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Again I am in agreement with both of you. The 30 years is an asset. Marie-Claire and her father have a lot of experience and have seen this business through very challenging times. But the different business, the new opportunity and the financial trajectory message isn't landing based on what is currently being presented.

Investors should be walking out of the sessions trigger happy and ready to buy. I've done some analysis on the share purchases since the results. All but 5 'buys' (over 100 shares) since the results are mine. I have picked up 42,000 shares, with just 12,000 shares purchased by others. That's just potentially 5 people who have looked at the business and thought - yes I need to be on this one, and between them they have invested just £10k. Again I am not concerned, it is a double edged sword. I have the means to buy a lot of shares, and at this price I am very happy to be buying as I believe that the price will double in the next 12 months even if we cannot get the messaging right given the results that I know will come. But it is frustrating all the same, I prefer rising prices and look at the opportunity cost of my chunk of capital not being invested elsewhere in other shares that are moving up.

Both of you give me great feedback and I am happy to take your thoughts to Marie-Claire, who may or may not choose to act on them but at least she hears the feedback which she has told me she appreciates as it gives her a view of what others are thinking.

Keep going, we'll get there...

6. GT Connect, Protect and Cloud - I heard some words, it sounds interesting but what is this doing? Is it locking customers in, you talked about it accelerating customer onboarding times and demonstrations. As an investor I want to know, is it delivering extra revenues, by winning new customers faster, how are lead times coming down, how many customers are using and they being charged more? Is this a USP over our competitors, do our customers love it?

7. GT Lite - How many sold? What revenues have been generates in the last 12 months? Is this expected to accelerate and drive additional revenues. Only include this if you really think it is transformational, is it like the apple SE phone allowing us into new markets, how big is the market, what share do we have and what is our target?

8. Janus C4 - Again why are we putting this in here? What is the market size, how much do we intend to take? Great that we highlight the pipeline but why just this product, why not all the pipeline across the business?

On the last 3 points we need to explain better the what and why of these products from an investors perspective- what is it going to deliver for us £, can these three products allow us to double our GT revenues - if so, let's day that.

9. Safetell - Doors - we have all the numbers showing the size of the automated door market, market size, number of doors, our current share of this and where we want to go. Put our customers on this slide. We have government contracts we are a trusted partner, and our partners love our work. Congratulations on the pipeline of work >£12m! Is this a record - if so we should state that. Let's get a graph showing the last 5 years (half year numbers), showing falling revenues to the low 2H 2022 then the rise. Let's highlight that this pipeline will see us delivering continued growth

10. Key business highlights. Let's get our share price somewhere on this slide. Investor confidence is growing, our shareholders are excited about the future (we are). We are now delivering solid growth. To make room, I would just have one point covering GT (not the three services HCM, GT connect and Access control) - 9 years of growth, accelerating further with 3 new partners.

Slide 6 works really well. Although again no mention of the 1H loss and the 2H delivery of profit. 2024 FY was two very different trading periods, again I would call this out. We want investors piecing together that looking forward the world will be more like 2H 2024 rather than the periods before (whilst we cannot say it directly). The stress around this should be within your comfort levels.

3. People and data focus - again all the numbers on this slide look so, so... Although if you have talked about 2H performance over 1H performance it shouldn't need re-iterating. Paul does highlight the reoccurring revenues in this slide, but there is no graph of clocks or reoccurring revenues over the last 5 years. With us providing the proprietary software and hardware, we are effectively following the apple, android and amazon model - so those customers signing up should be remain with us (you reference this in the questions, but can we make more of it here?)

4. Physical security - On the right of this slide I would list all the major partners we are able to highlight our high-profile customers we are doing work for including data centres, government contracts and large retailers. Again, a graph on this page would not go a miss, I have revenues growing 10% per half year reporting period since the low of £2m in 2H22. Finally work in that Physical security is growing again given an increase in staff attacks and safety and recent riots (did we see increased activity/enquiries on the back of those events?).

