Member Info for getafgrip

No, the RNS does not seem to have been picked up by the tabloids or any publication with a seriously sized circulation. Not the FT, New York Times or even the Wall Street Journal. The theme of this thread will be that dozens of journalists need sacking for this glaring omission, once this news has been blown out of all proportion!

The hype machine on this thread has gone into largely unsubstantiated overdrive! Undoubtedly time has been spent putting the RNS together, but it is light on facts, & extravagant in the interpretation of what facts there are. Shares magazine, RMS recruitment, IT Wire, Ask Traders, Business weekly (a specialist Cambridge-based limited circulation publication), have reported with a few column inches, but take-up has been very limited. Darktrace has not provided any verifiable figures on the take-up of Prevent, but loosely linked the take-up of Prevent with very generally favourable findings from a market survey.

"Darktrace has seen the longest list of customer opt-ins than for any product launch in its history." But Darktrace has not launched many products & only has a limited history! So, what!

Although this article states that Amber Rudd is on the Darktrace Advisory Council, it conveniently omits this information when mentioning Alan Wade, who is deceptively described as a "former CIA Chief," and who is also a member of Darktrace's Advisory Council. The RNS is largely substantiated by these two people who are very closely associated with Darktrace and its future prospects.

Darktrace has quite rightly just been fishing for some "free" publicity with the RNS.

Although this article states that Amber Rudd is on the Darktrace Advisory Council, it conveniently omits this information when mentioning Alan Wade, who is deceptively described as a "former CIA Chief," and who is also a member of Darktrace's Advisory Council.

Darktrace actually, "announced strong demand for its new Darktrace PREVENT™ product family as organizations seek to prevent cyber-attacks, rather than waiting for breaches to happen. In the three months since PREVENT became generally available in August 2022, Darktrace has seen the longest list of customer opt-ins than for any product launch in its history."

It is a very optimistic statement, but it is a leap of faith to take this as saying that the recession will not have any impact on Darktrace. Darktrace may be resilient to recessionary impacts. But, of course recession will impact on Darktrace, even if it only came down to a reduction in future sales, delayed purchases, lower level of protection purchases, or downward price pressure on Darktrace products etc.

There is no sense in assuming that with 7,000 customers world-wide, none of them will be affected by a recession, and therefore a proportion of Darktrace customers will fine-tune or even shelve their cyber technology purchases.

Ask yourself whether the customers that become insolvent during the recession will be carrying on purchasing Dark products? Ask yourself if say a recession in the US lasts 1-year, but in the UK lasts 2-years, whether the undoubted impact of this on the £ US Dollar exchange rate would have implications that would hit Darktrace?

Essentially before Prevent was launched as a commercial product, Darktrace's Antigena only dealt with intrusions to an IT system once they had actually happened. A cohesive product offering from Darktrace had, like numerous major competitors product offerings, to include a product that prevented the intrusion entering the IT system in the first place. The RNS is great news because it indicates very strong customer adoption & demand for Prevent.

It must be a short pipeline - the construction of Nord Stream 2 took from 2011 to September 2021!

Jim,

I agree the goal posts are going to be moved by Jeremy Hunt, my only point was to illustrate that there has been no impact of the Windfall Tax on Shell so far, and that there is considerable political will not to make it too punitive on the 17th November.

I think the biggest issue is that BP and Shell are easy targets for a Windfall Tax & it looks likely to be disproportionately applied, even though a host of other companies should also be drawn in to paying a Windfall Tax on similar logic, and it will leave an open question over whether the giant American companies such as Google, Alphabet, Amazon, Facebook etc should be included in relation to their British operations.

The windfall Tax is going to change dramatically, but my hope is that it will be applied fairly. It will not last forever & will soon be lost on the Shell balance sheet. The tax harvest will be inefficiently distributed but that is how governments work.

Additional to Putinomics & his war in Ukraine, something like a Windfall Tax was always on the cards in the future after the Government pumped £450 billion into the moribund economy during COVID Panicdemic, there was always going to be a point when they would run out of money and have to raise it from additional sources

Much as I hate to say this Charles could be on to something here. The Us tech shares I hold are all, without exception up today - on hopes that US inflation might be slowing! They jointly bumped up from the bottom a couple of weeks ago, which is a sure sign that although Tech shares have almost universally plummeted over the last year, the value spotters & cherry pickers are gathering strength!

https://www.ft.com/content/1d93c771-ee91-40a6-a878-be120d59f43c

If this is right & it is the beginning of the beginning, break out the Champagne Charlie!

Sheltie,

EVERY DAY you're posting what price it 'could be', 'should be' or 'will be'.

