Charles Jillings, CEO of Utilico, energized by strong economic momentum across Latin America. Watch the video here.
Was a strong day yesterday based on the news relating to 5G. Which is good long term news. Albeit no revenue from this yet. Many applications for 5g use though.
Question on Apple will be is revenue decline due to lowering prices or fewer orders. I suspect both. The market view seems to be the newer Iphone models offer no real difference to their existing phones so people upgrade less. Most CPU in phones are quite capable so a faster CPU offers less value. A 5G modem will offer much greater speed?.
Apple no longer announces number of Iphones it ships now. Suggesting the numbers are falling.
No one really expected good news from Apple. For IQE it will be about how much it's other clients are filling their order books. Plus when all these 5G orders arrive and if they offer good margins.
Motley Fool less than positive about IQE today. (They do change their mind a lot. No mention of 5G.)
https://www.fool.co.uk/investing/2019/05/01/more-bad-news-for-iqe-id-rather-buy-this-6-ftse-100-dividend-yield/
No change on shorts today.
A Nelson has just taken out share options for 7.6m shares at 1p each. He will be a multi millionaire at the end of this. Especially if they actually match any of their targets. Of course 1% dilution of shares for existing holders. 1.5% if you include the previous director share options in last month.
https://www.edisongroup.com/company/iqe/429/
'Industry outlook
Noting softness in the global handset market, management expects the FY19 recovery to be second-half weighted. This is supported by ramp ups on new VCSEL programmes. Volume production on some of these, including shipments to companies in the Android supply chain, has already started. '
So maybe H2 could bring some joy. New clients to make up for Apple's weaker demand?
Est. revenue 169.9m for 2019. About 13m higher than last year. So not a huge change on year expected. Will they meet this? In Jan Ediison were predicting 194m revenue. So they have lowered this be 25m. Explains why were struggling to get past 75p here.
Because there is no news. So some excitement about new technology coming through. However Apple shipment of iPhones down 10% or so. Also less people upgrading their phones. Be Q3 or q4 before any real positive news feeds through here. Shorts above 0.5% still at 7.85%. I tend to ignore the ups and downs of SP here as that is normal. 70p seems a good entry point.
Yes TTMV was a classic case of one big client which if they go the business fails.
Summit never really seemed to make money. Same for their European offices which just seemed to go.
Redleaf/Publicasity have done okay.
Newgate Uk has been like a lost sheep. It just seems like no one was watching what money was being spent.
The large volume of senior hires DW bought in just never seemed to cover their wages. Large bits of work can be very profitable but if they don't come in then you are just left with a large wage bill. These senior hires were on huge wages. Some of their existing staff it seems were not covering their wages either. (How can you run a business like that?)
The fact that they could find 3.6m of costs that could be removed says a lot here. That coupled with crippling loans and large rent costs made Newgate almost unprofitable. These new firms should of been integrated much sooner. Partly delayed by fact they never fully owned Redleaf. It might have been better to offer an all share buy out of Redleaf at start and strip out costs asap.
There is a lot of dividends from Asian firms still leaving Newgate. So 1.5M profit which a 1/3rd+quickly gets paid out to third parties. Even so with 1m or so buffer the UK office needed to make some money. I think the belief of the board was that they would quickly expand and find cost savings this way. It just never seemed to happen as they ran out of cash and the SP dropped. The way this merger with SEC is taking place shows how far Porta has fallen from it's 13-17p grace.
Yes he exercised his options then made sales that depressed IQE by around 3p in price. Albeit he was not the only seller. I don't believe they force you to sell the shares! Albeit he likely saw it as his bonus for the year. It will show as a director sell. If the new CFO get similar options it's unlikely he will buy any shares long term.
'In June 2018, Porta ceased payment of the interest on the RGL instrument, and as such started to incur penalty interest on the capital and unpaid interest, resulting in a debt increase of £0.6m. Combined with the £0.3m of accrued interest on the DDB, accounted for an increase of £0.9m of the debt balance, which was marginally offset by decreases in finance lease obligations and the RCF, part of which was re-paid.'
So if they don't make certain debt target they incur rates of 12%. Looks like June 2018 they were running out of cash. I guess this merger will remove the debt? This business needs a 10-12m cash injection. Remove 1.3m of yearly interest and after all the add backs they might make some money. The write off of 0.5m will help 2019 accounts.
Overall the Asian businesses seem to be doing well. China businesses booming. Middle East operations have recovered well. It's just the core costs in the UK causing a financial burden. Same story as last year. They needed to make cut backs in the UK but it seems 0.8-1.4m to do this was too big a burden.
See what the merger brings. How much more cost savings can be made with SEC? 2-3 million if they remove debt completely? If people are going to make money out of this it wont be the Porta Shareholders.
Yes the silence had me worried. I knew something was up.
