Member Info for faz147

Planet Payment and Vantiv Go Live with Pay in Your Currency® on ATMs Benefiting International Travelers with Immediate Currency Conversion Planet Payment, Inc. (UK: LSE: AIM: PPT and PPTR; USA: OTCQX: PLPM), a leading international and multi-currency payment processor and Vantiv, Inc. (NYSE: VNTV) a leading integrated payment processor differentiated by a single, propriety technology platform, announced today the launch of Planet Payment's Pay in Your Currency for ATM service on Vantiv's ATMs in the US. "This is the first implementation of Pay in Your Currency at ATMs in the United States, and we expect to roll out to over 5,000 Vantiv ATM locations in the next 60 days," said Philip Beck, Chairman and CEO of Planet Payment. "Vantiv and Planet Payment have a proven track record of offering successful multi-currency processing solutions to merchants since 2003. Together, we deliver Pay in Your Currency through retailers and restaurants at their point of sale so it was a natural extension for Vantiv to offer this convenience to their EFT processing partners." Pay In Your Currency, also known in the industry as Dynamic Currency Conversion, allows international cardholders using eligible cards to see the final amount of a cash withdrawal in their home currency at the time of the transaction. Without Pay in Your Currency, if an international cardholder withdraws U.S. dollars from an ATM, the transaction is subsequently converted to their home currency by their bank or card issuer. Given the timing of the conversion, the cardholder is not able to determine the final amount to be debited from their account until they receive their account statement from their financial institution. With Pay in Your Currency on ATMs, the cardholder is provided with greater clarity and convenience by offering them the option to convert the transaction at the time of the withdrawal. If the cardholder chooses to have the transaction converted, the amount in their local currency that they see on the ATM screen is the amount that will appear on their financial institution's account statement. For tourists seeking clarity in their vacation costs or business travelers looking to simplify expense accounting, Pay In Your Currency offers a powerful incentive.

http://www.investegate.co.uk/Article.aspx?id=201204200851537428B

Long time no speak mate, how are you? Well done for sticking with IDG until you made a good profit, I got out way too early with this one! I've had varied success elsewhere, mostly in cash at the moment but looking to get some of it back in. Looking at anything interesting at the moment? I've been watching DLM for quite a while now, haven't invested yet but I do feel that as a long-termer there is potential to multi-bag in there, just need to get the timing right! It could soon be time for me to pump some back into AFC, looking interesting there now. Anyway, hope you are well mate, speak soon!

Well done on getting some clarification on the trading update, always better to be in the know! Still following here from the sidelines, have contacted Coinstar Money Transfer Limited today to try and obtain some information regarding their agreement with Mobilityone Malaysia, and will hopefully have time to follow up with some emails to Sigue Corporation and MBO themselves, and possibly even M. Lhuillier. Will post any replies I get on here. maytheforcework - may I ask why you still feel that there will be an update soon, despite both the company's joint brokers, and Dominic from MBO suggesting otherwise? And these shorters that you mention, have you actually checked if any shares are being shorted? Finally, last years update came on the 17th of Feb. Nothing wrong with supporting and being positive about a share you are invested in, as long as the points you make are factual!

Not suprised that they were willing to take all your shares at the lowest point, they could probably sell them for 5-10% profit in the same day! now 6.6p to buy

thanks for your efforts re the update, I'm sure everyone on here will be grateful to know, either way. I was considering trying a quick in and out here after the drop, but as I said I can't buy more than 1,500 shares in one go!

there are obviously benefits to trading or buying illiquid stocks, i.e. high volatility, and large spikes on poisitve news. But the downsides are being shown right now. This is being totally manipulated by the MM's, dropping the SP and still accepting sells of 150k shares, but only allowing buys of 1,500 shares, which after accounting for trading fees makes it pointless for most PI's to buy. No doubt the MM's are just waiting to absorb a few more sells sub 6p, before pushing the ask price back up and increasing the max buy size. I dont know how they are still getting away with it on so many AIM shares, but it seems the FSA have bigger fish to fry!

fair play mate, I appreciate the fact that you are looking into it and not just giving a generic response. I am sure this board will benefit from getting to the bottom of this matter. Out of interest, before this started to drop today, was it in overbought territory? cheers

