Member Info for GoCPI

Omnicom is BMW's partner in the US. Monks is the current lead content partner for BMW Europe and will lose the account to Dentsu in 2026. That's a loss of a Whopper after gaining GM from 2025.

"never understood people taking pleasure in the collapse of the share price when they admitted they were not invested, sad really."

A good thoughtful post there, JSumm and your question got me pondering. To me that's either typical human psychology or short manipulation. Typical human psychology for when people buy higher (maybe even former employees), blame everyone else other than themselves for their investment, start bad mouthing management/company, maybe finally sell and once that's been done, they need to keep coming back to the board to show how their sale was vindicated and that this was always a disaster waiting to happen. Meta is killing us OR AI is killing us, and so on and so forth. Pathetic.

Then of course the downside manipulators wanting either a lower entry price for their trade OR to close a short position for higher profit, and post nonsense continously. The traders of course switch to pumping when they've bought in and reverse when they're out.

Outside of these, you then have the quiet or even loud Bulls who're stuck with a higher price and keep pumping higher prices too. They could be equally dangerous to investors too as they vastly push to inflate target prices just so they get a parade of buyers buying in and push the price up so that they can get out or even make profits on their side trades.

And there are investors who have put in their hard-earned cash in a stock that they think will give them a good return and make them that bit wealthier if their investment thesis comes good.

You do get all of the above on these message boards. The trick is to take almost everything with a pich of salt, look for real facts, do your own analysis of both macro as well as sector/company specific trends. These boards could help with a few inputs to your decisioning process, even to the extent of timing your trades in a low liquidity/participant market like the LSE.

Anyways - that's my musings on your question. :-)

"S4 concentration on cost reduction is being followed by others in this sector while revenues are distressed.

If it’s taken over / merged that’s great but if it’s turned down that’s just as good since it will show belief in the business, struggling businesses never say no to lifelines."

I broadly agree with the above. MS doesn't to engage PEs from a position of massive SP weakness, like S4's at now. We're currently lumped alongside WPP and the stock price movements there seem to correlate heavily with how we move. However, WPP is a beast now with massive fiefdoms globally that means making meaningful change isn't easy to execute. We're nowhere close to that. Per the 2024 AR, we have now integrated 32 out of 34 acquisitions technologically - that's good for us to start singing from the same hymn sheet. And the state of the US labour market also restricts mobility resulting in increasing productivity and output - that's the nature of the beast over there. Bodes well for 'One S4'.

MildLaddie - 90p? PMSL - you'll selling tomorrow at 24p should we get there. We'll get a 'Thank you buyers' post and then start your dumping posts saying this is going to 15p as you know nothing will come out of the bid talk. Whoever thought you were unpredictable?? LMAO..

This may have some legs, but I can't see Martin make a deal with the valuation on the LSE being in the dumps and pronostications of 140p deal is naught but fantasy - ain't going to happen without a solid revenue/margin uptick. This 'could' put a floor under the share price in the near term, but don't see the trend lasting, IMO. It's after all the remarkably deep liquidity driven LSE we're talking about here - the pride of the global stock market world post-Brexit.

Net revenue in 2024 of £755m, likely to drop to £725m in 2025 per current guidance and if we assume EBITDA of £85 - 90m like in 2024, we're still only at circa 12 to 13% Ebitda to net revenue margins. A long way from our targeted 20% range. There's plenty of work yet to be done. Step one is to sustain the YOY revenue growth we should certainly see in Q4 and possibly in Q3 - we should get guidance next month with the earnings release. Working on a circa 10 to 12% YOY decline in H1 projection per recent guide, we need to be at a circa 4 to 5% YOY growth in H2 to get to a low single-digit drop in net revenues. But the trajectory is known and is a lower base to grow revenues off, if the new business model (output based content creation revenues) + tech focus pays off, and the US economic growth cooperate. The downside or the muddle-along the bottom risk is if S4's pivot doesn't pay off. However, it's important to note that 2 (T-Mobile/GM) out of 3 (AMZN is the 3rd) larger addtional revenue contributing customers from H2 onwards are not tech customers. A plus for us I'd suggest.

FCF yield of > 20% shows stupidly we're valued at, but this is MS' own doing!! I won't be sitting around and pumping the share to kingdom come, but if the business trajectory changes from S4's business model being vindicated and that's an if, then the SP's performance will do the talking. A move to NYSE listing will certainly help with valuations, but isn't my base case and is unlikely to happen.

This PE interest, if confirmed, is good news and shows up our shiite current valuation - it's great if we get a upward tick in the coming days.

MildLaddie - It was all tongue-in-cheek. No harm ever arises from trading and making money. Keep on with your trading and broadcasting them - the board would be a dull place without your posts, however unenlightening they are. :-) Bon chance.