You missed out saying "but never is!"

An oil price cap applied to the Kremlin may disrupt supply networks, potentially increase transport costs, lead to further development of new markets, or increase existing markets for Russian oil etc, but it will quite simply not work as intended for a hundred reasons.

Western governments are keen to be seen to try and choke off the money-go-round to Russia, in order to fund its war in Ukraine, so along comes a totally unworkable price cap. A headline grabber that will fail miserably.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/9/4/explainer-capping-russian-oil-prices

"North Sea oil and gas producers such as Shell have been hit with a windfall tax in the UK to try and fund the government’s support for households.

However, Shell has yet to owe any taxes under the new levy, as it is allowed to offset investments. Its North Sea business has not owed any taxes in Britain since 2017, due to investments and decommissioning costs that make it unprofitable."

First two paragraphs above extracted from the following Telegraph article:

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/shell-handed-%C2%A390m-by-taxpayers-under-energy-price-guarantee/ar-AA13VnGW

Everyone is clamouring for a Windfall Tax on oil and gas majors, but as multi-nationals they can often be profitable where they choose. If there is no profit declared in the North Sea area & the government accept the calculation, how can a government tax it.

Also, many of the same government suspects are in place, who initiated a Windfall tax, but to offset the impact of this gave an 9% subsidy on new North Sea exploration! It is blindingly obvious that new exploration will attract heavy subsidies for years, before becoming "profitable" eventually after 3-4 years or more, when it becomes taxable. This would take us to 2025-2026. For me the government want the apparency of a Windfall Tax to appease public desire for one, but they are keen that it has no real teeth.

Even on a simplistic basis the Price/Earnings ratio that Motley Fool quote is erroneous by 20%!!!

L - I had to smile at your example of the National Trust. The only business plan they have on being gifted a new property to own and manage for a grateful nation, is to build the biggest playpark yet & decide where to site the mega-cafe! What about the best way to preserve the nations heritage - that's a really difficult one, so we'll put the cafe prices up to cover anything we conjure up!

Very much like Darktrace in sheer ability to take their eye off the ball! I want to see them exploiting the potential of the cyber-technology market, not just lining their pockets.

Never let the facts get in the way of a good story!

The alternate view is that ML does care about the business he founded - this is highly likely - founders generally do care! As a major shareholder he perhaps does not agree that a CEO should receive 8 x Darktrace's current profitability level as a gratis bonus! It indicates strongly that he is not content with Darktrace's share price performance - is anyone!

More importantly for shareholders a breakaway faction might well be forming, that with a significant share of the shareholder votes, may start to heavily influence company policy in other areas in addition to remuneration. Also, in the event of further takeover interest they would be one of the keys that, along with share purchases by the predator company & further defections from Poppy's faction, could unlock & determine the future ownership of Darktrace!

"they won't need to be concerned about competition"

That should save money as they will hardly need an R & D function! It is shockingly conceited and blinkered to consider that no company in the marketplace can replicate or improve on Dark's products.

How many times have you heard this sort of statement from marketing and sales led companies! The pre-eminence of their products in the marketplace needs to indicate that the competition is meaningless & inconsequential & Dark is a long way off this point!

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/mike-lynch-rebels-over-executive-pay-amid-tensions-with-darktrace-0tfbk77kc

Also if you look at the % of votes cast for resolutions 13 & 14 - Total votes cast as % of ISC it is 71.94%. This specific 71.94% then crops up repeatedly in the votes, so it looks likely it is the same people voting against a number of resolutions!

Over 70% of the votes against Resolution 14 were from three shareholders, Angela Bacares, GO ETF Solutions and Michael Lynch. It also looks like the same suspects voted against Resolution 13 on Directors Remuneration. Maybe a bit of discord surfacing!

B o E's Andrew Bailey stated that the Bank's forecasts are based on rates peaking at 5.25% in the second quarter of 2023. If there were only 3 x further rate increases, each would have to be 0.75% - making 4 x 0.75% increases in a row, which is highly unlikely!

The "total security of cash" is a laughable statement at the moment. CPI was 8.8% in the year to September, whilst RPI was 12.6%! So, cash is "total security" minus at least 8.8% per annum! That is without taking full account of currency movements & a host of other market dynamics.

Thinking about the 15% dividend increase for the 4th Quarter, payable in March 2023. Shell is already committed to increase the dividend by 4% each financial year starting January, taking the dividend to 29.9 cents a quarter for 2023, or more likely 30 cents!

i.e. 25c + 15% = 28.75% + 4% = 29.9%