Howzabout this for a theory.... Some sort of deal is cooking between XLM and TAP. XLM has very little debt so could pull the trigger on a huge deal if one were to pop up. Plus they both av lots of cash, they're both Israeli and a somewhat complimentary fit for one another. Rivi Bloch, the new female CEO at Taptica has been a good friend of Inbal Lavi the female Israeli CEO at XLM for a long time. Help me out here....how would we get this deal to work? XLM market cap is £163million and TAP currently £116million. Some very clever people on these boards can put this together lol. Also i note that the current XLM buyback is being done independently and is allowed to continue during closed periods (this seems bullish for XLM as they could be cooking something up ready to release anytime). The TAP buyback is being done inhouse hence their hands are tied once these 'chats' start happening. What would us investors think of such a deal? Anyway, can but hope.
Very encouraged to see the short position in XLM all but closed as of Nov. It's now down to 0.03% which is next to nothing in the grand scheme of things. Hasn't been this low since Dec 2016 and what followed was a share price run up from 94.5p in Jan 17 to 198.5p by Dec 17. Another double up from here would go down a treat. Data taken from https://my.euroclear.com monthly stock on loan data Percentage of XLM stock on loan (short) May 0.37% June 1.13% July 3.01% Aug 3.24% Sept 2.77% Oct 0.84% Nov 0.03%
Sorry to see you go CM. Hope you buy back in for the recovery. Any chance you can post the Growth Investor comments here please? We could do with a little cheer. Still feel value will out for XLM investors. Net of cash currently valued at £160 million which seems crazy cheap for a tech company with great prospects forecast to make £30 million profit in 2019. If i had the money I would buy the whole company and I suspect private equity could be planning a swoop around these levels. I also like the moves XLM are making in Personal Finance in North America. The new website at Webpals.com explains the strategy well. In terms of the macro picture and Italy it's the same old noise. Always some crisis somewhere these days. They'll sort it out they always do. Thankfully at the micro level XLM has zero exposure to the Italian market.
...is the fact that Axxion S.A Luxembourg crossed the 6% of shares ownership threshold on Monday. However since then several more million shares were purchased yesterday......tasty. What a lovely morning this has been sat in Russell Square
...so perhaps it is these Luxembourguese (is that even a word) folk who have put orders in with market makers at specific prices. Now their order has been filled and they are aboard the train is the handbrake about to be released?
Well looks like we're not the only ones who think XLM Shares are catergorically undervalued. This rapidly growing privately owned fund based out of Luxembourg with 40 employees and 8.4 Billion Euros under management has spotted the opportunity and snapped up no less than 14,098,000 of your finest XLM Shares.
The UK regulatory picture is gradually becoming clearer and even in it's current form is still one of their fastest growing markets. The potentially vast USA gambling market is still embryonic opening up state by state. XLM are already building assets and infrastructure so they are ready and able to work with sports betting and casino operators when the time comes. Revenues could begin flowing here in 2020 and beyond. I have topped up my holding this week as I believe value will out for XLM shareholders in due course. These shares are too cheap at this level.
Huge buys going through again today, my guess is shorts closing at requested prices, once again in cahoots with market makers walking the price down for them akin to the other Monday. Recovery is on track and the shorts will know that. They also will not want to get caught in a short squeeze which could feasibly happen when a company is sitting on $51 million in cash with access to an additional similar amount in debt in what is a consolidating sector. Attended the presentation at Berenberg HQ today. On reflection I feel reassured. It appears the biggest impact on profit in the first half was due to one-off malicious scraping and black hat attacks which began to impact the SEO performance of some of XLM's publishing assets in April, May and June this year. These assets are the profit engines of XLM hence the need for the unexpected trading update in June. Today it was alluded to that it was organised crime carried out by a company or companies in Eastern Europe who deliberately target high net worth businesses or publishing assets such as those owned by XLM. Driven solely by financial gain their game plan is to duplicate content and effectively pose as XLM and indoing so earn more money in a few weeks than they could in a few years. They then move on to their next target. Suing these entities in local jurisdictions would be an expensive and fruitless pursuit. Ory and Inbal stated that XLM have always had security systems in place which have successfully protected them from such techniques for the last 15yrs. As a result of the recent breach, the upside here is that XLM has reviewed and upgraded all security infrastructure and they are now fully protected from these attacks and in future will adopt a pre emptive role and preparedness to prevent any reoccurence. The sites targeted are now recovering their google rankings and the latest Google Algorithm update in August showed the comeback is well on track with site rankings steadily going back up to previous levels. Full recovery of Google rankings could take approx between 3 and 12 months for the respective sites to regain the positions they had prior to the attack, but recover they will. These attacks were isolated events which have now been blocked. Their is nothing wrong systematically at XLM. The priority for 2018 is to hit the revised revenue and profit targets and they are definitely on track to do so. They then see a return to growth in 2019 and beyond. Personal finance assets are performing well and will be added to. They see real oportunity here in North America and have quickly become an established player in what is an uncrowded market place. All acquisitions have been earnings enhancing and there is more to come on that front. They have also added more new customers in Korea targeting mobile games and see further revenue growth in Asia. They are fully compliant on all aspects of GDPR and this will have no negative impact on XLM moving forwards. The UK regulatory picture
Sod it buy some shares live it a little lol If they maintain the interim dividend of 4c (3.05p) per share then that gives a yield of 6.6% for shares purchased at 90p. This all seems like the short position making hay whilst the sun is not shining. They have played the uncertainty created by 11th June perfectly (with a little help from mkt makers imo) Mon 24th Sept is a chance for XLM to nip that uncertainty in the bud. I could see us back at 120p post results in no time at all.