Well I hope for you and other shareholders here that you are right. All the things you mentioned are very possible. My concerns are/were getting caught up in the hype and anticipation around the trading update and the return to profitability, as well as the revenue recognition issue. You know what they say, buy on rumour, sell on news. Well I have only been out a few hours but the SP is now down 16.67%. I thought the 100k trades earlier today looked like iceberg trades, maybe from someone selling out after seeing no update this morning. I dont have Level 2 but dummy trades tell me the SP has now stabilised a little, so I will continue to watch. I think it was Allenby who stated that the company has historically provided an update in February, but that was very shortsighted. Yes there was an update last year in February, but in 2009 and 2010 it was in June, and in 2008 it was July, so certainly no guarantees of any news this month. Perhaps the arrival of Daniel Stewart as Joint Broker in November 2010 inspired MBO to give an update on FY2010 earlier than usual. In my experience Daniel Stewart are a far more competent outfit than Allenby Capital could ever hope to be, but that is only IMO. Blowster, if you dont hear back from Allenby I would suggest forwarding the email to Daniel Stewart, nothing to lose! Still quite shocked that none of the long-term holders on here have had anything to say about the companies revenue recognition practice, either I'm totally mis-reading the situation, or people are burying their heads in the sand.

I was hoping the research I posted last night may have instigated some discussion, especially regarding the booking of revenues. It concerns me slightly that I suggest the way they calculate their revenues is a form of skulduggery, and none of the shareholders on this board contest or challenge such statements. I suppose it is re-assuring that the company is approaching breakeven despite income (after 93% of top-up revenue passed on) being only a fraction of what many believe it to be, because of the misleading nature of MBO's revenue recognition. As I have said, there is potential for MBO to be a serious player in the payments and remittance markets of South East Asia, but I believe they require a global strategic partner (perhaps CMT/Sigue Corp) and a significant improvement in PR and Shareholder relations. I personally feel, barring any revelations from the supposed trading update, the company is slightly over-valued, based on the forecast profits and eps, and this view is supported by the usually over-optimistic Allenby, who put a forward P/E ratio of 5.4 on FY2012 expected profit before tax of £741,000, so they see fair value at circa £4million. However, this valuation could change rapidly if we recieve a positive update on the relationship with Coinstar Money Transfer Limited, now owned by Sigue Corp, or results are better than forecast, or they source a powerful strategic investor, or announce big deals etc etc. For the time being I have decided to stay on the sidelines with this one, as I feel that even if the current rising trend continues, there is a good chance that resistance at 8p would be overpowering. I will continue to keep a close eye on the SP and general developments though, and if it was to bounce off 8p resistance and settle somewhere below the current SP, I would quite possibly be looking for a buying opportunity. For the record, the advertised ask has just dropped to 7.25p, and the real ask is down to 7.15p for up to 150,000 shares, but you can only sell a max of 75,000 at 6.51p. Out of interest has anyone on this board contacted the company to inquire as to the likelihood of a trading update this week? The SP has risen by approximately 1p from the start of February, and over 2p from the lowest point of the month, probably in anticipation of a trading update towards the end of this month. If I was holding here and that update was not going to be forthcoming, I would want to be the first to know! I might rattle off an email to MBO this evening if I find the time, but I imagine someone here has already done so, or is at least considering it! ATB guys, I'm sure I will catch up with you all soon, either here or elsewhere! GLA

Now have a look at this deal signed in 2009 between MBO and M. Lhuilllier: For the Group's international remittance services, MobilityOne Malaysia has entered into an agreement with M. Lhuillier, a financial services company in the Philippines, to provide money transfer service from the Group's outlets in Malaysia to any of M. Lhuillier's branches in the Philippines Maybe not that significant on its own, but when you also consider that M. Lhuillier partnered with Sigue Corporation in 2010, http://www.sigue.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=112:sigue-corporation-expands-presence-in-the-philippines-with-m-lhuillier&catid=1:latest-news&Itemid=111 and then that Sigue Corporation bought CMT in June 2011, you realise that MBO are involved with a global payments company who are focused on emerging and developing economies. http://www1.cmtmoney.com/news.aspx#fraud With the closing of this transaction, Sigue is a leading global money transfer company, operating in 136 countries and in 6 continents. "The combined strengths of these brands will deliver new products and services to a global agent network of over 75,000 locations, including many company-owned stores and strategically located regional offices throughout the world." http://www.sigue.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=123:coinstar-signs-definitive-agreement-to-sell-its-money-transfer-business-to-sigue-corporation&catid=1:latest-news&Itemid=111 Sigue Corporation expected in August 2010 to pay an aggregate purchase price of $41.5 million for CMT. So although the developments in terms of revenues from MBO's International Remittance Services has been slow, the change of ownership of CMT has no doubt had a significant effect, and the committment shown by Sigue Corp certainly bodes very well for MBO in 2012. Also the tie-up between MBO, M. Lhuillier and Sigue Corp makes it a distinct possibility that Sigue will look to make a strategic investment, or even a takeover attempt on Mobilityone, to secure their Intellectual Property and their established operations in South East Asia. Obviously I have no evidence that anything of this nature will happen, so it is purely speculative on my part.