5. Operational Highlights - should this be titled - accelerating our growth strategy? I was surprised to hear that we have 3 new partners, thinking it was only 2. Can we not RNS these partners when we sign them? On this slide - amazing stuff. But for investors what does it mean. We go back to targets - does this mean that growth will be higher or lower than the growth we have achieved in the last could of years? Does it mean increasing margins and higher revenues and higher profits? If you recall you stated a 3 years ago that you intended to grow revenues by 2 to 3 times. Here we are today and we did not achieve that, but you investors are not giving you a hard time over not achieving that, in the main I think we're all pretty happy so - please can we set something out for investors around what we are trying to achieve - a minimum of 10% growth in revenues per annum with a stretch of up to 20%? Profit, margins? Clock's even. This was the previous plan 2018 target 500 clocks, 2019 3,000, 2020 5,000, 2021 7,000, 2022 13,000, 2023 22,000, 2024 34,000, 2025 54,000. We were not far away from our plan in 2024. Amazing stuff. Set some more targets on the back of this strategy.

Firstly, great to see you and Paul at the Proactive Investors event (I have watched it back). I know it is an event you have done many times in the past, so we shouldn't expect too much from that, but I thought I'd give you some feedback from an investor's perspective below before going into the events of next week.

This is all meant to be constructive, please take from it what you will,

1. The intro - I think it is pretty good; it gets across what we do well and the fact that we are established 30 years needs to come out. However, for a business established 30 years, as an investor I am thinking if this is such as great business - What have they achieved in their 30 years? What's been the return to investors? I am hearing high margins with well-established customers so wow, they must be making millions right?

Then I look at the facts. The business has barely made money in the last 10 years, it has run up debt, the share price has done nothing, no dividends since 2016.

I'm wondering if there is a legacy break needed in this initial part, it is almost whilst we have been around for 30 years, in the last 5 years we have been transforming this legacy business into a high growth, higher margin business which in the last 12 months has really started to accelerate. We're here to focus on our future, the growth picture and explain to you how we are rapidly growing revenues and profits in GT and we have been turning around our physical security division from a decline into a growth business again to deliver more revenues and profits.

2. Financials - We then go into the financials with Paul. And I am hearing that Group revenues grew by 10%. Okay, revenue growth is good, but hang on inflation has been significant over the period, so how good is this? (Google states that CPI for April 23 to April 24 is 3%) so we are growing revenues 3x ahead of CPI. More importantly revenue growth in the 2H was 15% higher than the first half. We highlighted despite revenue growth in the 1H, that overall FY revenues would be back end loaded - let's tell the audience that this was the case, we delivered much more revenue in the 2H and if we are feeling bullish - we see this revenue growth continuing.

6% YoY growth in GT sounds poor when we talked about being high growth and high margin. Again 2H was significantly higher, 16% higher than 1H and 2H 24 was 23% higher than 1H 23. So, let's say whilst revenue only grew 6% YoY in GT this is because we lost a partner although since then we have won 3 more and revenues for 2H were 16% higher than 1H and 2H 24 was 23% higher than 1H 23. This makes for a much better presentation from an investors perspective and gives an opportunity to highlight losing a key partner but bringing on 3 new partners, hit us for a period, but we are now over that and growing strong. The 9 years of growth is amazing. Can we show a slide of the 1H YoY growth? The Safetell growth and turn around comes across really w

Hi fft100,

I couldn't join. I sent the above as feedback on our presentation at Proactive, ahead of the really important session next week.

Finally some positive news, which is basically things are not getting any worse. The productivity increases are called out although with the market being flat, just means prices remain under pressure. 11 USD of cash is useful. Margins are critical in delivering a profit

Steppe Cement Ltd

("Steppe Cement" or the "Company")

Trading Update for the Third Quarter ended 30 September 2024

Steppe Cement Ltd (AIM: STCM), is pleased to announce the following trading update for the third quarter ended 30 September 2024 ("Q3 2024" or the "Period"). All numbers referenced below are unaudited.

· Steppe Cement generated revenue of KZT 15,085 million (approximately USD 32 million) in Q3 2024, which was 7% higher than the revenue achieved in Q3 2023 of KZT 14,116 million (approximately USD 31 million).

· For the nine months ended 30 September 2024, Steppe Cement recorded revenue of KZT 30,520 million (approximately USD 67 million) compared with KZT 31,093 million (approximately USD 69 million) in the corresponding nine-month period in 2023 (a 2% decrease).

· The increased revenue in the 3 months to 30 September 2024 was largely attributable to the increase in the volume of sales during the period to 621,915 tonnes, 5% higher than in 2023 as well as a 2% increase in the price of products sold in the quarter.