Broke - no, the entire market isn't concerned about Meta AI. That's the rationale of some on here who're seeing a sustained decline in the stock price and of course that has to be driven by Meta AI taking over the ad world. They're not seeing the wood for the trees, IMO. The Meta (or any AI content creation) AI content platform is a bogeyman and whilst it could be a concern for pockets of the market that have a big focus on a Time & Materials content creation only model for small and medium businesses, and you could argue that even larger business will look for agencies to reduce content creation costs - this is where a concern could arise. OK, it was a poor choice of words from me to label Meta AI concerned holders as brain dead and if I could walk that back I would. I should've kept my focus on my resident troll, jcj07, and left all my special labels for him. ;-)

However, IMO, that doesn't detract from the fact that S4's SP issues are anchored in 1. Tech sector focus and that sector pulling back on ad spend leading to negative revenue growth 2. Macro is still playing a part in reigning in marketing spend - tariff uncertainty is still prevalent in the US and impacting US growth broadly impacting ad spend 3. Listed on the best stock exchange on the planet where the only metric that matters is revenue growth and all other valuation metrics be damned 4. and to throw in for good measure - High-cost employee base that does impact profitability, however acknowledging that this isn’t what is causing the pain in the market.

The loop of recent all-time lows in the stock price is accentuating the angst among a bunch of holders and of course, AI content creation giant steps or big bad wolf Martin are causal factors, and these notions seem to be source of friction on this board. Anyways, changing hearts and minds isn’t my objective – I do stick with my conviction that we’re an undervalued business, but also note that valuations can be irrational for far longer than I’m solvent.

I’ve already said that I won’t be surprised to see us hit more all-time lows in the coming days/weeks, but if I do get more opportunities to add, I will. And of course, I’ll have to bite back at my troll JCJ on the days he starts to bark when his mummy doesn’t feed him milk. And that’s pretty much every day it hits or hangs around these all-time low levels. PMSL.

This humungous Capex AI cycle will taper eventually – whether that’s a 2026 story or 2027, who knows. I don’t/can’t see insolvency issues at S4, not with the FCF generation from the business and the ECB rates as low as they are facilitating refinancing at favourable rates should they want to do that in 2026/early 2027. The buzzword, Meta AI (or any other AI content creation app) is just that until real numbers show ad spend crater as a consequence – it’s a bogeyman until then.

Weekend golf time now. GLA - enjoy yours!!

"Haha of course he did, show us a screenshot of the 6m shares and I will shut up."

MildLaddie - Sure, Hold the line caller. I'm on the line with the Monks.flow team to get this required content generated. The ask is whether you want to see 6m screenshot or 60m - the application can generate either or any other detail you need. They can throw in a few dancers holding up the placard with the number too - set in Hawaii for good measure. Will that help convince you about the veracity of my obnoxiously large holding?

This is a fascinating read from an interview with Henry Cowling and the head of Monks in India. When we get to around to monetising this AI head start, could the returns be many-fold?

That's the pertinent question for us shareholders. And not to forget the brain-dead on here who parrot/regurtitate the same old line that Meta is killing the 'agencies'.

https://www.campaignindia.in/article/ai-is-not-eating-your-lunch-ai-is-your-lunch/503849

Jcj07 - Mummy feed you milk this afternoon or were you doing a street shift? Whatever keeps that one grey cell running along...

I also think it may well be. Although TradeDesk has another headwind in terms of competition from the Amazon DSP platform.

This quote from TTD's CEO in their earnings release today is probably a driver for today's sell-off in WPP (and then us) - "from a macro standpoint, some of the world's largest brands are absolutely facing pressure and some amount of uncertainty".

MildLaddie - Martin gave me 4.37m shares free and I bought 1.496m shares at a 33p average. I'm massively in the black but don't get too envious though - something to think about for you when you make your 1000 share trades. PMSL!!

Good weekend, Laddie.

And here comes the mild laddie!!! PMSL - comedy gold every week.

"Got 3.3 million of these golden tickets now.... and all basically free with the 100 % profit in Oxford nanopore.."

For the avoidance of any doubt, I was referring to this post!! I'm a sucker for big numbers and I love these numbers being thrown around on an anonymous forum without context other than self-aggrandisement.

Thank you for that highly enlightening post, 1msn!!!

"The linkedin post was a lot more pertinent, on why isn't SMS discussing S4 capital and instead using it as a platform to rubbish his rivals. The comment about the adage about throwing stones in glass houses hits the nail on the head."

Ahem...not quite true, even though on the face it you might think that's argue. I suppose that's the difference between regurgitating headlines and doing critical analysis.