On a more positive note, I have looked into the groups international remittance services and the agreements in place, and despite these comments in the interims……: The Group's international remittance services and overseas expansion advanced at a relatively slow pace in the period but the Directors remain confident that these business areas will contribute positively to the Group's financial performance in the long term. I feel that there could be some transformational developments for the company in this space over the next year to 18 months. The reason I am so positive about the international remittance services, despite very little apparent tangible progress, is because of an agreement the company made in H1 2010 with Coinstar Money Transfer Limited (CMT). For the Group's international remittance services, the Group has entered into a Money Transfer Services Agreement with Coinstar Money Transfer Limited to provide money transfer service from the Group's outlets in Malaysia to any of CMT's locations worldwide. This is in addition to the Group's existing agreements with G-Xchange, Inc. and M. Lhuillier in the Philippines as well as PT Finnet Indonesia and PT Telekomunikasi Selular in Indonesia for the money transfer service to the Philippines and Indonesia respectively. About Coinstar Money Transfer Limited ("CMT"): CMT is a leading money transfer provider, with over 23,000 locations, operating in 143 countries worldwide. It was previously known as Travelex Money Transfer Limited and was owned by Travelex PLC until 2006, when it was acquired by Coinstar Inc.. Coinstar Inc. is a NASDAQ listed company based in Seattle, USA. The company was founded in 1991 and pioneered self-service coin counting machines to provide consumers with convenient and innovative means to convert loose coins into cash. Today, Coinstar Inc. is a multi-national company offering a range of solutions for retailers including self-service coin counting, electronic payment solutions, entertainment services and money transfer. For more information on CMT, please refer to the website at www.cmtmoney.com When you consider that the agreement with CMT is to provide the transfer of money from MBO’s outlets in Malaysia “to any of CMT’s locations worldwide”, you start to see why I used the word transformational! Yes that is all 23,000 of CMT’s locations, in all 143 countries in which they operate!

The second thing that stood out from my research is this paragraph from the Allenby Capital broker note in September last year: Discussion of revenue definition and gross margins for Mob1 Here we flag what appear to be healthy revenue numbers yielding low earnings. i.e. narrow gross margins. This is because for the largest part of Mob1’s business, which is mobile pre-pay top-up and bill payment in Malaysia, Mob1 recognises the gross top-up/billing amount as revenue and assigns a circa 93% cost of sales i.e. a circa 7% gross margin. The margins in other areas of Mob1’s business, such as maintenance and rental, are higher. Also, for the growing remittance business, revenue is recognised in our forecasts as the 3% margin only, with no cost of sales. As the areas of Mob1’s business outside the core Malaysian aggregation business grow, the relative contribution of the low gross margin Malaysian business will fall, which will result in wider gross margins. I find this both strange and slightly concerning. Basically MBO are taking a 7% commission on revenue earned for network operators from MBO’s mobile pre-pay top-up and bill payment services, but rather than recognising this 7% fee as revenue, they are booking the whole 100% value of the top-up/bill as revenue, then assigning a 93% cost of sale. I don’t know how business works in Malaysia, but surely MBO claiming a third-party’s revenue as their own is unusual to say the least, or to say the most a form of skulduggery. I imagine that the arrangement they have with the network operators involves them booking the income from pre-pay top-ups etc as revenue, and then passing on 93% of the total value of these top-ups to the networks. You have to question why the deal would be structured in this way in the first place. Yes it makes revenue appear more than 13 times higher than it realistically is, but it gives a gross margin of just 7%, as opposed to near on 100%. I know I have tried to move away from comparing MBO to MONI, but this strikes me as being the equivalent to MONI claiming that the billions of pounds of transactions on their eco-system last year were revenues. They certainly wouldn’t be boasting gross margins of 63% if that was the case!! Happy to hear any thoughts on this matter, and to be corrected if I have mis-interpreted, but to me it looks like genuine revenues will be more like a tenth of the £30 million or so alluded to by MBO and Allenby Capital.