Their annual report says as of 11/03/2019 Hales Hargreaves still had all 25m shares. No idea about Jeremy Wyatt or other holders here below 3%.
This is a reverse merger. Will it not be on the AIM market? Not read all the jargon in full. Overall it does not look good. As we will likely get diluted by parties injecting monies into the firm. They won't want to take on 10m debt at 8%. SEC already has financial duties to pay for ownership of other firms.
Problem with Porta is it went wrong a few years back when TTMV and 1-2 other offices failed. Debt has since spiralled. The share have been heavily diluted with nearly 200m shares since. The minute the share collapsed it stopped them doing any proper mergers.
I think it's only a merger as SEC failed to raise 4-5m in their fund raiser on the open market last year.
Porta has never really been able to afford these 8-12% loans. They have crippled the firms finances. Many investors here are down 10's of thousands here. I know quite a few wanting to sell at these prices fearing they will lose everything. Difficult decision time. Will this new group start making money?
What is your thoughts?
4.4m loss after 3rd party payouts. Further loans planned. Revenue circa 35-36m. Conversion rate of Porta shares here is very small. Not worked out the actual value at current market prices. Too much to take in.
Welcome to the world of IQE. Mix of shorts below 0.5% and funds selling. Mixed with others buying. This share needs actual news if the SP is to really take off. So far speculation.
Not so sure about T Rowe Price influencing price. Their holdings have not changed greatly in last year. Their loaned out shares seems to move from 4-5%.
Some big trades at end of day. Many going throught at 500k-756k. Worth 3m volume or so. Shorts or something else?
I am not worried about automated trades, Many funds use this to buy and sell shares. A lot of IQE trades are automated as funds own most of the shares. UT trade of 75.5p.
Foxy Bingo!
https://www.holmesreport.com/latest/article/emea-news-in-brief-(march-25-2019)
LONDON — Foxy Bingo has tasked Publicasity with its digital strategy and Facebook community management along with news creation and media sell-in. Foxy Bingo is home to over 10 online rooms of 75-ball, 90-ball, 80-ball and 30-ball bingo slots. The account is headed up by managing partner Paul McCaffrey.
Publicasity may also be in running for Yakult contract. Albeit there are 2 other firms tendering for this from what I can see. Fingers crossed Google is not making that up.
Looks like a decent contract win covering many areas. Hope this is no April fools joke! It's after 12 now.
https://www.prweek.com/article/1580695/brief-air-new-zealand-chooses-agency-ketchum-adds-fitness-client-wins-newgate-agent-42
'Newgate wins account for leading HR and payroll provider
Integrated corporate reputation agency Newgate Communications has won a competitive pitch to provide corporate PR support to Moorepay. The company provides over 10,000 SME businesses with sophisticated software to make their payroll and HR easier and a suite of service solutions to support happy, healthy workplaces and boost wellbeing at work. Newgate will provide corporate communications support, including two significant campaigns for this year, alongside stakeholder and influencer engagement, and media relations.'
More chance of good news on IQE right now than here? Didn't know how to remove post below. Someone needs to report the post?
No idea when results will be. End of April? Will they actually tell us before they arrive? Friend thinks there will be no major news till debt restructured. I think they want to get all bad news cleared from 2018. Then they can announce 2019 as the year they are closer to or in profit. 2-3m cost savings and no profit would look bad. Q4 is the key period. They have been announcing a lot of new clients which is hopefully good news.
I still have faith in this share albeit the background sellers keep dumping 500-700k of shares. Really confusing to know who actually owns what shares here. Ruffers and Herlad management sold out? I assume someone else is buying these shares?
In terms of IQE I see a similar pattern to what happened here. They keep promising the world then fail to deliver. Not suprised it fell from 180p to 57p, This is one reason not to keep doing RNS if 1-2 months later the news is actually worse. Albeit the RNS news here has pretty much dried up. Not had any real news in 3-4 months. Albeit their Twitter feeds do give client and other news.
Their European partners SEC are not doing well. Share price peaked around 120p now around 80p. Little or no news apart from changes of advisors, accounting issues and one acquistion. I wonder if like Porta they may run out of cash. Hence why no takeover here from them. In fact their investment here has fallen by 2-3m. When you part buy companies it can cost xm a few years later.
Fingers crossed 2019 is year Porta can turn the corner. No news is normally good news. That or they are just not telling us anything. We will see soon enough.
I mentioned the Blackrock short position yesterday. Also called around 64p as the low here for now. Wouldn't be shocked to see Oppenheimer still buying..
Unclear if institutions are still buying. Certainly only Oppenheimer of major share holders increased based on IQE website. Could more be some shorts closing causing the rise. Black Rock?
No one wants jam announcements. They want information to back up the figures they keep suggesting. So announcing a major new contract or new product going into production.