Member Info for Forensic505

Good spot Skep Tick - thanks for sharing. What a mess this has turned into !

Anyone who has worked in or used legal services in London in the last 20 years knows Rosenblatt is Ian Rosenblatt. He brings in a huge majority of the revenue personally. He may not be everyone's cup of tea on a personal level but he is certainly highly respected as a commercial lawyer. But the value destruction here is eye-watering. However, IMHO this is not Ian nor Driver's fault. That is really ALL the fault of the former CEO, Foulston.

DYOR

This one just keeps on giving…more popcorn anyone ?

Staff costs increase again to 61% of revenues, even when revenues up 26%…..

Makes football clubs look extremely well run in comparison!!!

Decent update but net debt is increasing worryingly.

Steve Hunt has gone very quiet but….of course, with the weekend approaching, he’ll be doubtless organising a big “meet up” against a top crew from Millwall or Charlton, Ladies Under 80s.

Surely you can deal me any “meds” Mr Hard Case Manolete Customer/amateur investment bloke ? Respek bruvva - lemme know the damage on Telegram (as per our usual modus operandi for your multifarious illegal transactions👍🤝🕶️)

(I’m not too sure I have got that last spit right have I ??)

wow…..impressive ballistic knowledge here.

this board has got “creds”. a whole new “guy ritchie” gangster image now being applied to our friends here…who knew there was such depth of ****nal knowledge between manoletecustomer & up steve hunt. amazing. we basically have full time, proper “street-level”, hard cases, busting their “frontal and ****nal” double entry bookkeeping knowledge in their spare time - right here !! literally, when they are not “making peas” (i think that’s the phrase right from that “top boy” series?) from their drug deals and related “stuff”, they are googling about gun chambers and proper tough boy criminal bruvva shiiiitteee.

then even correcting each other on some of the technical gun stuff, to prove beyond any residual doubt that one of them is even tougher, and street peas, than the other gansta (see what i did there?) bro.

StreetsJ - lol !! Let’s compare apples and coil springs and bananas lol “You’re better than that” 😂😂😂

UPshunt: you must be Steven Hunt the infamous liquidator who spends a lot of his time suing other liquidators. No wonder. You must be pretty miffed that you didn’t create Mano yourself as that opportunity was right under your nose for many years before Mano came along!

“For those in the industry, “Hunt” is globally considered by his peers to be rhyming slang” - bet he only gets a Xmas card from his Mum ! Lol

I agree LJ.

Canaccord have issued numbers for the first time. The clue for the psychotic StreetsJ, who really does need to find a counsellor, it’s called “INITIATION COVERAGE”. So his “previous” figures come from ????? Poor guy seems to spend his entire time concocting these fallacies. Pure madness because I am sure it would impossible to short a stock like this on AIM. So why does he dedicate his life to this ?…

Mano just needs to secure one cartel settlement, the renewed HSBC facility or a BBL package or another record cash haul or a combo of the above and Streets will look very silly and doubtless disappear into the sewer to slip quietly into the night and think up a way to find a point to his life.

Probably a naive question, why are these shares trading below the cash takeover offer please?

I noticed that there share buys have grown to halt. That speaks volumes. A clear message from management that they expect to see the share price significantly lower following the multiple recent case losses.

My estimate is that this one will step fairly rapidly down to around 65p, which is not unfamiliar territory for this Company. Obviously, DYOR.

Good work Gallmat.

Do we know how much the policy is for ? Softer (and more difficult point to answer in all fairness) but is the general feeling that the policy will respond - we all know what insurers are like when it comes to coughing up.....!!

Continues:

"Sad. But this was always an incredibly brave business model. As soon as I saw the video of Patrick Maloney the LCM CEO actually WITH the buffoon in the wig and sunnies, this looked like a total sh*t show waiting to happen."

I do like that last point - lol ! That was crazy !!

Copy and paste from ADVFN.

"20% of invested cash blown up on one case. And that is just their own costs. What about the LCM liability for the winner's costs? They probably have some level of ATE insurance cover but (1) insurance for, say, A$15m adverse costs is hard to come by and very expensive to maintain. (2) even if they have it on paper - will it pay out ? As others have stated above, the case deteriorated badly, so were the insurers properly informed. Did LCM step into their shoes ? No idea. Pure conjecture but the RNS on this is very thin. Who knows.

This is horribly tough territory now. The other side's lawyers and the insurers lawyers will be ravenous. Very sad to see. I think Patrick the LCM CEO has fought very gamely. Wonder whether the CFO leaving a few months ago, just before results were issued, was possibly connected to this ? Again, who knows. Pure conjecture.