· For the first 9 months of 2024, the volume of sales remained at 1.34 million tonnes

· The average price (ex-VAT) for delivered cement was KZT 22,755 (approximately USD 50) per tonne in the first 9 months, compared with KZT 23,163 (approximately USD 51) per tonne in the corresponding period in 2023.

· Production levels have increased due to the increased efficiencies resulting from the capex spent over the previous last two years. Higher production levels helped to stabilize the cost base as well as to increase the clinker stock available for the fourth quarter.

· Steppe Cement has cash and cash equivalents of USD 11 million, as at 7 October 2024.

For the first nine months of 2024, the demand for cement in the domestic market was 9.1 million tonnes, similar to 2023. In the first 9 months of 2024, imports into Kazakhstan decreased to 3.5% of total consumption down from 4.6% in the corresponding period in 2023, while exports from Kazakhstan were 0.72 million tonnes in the 9 months to 30 September 2024 due to higher competition in Uzbekistan. The current estimate of the cement market for the full year of 2024 is 11.3 million tonnes, the same as in 2023.

Steppe Cement's market share is expected to stay at around 15%.

Javier del Ser Perez, Chief Executive Officer of Steppe Cement, commented:

"We recovered both volumes and pricing in the third quarter of 2024, following a price adjustment in the second quarter. While competition remains strong, our factory has continued to enhance its capacity and productivity, enabling us to offset the impact of past inflation. We remain focused on d

Again in agreement with you fft100. And Hedgehog, a great presentation of the numbers.

Frustrating definitely sums it up. Questions need to be raised at these sessions that spark thoughts in others if the management will not lead the audience.

The reality however is the numbers will do the talking. And we're going to do very nicely off this investment.

I was tempted to go to the session and fire in some leading questions but couldn't make the time. The lack of any trades today and the lack of trades in the last month since the results speaks volumes around the delivery of our messages so I expect you are right fft100.

Whilst you need to explain a little of what we do and put some focus on the FY24, the key messages to land are as per my earlier post, the half yearly moves to profitability from the lows of 2H 23 is the story. The Safetell turn around, the GT amazing growth story and reoccurring revenues thrown off our proprietary tech and software, is not shining through from the current 'this is what we do presentation'.

It is immensely frustrating but not worrying, I am confident that we'll report an outstanding 1H 25 and be confident in the FY25 and FY26 picture. The numbers will drive the price in time but I'd agree we need to sharpen our pitch if we want to get a decent multiple.

Exactly Longtimeinvestor, my 2000 shares will ultimate be worth £10m each when they have repurchased everyone else's

:)

What a lovely share this is to own. Making lots of money, paying lots of dividend and buying back lots of shares. Simply marvellous...

Nice post Hedgehog. I hope you are keeping well, the UK Investors Magazine evening is a new audience and therefore really important. I really hope we can land the key messages and bring in some new investors.

I've paused my buying as I am buying into some selling with few other buyers around. We need to drum up some interest from new investors, I'm happy for the price to fall back a bit and go again, nearer the next results.

I summarised to a fellow investor the other day our performance as follows...

"Newmark Security have just reported their results. Revenues up for the 2H period (23 & 24) from £9.675m to £11,911m. A whopping 23.1% increase. Delivered by both growth within their two business (outlined below).

They have tech business Grosvenor Technology (access control - entry card and biometric readers) that put in its best ever performance with record revenues of £8.84m up from £7.185m in 2H 23 a 23% increase. This is despite revenue UKG that they lost (my estimate is c.£2.6m pa in 23/24) from a distribution partner that was acquired. The amazing thing is that this partner has since been replaced with two new partners that appear to be delivering the goods. GT manufactures the hardware and software that is licenced and sold through partners, and thus revenues can be reoccurring, and margins benefit through scale.

After years of decline, Safetell (physical security - barriers, screens) revenues are up 51% on 2H22, and 23.3% on 2H23. (£3.07m 242H, £2.49m 2H23, £2.03m 2H22) on contracts wins with major supermarkets, hospitals and data centres. Safetell has now delivered 4 half year reporting back-to-back increases in revenues and has an expanding client base, they are also expanding via an automated door entry strategy based on a fit and servicing basis (which is now more regulated) so there are reoccurring revenues developing there too.

