the rate? LSE/RNS rules require disclosure of anything which is likely to be share price sensitive. However firms can chose not to disclose commercially sensitive info. I would not have thought this was commercially sensitive but It turns out that it's not particularly SP sensitive either!
I hope you're right. I thought the ALK model was simpler and a more compelling investor story. I find PPG's corporate and operational structure too multi-layered but it's the closest I can find to ALK at present. I was against the takeover of ALK by Balfour Beatty. Sold far too soon in my opinion. Let's hope for better from PPG.
Sorry guys but sometimes I can be a bit dim. Does anyone know what form the asset finance will take. If it's debt then the interest payments will be a drain on cash flow (impact on dividend), ditto bonds. If its stock then there's instant dilution. Why all the optimism? I'm in this since 1.10 after ALK got taken out so happy to be kept informed!
Agree. Groves and Edmonds have been shamefully devious throughout. If either of these two are allowed to be directors of a listed company from here on it will be a travesty. LSE/AIM should be ashamed too, this is way outside the normal acceptable investor risk parameters. That's the third AIM de-list I've been involved in in the last six years and in each case the shareholders are left high and dry. If banks acted like this the banking authorities would jump on them from a great height. I won't invest in an AIM stock again.
Down 60% from a year ago!
Looks like EPO may finally be turning around after a year of poor performance. The Trading statement wasn't too bad which might have been the trigger for some big buys coming through this last few days. Certainly there can't be many bears left at 15-17. It remains to be seen whether new hope will get us back to 40+ but I think we need some changes at the top. The senior sales team also needs to reel in some of the pipeline prospects they keep banging on about.
Agree. Makes the selloff from 160 over the past six weeks look a bit silly. But it meant I topped up at 127 so very cheerful now! Good numbers all round. Is the GSK lawsuit a serious issue? I don't know enough about the industry to know whether this is routine behaviour which will just pass over or whether there will be repercussions such as GSK not wanting to do new business with with VEC. Any informed opinions out there?
At a guess looks like 127 may be a bottom. There are two or three chunky buys going through at that price today although there's an awful lot of sellers on the board too but for smaller volume.Given last results and prospects and an update next week this could be an answer to the holiday kids in the back of the car question - Are we there yet?
To be honest I never understood why it dropped from 870 to 570 so quickly, especially as no big investors announced downsizing. Today saw a huge number of small trades - I reckon someone had a programme trade working today, picking up small lots in order not to frighten the horses. Let's see if it continues! Other property stocks did well too so it could also be a generally improved sentiment for the sector.