Thanks for your kind comments, I trust you enjoyed your weekends? I haven't had as much time as I would have liked to this weekend for researching MBO, although I have identified several points which I feel warrant discussion on this board. Firstly having looked through the last few annual reports, I think it is fair to say that the directors and employees wages/bonuses, remuneration etc are very reasonable, both in their own right when considering the size of the company and the number of employees, and also in comparison with their peers. This might be something that you should expect of all young developing companies, especially those not yet generating profits, but it never fails to amaze me how many young companies out there are having their cash resources seriously depleted by directors demanding extravagant pay packets. Therefore I felt it worth noting the apparently sensible nature of MBO's payment policies, as this inspires confidence in the leadership of the company, and suggests they hold shareholders interests above those of the directors and management. http://www.mobilityone.com.my/pages/pdf/MOL_AR2010.pdf (page 41) Interesting that they chose to capitalise £189,861 of the employee pay, and £55,180 of the directors total remuneration in development costs. Perhaps partly as a means of watering down the increase in pay across the organisation from 2009-2010, but I would imagine these amounts were linked to the development of a new product/products. (See page 46) Development costs Development costs will not be amortised if the product is still in its development phase. The amortisation of the development costs is over 5 years period, which in the opinion of the Directors is adequate.

Some great research there, thank you for that! Clearly the South East Asia mobile internet and mobile banking/payments markets are developing rapidly, led by the demand from consumers for more convenient, more efficient, and more mobile internet and payments capabilities. The risk for MBO is that this development will attract some serious competition. I feel management have been very wise in focusing their efforts on establishing a presence and market share in two or three key countries, as opposed to entering as many territories as possible. It does concern me slightly that growth in the deployment of mobile banking and international remittance services has been slow, but I have been looking into these offerings and the agreements in place, and will post some research on the matter shortly. Blowster - I totally agree that AIM valuations in particular are often subjective, and that regardless of the differences between MONI and MBO, MBO should not have a market cap only 2-3% of MONI's. Re II's, it does show confidence that so may of the shares are held by directors, and makes it less likely that there will be any sustained sell-offs. On the flip side it means the shares are somewhat illiquid, and it would be much easier for them to delist the company from AIM if they so wished. It seems to have been over-looked that Thornbeam Limited own 16,048,922 shares in MBO, representing 17.15% equity. http://www.mobilityone.com.my/v2/?page_id=37 They purchased their shares back in May 2007 from GHL Systems Berhad, and despite being a relatively small investment vehicle, and despite the fact that they are sitting on a tidy profit from what I can work out, they continue to hold. http://www.insage.com.my/masanews.net/dll/GetMasaNews.dll?NewsId=20070525GA05442&Theme=1

No doubt the two have similarities financially in terms of revenue and profit/loss, but Moni has very significant cash in the bank which MBO does not, and it has a substantial order book of £83million and it is debt free. Again all things that MBO can achieve, but they will need to get the PR wheels in motion and I believe they will struggle to continue growing and maintaining market share if they do not find a very powerful partner like a Visa, Mastercard, or Paypal etc in the next two years. I have been researching all afternoon and decided not to buy in before close, despite the ask dropping to 6.98p towards the end of trading. I need to look more closely at the subsidiaries, the agreements they have, the clients they are working with, the markets they are operating in and targeting, and the competition in those markets. I have done some research into the Chinese and Indian markets because of my holding in Monitise, but I dont feel I have enough of a picture yet of the South East Asian market, and therefore I'm finding it difficult to place a value on the company as a whole. I do feel that the company is probably valued quite pessimistically on a forward looking basis, but based on the risk factors currently attached to the company I dont believe it is as hugely undervalued as some make out at this time. If we get an update next week and profitability is as expected or better than that opinion may well change, and I still have a lot of research to do! Enjoy the weekend guys!

There is a big difference between this and moni and I dont think we should compare too much, MONI has relationships with Visa Inc and Visa Europe, who own over 20% of Moni between them, they have relationships with many of the worlds largest banks and are operating in the worlds most developed nations. Not saying this doesn't have the potential to be as big as Moni, because it does, but its not there yet. I actually sold half of my remaining holding in Moni this week, but still believe it will eventually be a FTSE 250 or even FTSE100 company with a market cap in the billions. If MBO can continue to grow revenues whilst continuing and furthering expansion into new markets and territories, there is no reason why it cannot achieve any of the above. I do feel that they need a strategic investor to acclelerate their development, but I feel this or a takeover is very likely in the next 12 to 18 months. On the downside I believe many London listed companies who are based in the Far East and South East Asia suffer from a certain amount of scepticism amongst investors, and the few who escape the generalisations of the masses are those who have exceptional PR and/or exceptional strategic partners and investors. MBO will have to look very carefully at these points if they wish to be a serious player in the Asian payment space, which I am certain they do.

managed to postpone my meeting so I can carry on researching and hopefully buy in before close. I'm very well thanks riddler, how are you? I suppose the most important question here is what are the reasons for the low valuation? Any thoughts welcome

fair play mate, well done at getting in so low, what was your most recent buy price?

thanks for that mate, didn't realise you were following this one, are you in?