Then there is profit. The loss of UKG hit the company hard. After making £0.7m profit in 1H23, profits slumped to a £0.5m loss in the 2H23. This meant the share price slumped. Although there was still some revenue in 2H23 from UKG, the YoY improvement in profitability for the 2H24 has moved from a loss (£0.5m) to £0.9m profit. This is a £1.4m year-on-year improvement in profitability 2H24 over 2H23 and I believe this level of profit can be maintained.

I therefore believe, reading between the lines, that this growth will continue for FY25, and the company should deliver 2H24 x2 plus growth. This equates to a minimum of a £2m profit for FY 25 (first half results out in January), and I think we will be nearer £2.5m-£3m profit. The market cap is only £8.5m, so the share price should double from here in the next 12 months. (IMO DYOR)"

Totally agree Finley1. It is like we are scared to grow the economy. The US now have cheaper money to keep growth going and potentially buy key assets from under our nose. Bunch of clowns at the BOE.

I'd love us to be valued a lot more than we are but for all investors, at worst, this is an amazing buy and hold opportunity at these levels. The returns on investment are amazing with hardly any risk premium. PRA regulation (whilst making UK financials inefficient burdened with risk management cost and solvency management) has made this sector as safe a financial investment as you can make. So take the dividends, buy back those shares and watch your return on investment rise and rise. Share prices will catch up, and when they do watch the sector fly. Barclays dipped to 129p last October and is 225p today. When we will rise is anybody's guess but I am sure we will, and when we do, it will be spectacular.

Agreed, when this moves it will move quickly up. Sit tight. Although no choice really :)

Let's quote the CFO again..... my reading of this is £2m + profit this year no problem.... and potentially loads more..

"“I am very pleased to see the positive momentum of FY23

continue in FY24 with increasing revenues, gross margins and

operating cashflows from both the People & Data

Management and Physical Security divisions”

Paul Campbell-White, CFO"

I have been busy the last few days. Here's a few highlights that were not clearly called out in the results.

Revenues up for the 2H period (23 & 24) from £9.675m to £11,911m.  A whopping 23.1% increase.  Delivered by both growth within GT and Safetell.  

GT put in its best ever performance with record revenues of £8.84m up from £7.185m in 2H 23 a 23% increase.  This is despite revenue UKG that we lost and replaced through new partners.

After years of decline, Safetell revenues are up 51% on 2H22, and 23.3% on 2H23. (£3.07m 242H, £2.49m 2H23, £2.03m 2H22).  Safetell has now delivered 4 half year reporting periods of back-to-back increases in revenues.

Then there is profit.  The loss of UKG hit us hard.  After making £0.7m profit in 1H23, profits slumped to a £0.5m loss in the 2H23.  And although there was still some revenue in 2H23 from UKG, the YoY improvement in profitability for the 2H24 has moved from a loss of £0.5m to £0.9m of profit.  This is a £1.4m year-on-year improvement in profitability 2H24 over 2H23.

I have emailed Marie-Claire as for some reason we have failed to emphasis some of the above in what we have presented.  We lack forward-looking positivity and make statements like we are 'cautiously optimistic', which we have heard so many times in the past like nothing has changed.  We fail to make the loss of UKG more transparent (understanding confidentiality) which really masked the real growth story of the new partners (after this year we won't need to) and in our best performing year since pre-pandemic, we have scored an own goal of having to pay more tax due to changes to R&D credits and fail to move the balance sheet and underlying value in a meaningful way.

So accepting that the business growth is brilliant, what can we do better?  We really need to get on top of our story telling, investors might want to know a little about our products and tech and strategy, but far too much time is spend on this and we need to focus more on the numbers, growth and outlook.  We need to think about our RNS communications (could the Oracle initiative gone out separately?  Could we have disclosed some partner wins through informative RNS's?) and what else investors want and need to hear about (both existing and new).  We need to open new doors and tell our story to funds, trusts and PE (are Allenby really enabling this, are they really advising us so well?).  

Let's see how things change.

Thanks for your appreciation of my forecasts fft100. I have recommended your post as I actually agree with many of your points.