The Journos ask him a question about WPP and is he meant to pontificate about S4's virtues in response to that question OR about the forthcoming IPG/Omnicom merger? Of course, they'd pick on the big beast (WPP) knowing that he was the man who took WPP to where it go to and I'd think knowing that he's still a stockholder there.

What I agree on is that he isn't an oracle, but the bet on tech clients hasn't quite panned out and they're pivoting. And pivoting isn't all easy in a dreary economy like the US is in now. Do I think it has distressed debt on the balance sheet which means its going bankrupt, NO. Is it generating FCF on a regular basis, YES. However, can it hit all-time lows and not bounce!! We have the answer don't we?

Woflie - Don't get me wrong, Hubris rules Martin. And he gets it wrong it wrong quite often with his pontifications - his pointless slandering of WPP (sour grapes is probably an understatement), his proclamations that numpty trumpty would be a godsend to the US economy (and globally) has been woefully off the mark. And whether we accept/like it or not, the economy has on outsized impact on marketing ad spend. But he's still a big man in the ad world and when the US economy eventually is righted, valuations will normalise and we'll have a fighting chance of 3x to 5x from these levels. Penri's views in his post are just as non-analytical as his accusations of Martin building a business for 10 years prior - content creation is definitely now commoditised, and S4 doesn acknowledge that. They're probably movers in pivoting to a output based model, and if the success parameters are well defined/agreed they could even lead the ad world towards an outcome based model. But it is still rapidly evolving and I can't see big beasts like WPP pivot as quickly.

The ad world tree shake is ongoing now, and it may be a couple of more quarters before we know if S4 can still thrive in 2026. But to strike out S4 just now is an error. I suppose S4 can still keep cutting high-cost employees until it reaches that sweet spot of balanced revenue/cost mix generating a circa EBITDA runrate of 15-20%.

On the economy side - Tariff certainty is more or less there, and US businesses will now have to adapt to the new reality and I suggest they will. A recession is unlikely, IMO, as dumbo can't stand that and will probably TACO again and give more reprieve to businesses, but US rate cuts are coming, and I won't be surprised if the fed delivers a 50 bps cut in September - that could become a certainty if we get a horrible september job report.

I'm not selling, but adding small chunks around here. GL, however you play this.

"I agree GOCPI, l think it's very naive to write off SMS"

Amen to that, Longfell. I won't relitigate how/why we got to these levels at a circa 97.5% lower price from the peak - you can blame that on hubris, betting on the tech sector just when these companies went on a massive capex spree, making pricey acquisitions at bubble valuations, and of course my favourite - being listed on the greatest stock exchange on the planet.

Unlike WPP, we're a lot more nimble and can move quickly. We're one of the first to pivot from a T&M hourly fee model to an output based model, backed by a solid tech and data acumen in the marketing space. The US is still in the dumps with the tariff uncertainty hammering the wider economy (tech sector is probably the exception) and that certainly means that YOY growth may be hard to come by in Q3, but we should see that turn in Q4 certainly. And Martin knows that when there's a turn in the economic outlook in the US, our fortunes will turn too. And he has the gravitas in this sector to get S4 involved with customers in other sectors. I look at a circa 25% FCF yield on our SP and I shake my head.

However, I do acknowledge that I may yet be shaking it for a few more months!!

Yawn - Jcj07. Everything OK on the streets? They feeding you OK?

I put my money where my mouth is and I'll keep adding here with my ill-gotten gains from my other stocks. Run along to mummy and play while we make money after the turmoil fades.

Good on you, Wednesday.

Its steady progress, but not fully helped by the private sector being in the dumps, no thanks to our esteemed government's fantastic tax plans. The upside is that the largest division is getting larger with improved margins to boot.

However the concern for me is the difficulty we're still facing in generating solid free cash flow. I posed the question yesterday on FCF for 2026 and Pablo made a reference to a vague forecast on their website for 2026 numbers - that's not substantial number. Maybe they're low-balling it, but they need to think like US CFOs whose CF forecasting is called into question very quarter.

I didn't expect a miracle with the H1 release and the operational progress can be seen. It's just better operational execution that can push margins up close to 10% via offshoring - that's what can take us to £6 levels. We're someway yet from there.

MartinG - well put with that note. Yes, best not to engage with Gaslighters like Meekie - nothing to be gained from that, zilch. These gaslighters have been pathetically wrong with proclaimers CPI doomsday at 180 and squirming in agony as it jumped to 358p and then that inevitable correction then somehow vindicates these clueless lightweights.

There's no gain in indulging those with a petite willy syndrome.

Good solid progress in today's report and puts CPI on a perfect takeoff path towards sustainable FCF from 2026. Dividends only in 2027 though, IMO!!!