What do u mean "the £ was the BB default"? Certainly seems to be a professional shorting job going on on XLM in recent times. Today there was 2.75 million shares quietly purchased in 4 tranches of 1,000,000 800,000 600,000 and 350,000. When one considers that there are currently over 7 million shares on loan to shorters perhaps these large buys are them taking part profits. ...Or are they buying them back only to dump them again on or before results day? Professional shorters strike me as very intelligent but they must surely get a helping hand from market makers on the take who will drop prices violently like on Monday. The whole thing stinks imo. What a week...
This looks like a textbook treeshake to me. Currently jewish new year and results still 2 weeks away. Shorters and market makers having a field day. Read the latest interview from Ory I posted here last month for a more rational perspective. I suspect value hunters will begin moving in at these levels
EGR Marketing: You’ve said in the past that XLMedia was one of the early adopters of an omni-channel approach to online performance marketing. What did you mean by that?
OW: Historically, affiliates were good at one thing. They knew how to do SEO, or they knew how to do some paid search or Facebook advertising. These days, especially in regulated markets when everything is open, it creates an opportunity on one hand, but it also makes it difficult because if everyone is allowed to do paid search it is obviously more expensive, more competitive and the margins are lower. But the scale is big. So, affiliates really need to become multi-disciplinary – they need to develop know-how and, ideally, tech as well to run lots of different kinds of user acquisition methods if they want to stay competitive.
We are about 45% and 45% between our traditional SEO business and our media division, which runs anything from paid search to Facebook to Instagram to Twitter and video. We are a Facebook and Instagram marketing partner, which took quite a lot of effort to get, and we have a significant amount of volume coming from any different methods and products.
As a result, we wanted to maintain a large tech team in the back-end and we have close to 100 developers in house who develop both our optimisation tools for our publishing division and media-buying tools for our media division. In regulated markets where everything will theoretically be allowed, it would be very challenging to remain an affiliate with a single methodology. And it would also be leaving money on the table because not all users search for the best casinos or the best odds. There are other ways to reach them and I think if you are not practising that then you are missing out.
We have taken a safe and diligent approach, and our leverage level is close to none.
Catena [Media] has a €150m debt out there. And they would admit that most of their growth came from acquisitions. I don’t say that as a negative; it is their strategy. When they came to market they were a business that is a fraction of what they are today, and they have acquired their way to big growth. Generally, it is a riskier approach, with the different back-end systems and people working in different locations and different mentalities. We generally consolidate acquisitions into our team and platform – we don’t leave them running on their own platforms. And most of the acquisitions we have done out of our cash flow.
“Even though everyone is talking about the backlash, the UK is still one of our fastest-growing markets” – Ory Weihs
But we see acquisitions as a complementary tool for growth and a way to get into sectors that we are interested in. We did this in 2014 with mobile games and we did this last year with both personal finance and cybersecurity. And we’ve done it with gambling. So it’s not like it is a way to replace organic growth in our core divisions. We passed on many acquisitions that others have bought because we didn’t feel them to be a value that fits our strategy. Our M&A strategy isn’t to just buy everything – we want to buy things that are proven to us, are valuable assets or unique product offerings.
EGR Marketing: What are your key markets and product verticals right now?
OW: Even though everyone is talking about the UK backlash, the UK is still one of our fastest growing markets. We still see plenty of growth in Scandinavia: in Denmark and in Sweden we are looking forward to regulation, which is very positive. 2017 was definitely the year of financial services for us, and we really have started to invest more in the sector. When I say financial services, I mean plain vanilla banking services like credit cards, bank deposits, loans and mortgages rather than CFDs or Forex.
We have especially focused on the North America region and we see this as a very strategic sector in the long run that we are very bullish about. Having said that, we’re definitely not leaving the gambling sector and I’m confident that in the next three to five years it will definitely be our largest sector. Gaming is still the core business for us, and other things like personal finance, games, apps and cybersecurity are more on the perimeter. Of those, personal finance is the one I’m most bullish about and should become a more substantial part of our business.