The team are doing an excellent job in delivering performance within the business. Sales and profit growth is excellent if you look at 2H 23 v 2H 24 we are up 23%. We have gone from a £0.5m loss on the 2H 23 to a £0.9m profit in 2H 24. Yet we chose to not mention that, instead highlighting a 7% increase in sales on the full year and a profit that looks good on paper but only moves the capital position by £0.1m....

This presentation is basic stuff and if it is Allenby advising on how to present to the market they deserve to be fired in my opinion. Similarly if they don't open doors to new investors l, again boot them out the door.

The loss of UKG has been presented badly. The fact that last year we included a £300k offset to R&D and this year we are writing it back in and paying a hefty £600k tax charge is another blow for investors on the back of poorly presented UKG impact.

If I didn't know better, and many investors don't, I'd be selling on the back of the poor presentation we are making on things.

Then there is the chairman statement 'cautiously optimistic' about this year. Seriously.. The pipeline is great, the business is going to make 2H 24 revenues and profits x2 plus growth. We should be saying we setting out to make FY25 our best ever year, or we're confident that we'll beat FY24 with significant room to manoeuvre. But no. We are cautiously optimistic.

I am however extremely proud of those delivering the value. Marie-Claire and Paul are doing a great job but appear to be advised by clowns.

Finally, I have no issue with the share dilution that will be created by having the management have a stake in the game. I hope we all become millionaires and on the results I see no reason why not.

Just to demonstrate my belief, I continue to put my money on the table here.

Holding in Company

Newmark Security plc (AIM: NWT), a leading provider of electronic and physical security systems, announces that it was informed today that Mr D Bitner, together with his wife and son, have increased their holding in the Company's issued share capital to 378,873 ordinary shares of 5p each, representing 4.04 per cent. of the issued share capital of the Company

So I'll go back to my most recent forecast:

26th August "We also know (from the FY trading update) that revenue for the 2H24 will be no less than £11.7m - as they stated it would be no less than £22m for the FY). This is a record and up £1.5m from the 1H). I have provided my more pessimistic view for £700k profit for the 24 FY given the £0.1m loss in the 1H. The forward looking view for FY 25 looks good. I assume further increases in revenue and we'll easily hit a minimum of £25m (up from £22m) but I actually think we beat this and am looking at £26m driven by Safetel. I expect would result in a £2.8m profit for FY25. This is based on the £0.8m profit in 2H 24 x2 plus the margin c.30% on the extra £4m of revenue. Perhaps £2.5m if lower revenue or higher costs"

UPDATE

These results confirm we are on for a large profit in 2025 FY. The way we present the results is a little cloudy but if you look at the 2H 23 over 2H 24 it tells an amazing story 2H of 23% growth in both GT and Safetel. From the commentary this impressive growth is set to continue (although the bull in me is less happy with the cautiously optimistic statement from the Chairman). Back to my 25 forecast, if we repeat 2H24, 0.9m profit x 2. Then add in similar growth 20% and margin, we're approaching a £2m-2.5m profit for 2025...

Without the typos

I fired an email over to Marie-Claire last week. Whilst Marie-Claire can give nothing formal away in her response, I'm delighted that she confitmed that we're going to provide some more guidance on the forward looking view. That has been lacking as the confidence in the strategy was needed. Confidence is now sky high so we can start to talk about the future. We also know (from the FY trading update) that revenue for the 2H24 will be no less than £11.7m - as we stated it would be no less than £22m for the FY 24. This is a record and up £1.5m from the 1H. I have provided my more pessimistic estimate view for £700k profit for the 24 FY given the £0.1m loss in the 1H. The forward looking view for FY 25 looks really good. I assume further increases in revenue and we'll easily hit a minimum of £25m (up from £22m) but I actually think we'll beat this and am looking at £26m driven by improvements in Safetel. I expect this increase in revenue will result in a £2.8m profit for FY25!!!! This is based on the £0.8m profit in 2H 24 x2 plus the margin c.30% on the extra £4m of revenue (£1.6m + 1.2m). Perhaps a more pessimistic £2.5m, if the revenue is a little lower or higher costs eat into the margin.

So whilst I cannot wait for the FY24 results and they will be really interesting, the1H 25 results in January will be the real catalyst (although we should rise in September to at least 120p-130p) to drive the re-rating. Fingers crossed everyone!