Much more fundamentally: the investment thesis on this stock seemed to be that it was a nailed on constantly growing cash multiplier. Hindsight, yes, but that was always complete nonsense peddled by a buffoon in a wig and sunglasses. He ramped the shares and legged it. This is litigation. Of course they were always going to get a bloody nose at some stage. This case is a massacre though. And so soon after the Katy Perry loss. No RNS on that one.

So valuing this by moronically assuming perfect win record and perfect execution is and always was pure garbage.

LCM is and always was very, very high risk because they have and always have had a very small size portfolio of very large bets. And this is one of their very largest cases and furthermore held at a 20% Fair Value premium to cash cost. TomT is of course 100% correct in picking Maddox up (Maddox used to be a high quality poster) when Maddox stated the judgment was "perverse". Pure nonsense Maddox. You need to take your loss like an adult as well. I thought you seemed better than that. No one is going to appeal this. It is completely disingenuous of the company to suggest otherwise. It turned into a complete pig but going back through the river of blood was never going to be an easy decision. BUT you do not put more good money from the bank and shareholders after bad. Take it on the chin. It will be bloody awful for the numbers and the equity story but you have to live to fight another day. The Fund model must be the way forward, if there is one. But how will fund investors perceive this outcome, is the obvious question...and equally obvious answer...Query also the very recently announced new bankers. Gordon Bennett, they must be spitting feathers...

The other listed funders that I am aware of: BUR, OMNI and MANO all have one similar feature that LCM never had. They have LOADS of cases. Yes, of course a total YPF write down for BUR would be horrible but even then...it has LOADS of other cases. OMNI looks pretty well balanced. MANO is very, very granular and cookie cutter UK insolvency small/medium cases."

C

I am informed that this was held on BS at 1.2x cost. So full FV and Cost write off c. £15m. . So this investment comprised c.20% of LCM’s total cash invested into cases (A$128m). Ouch!

If LCM's own costs are £12.5m then the winning side were probably around £10m. I presume in Australia (who are usually very similar to the UK) the loser pays, so LCM have further exposure to adverse costs. Did they have ATE in place ? Will if respond ? Or is that another battle.

On the big plus side: very good to see the (albeit rather limited) disclosure on this - you can almost see the gritted teeth in the few words ! But that disclosure is welcome so soon after the Katy Perry loss we all discussed recently.

My conclusion: the idea of mechanically compounding past data to forecast future huge returns is fundamentally flawed on this company. They have relatively few cases compared to BUR and MANO. So they are invested a lot of shareholder and bank cash in a very small portfolio which is therefore highly vulnerable to losses, of which we have seen two is quick succession. When they lose the losses are massive.

In contrast: BUR as so big that it would take a very exceptional run of losses to materially hurt their BS. Although the FV write off on the Argentine case would be enormous. MANO is different to both LCM and BUR: around 1,500 small/medium UK cases all of the same type (insolvency). MANO own their cases, so if a big puppy is emerging, they can drop kick it immediately - they are not tied to a "Funding Commitment Agreement" like LCM and Burford, which commits LCM/BUR to keep funding because they cant interfere as its not their case. Very different game...

LCM always pays the highest rates on its debt facilities compared to all other listed litigation funders. The banks behind all these facilities always get to see far greater financial detail that is ever disclosed to the equity markets (for good reason, of course). So that is a concern.

RGBP - the public catastrophe that just keeps on giving !

I think the film company who do the ITV Post Office series, should get the film right for this one :-)

I'm sure Woody Allen would be interested in playing Mr Rozen. Just need to find a proper minger for Foulston.

With all the mess Starmer and Reeves seem to be in a rush to make, FRP should be very busy, at least for a single parliamentary term! lol

I think their broker has a tp of 200p. Makes sense to me.

Wobble24 - totally agree. Comes with the territory.

I suppose my only thought is: LCM are very good at quickly explaining the wins in an RNS on the relevant case in terms of bottom line positive financial profit impact to investors. That is much to be applauded.

So, now that they have moved to Fair Value accounting, they should do the same for the odd lost case. With the move to FV, it wont just be their own costs of funding the case that will now need to be written off and also the adverse costs that they will need to pay the "real" Katy Perry, because she won. They now also need to disclose the FV that they had attributed to any lost case like this, of course.

I have no idea what the numbers are like on the Katy Perry case, so for all we know they had this value in their books at £20m. So purely for the purposes of an example this P&L loss could be:

£2m own costs now written off

£1m cost contribution accrued to pay towards Katy Perry fees

£20m Fair Value Written Off on loss

Therefore P&L impact: Negative £23m

Completely made up numbers here, simply to highlight the point.

I have seen other litigation funders do this very basic level of disclosure.