Member Info for Handofjohnson

Not sure if EBITDA is the most useful metric with a company that has breached it's working capital banking covenant and announced in those H1 results that H2 results will be down. Cash flow is the key consideration, IMO if they can ride the next 3 months or so out, could be worth a risk

The fact is nothing can be ruled out until told otherwise. The fact the phone was answered only proves there's someone there to answer the phone! There is also no proof they have all been let go, I just had a look on LinkedIn as you'd expect people talking about and 'seeking new opportunities'. They don't have to let the market know if they are letting people go. They let go of a whole tier of management about a month ago and have had 3 rounds of voluntary (and not so voluntary) redundancies. As I said yesterday to those looking for an announcement what are they supposed to say?! What can't be disputed is a lot of people are dumping their stock, the question is why now?

Post on ADVFN forum says they've "heard" it will be bust before Xmas. Could be hearsay but the poster does have a decent track record.

The BD are in a difficult position. They have warned on multiple occasions over the last 7/8 months that the last 6 months accounting period will not meet expectations. They can't really come out and squash anything as the fact is there will be bad news with the next set of results. So what are they supposed to say to inspire confidence that they already haven't. They have nothing concrete so it would just be "yes the figures are poor but we've sorted it and it's getting better....wasn't out fault it was the old bunch"!

They have a £25 million RCF with RBS due to mature in April 2019. They breached 2 covenants around earnings ratio with RBS that were waived. Upon renegotiating the covenants they breached a further covenant around capital expenditure, again RBS waived this. They have £15 million in debt. In terms of the next update it is incredibly unlikely good news will follow as they stated in July 2018;

"However, the significant delay in the completion of the 2017 year-end audit has had a somewhat destabilising effect on several key stakeholders of the Group, including colleagues in the short-term. Accordingly, the Board now expects the Enterprise division, in particular, to have a softer second half of the financial year, due to these short-term uncertainties."

They don't have a lot of headroom in terms of debt to RCF ratio, a further supplier claw back could easily send them over the top.

They are leaking cash everywhere £2.2 million in settlements/legal fees with competitors and customers. Restructuring costs £984k, a charge of £509k as result of dispute with competitor, staff settlement payments of £678k, additional audit costs £450k.....not an exhaustive list

Quite unbelievable how badly this place has/is being run.

Source; https://markets.ft.com/data/announce/detail?dockey=1323-13576600-5E30ANHN58ID7AUU8C1AELNQ9K

I agree that BF couldn't really have picked a worse time to join, having said that he has done nothing/little to prevent the on going issues. His appointments have been very disappointing. With no experience of the industry himself, he recognised there were leadership changes required, however he just bought in people from Sage & Northgate who he had worked with before who also had little/No industry experience. Although I'm being critical of the diversification - something I believe should have been done incrementally, years ago - there is little other option. The cash flow issue can't be rectified without doing so as there is no way of speeding up supplier payments from their core business. The gravy train of upfront payments ended in 2014, at that point costs should have been drastically streamlined and a new business model implemented. A further issue that BF could not have foreseen is large increases to wholesale prices, which significantly effects the margin UW can apply to new and existing customers when re-contracting. The average commission per client was around £1500, this was with a wholesale power price of around 10p per unit. This allowed UW to input a 'decent' margin for themselves and not 'rip off' (in an obvious sense) the client. The wholesale price is now around 14p - if an existing customer enters into a conversation around renewing their contract and is informed of a +50% increase, they will shop around. UW was one of the first large broker consultancies, however competition has grown massively within this sector. There are now over 3000 brokers offering identical services, with most not having to contend with the inflated costs of UW's infrastructure. There are also now cost comparison websites for business consumers that were previously not available, and far more new and aggressive suppliers looking for their stake in the market.

Proudnelad- who's 'crucified' anyone? Ultimately if a former Director/owner dumps all his shares, it is going to be discussed! You claimed all that the info I provided was "inaccurate and nonsense" yet when challenged to back up your 'attack' you have changed the direction of your argument. As for BF and his team they have had over 2 years now and things have not improved. They recently announced they have linked with "netpay" a merchant service provider and will also be offering insurance. I believe the 'netpay' deal is a last ditch attempt to manage cash flow. Deals for merchant servives go live significantly quicker than utilities. Netpay will pay out these deals weekly and they will average about £400 per deal. Issue is they will be referring and not actually brokering as their staff are not trained in this field and it is FCA regulated. I also believe they are in danger of becoming a "jack of all trades" outfit. I have already gone into great detail as to why they are experiencing cash flow issues in light of the way they now get paid by suppliers, read my previous post(s) if you want!

Peakyblinders - if you read the thread it was speculated by another poster that working capital was needed for the claims business. It was also 'speculated' on this thread and on several over the last week that the funds were required for financial reasons. I was merely stating that we can speculate as to why, but it is not for the above reasons. If I were to speculate as to 'why' it would either be to possibly remove all links as you state. It could also be to destabilise even further, in tandem with setting up a claims company - that has no teeth - the motive to destabilise could be to delist or just bitterness.

Proudnelad - could you please elaborate which part(s) are inaccurate? The share sales are public record as is everything else.....I agree it is irrelevant - but if you bother to read the thread it was in direct response to speculation as to why Geoff Thompson dumped his remaining stock at £0.10. As I say if you believe it is inaccurate state your source(s) and correct me.

There's speculation and there's nonsense. The Thompson's sold the majority of their shares back in 2014. I believe Geoff Thompson had over 13mill shares and Adam Thompson had nearly 4mill selling at over £2.50. Adam Thompson effectively 'retired' in 2014/15 with about £12mill buying a premier league footballers mansion. Geoff Thompson must have made over £25mill. I do not know what the son "callum" that has set up the 'claims' business had but it's fair to say he's ok! The amount Geoff Thompson received for his sale recently is a drop in the ocean, not forced and not to "prop up" the younger sons business. He has invested about £2.5 mill in South shields fc paying salaries for former premier league players. Now the son's business, this is a completely unregulated business sector, so there will and can't be any huge PPI type situation on the horizon, there is a voluntary code of practice, that is it. Brokers do not have to disclose commission(s) so I have zero idea how any case can be upheld. The only way would be fraudulent contracts which will account for a very small %. The running and set up costs will be fairly small, I believe they have a small office in a shared business center. A phone and a laptop should cover the rest! What is speculative is the motive, I believe Thompson was forced out as CEO, was given the position as "chairman" to appease, realised it carried no weight and left. This new venture is just there to cause a few ripples and imply to those that do not know any better, there could be trouble (more than UW are already in) ahead with a wave of claims. Seems a little bitter, but then it was his company. All this info is available on google

"Whatamess".....read all my comments and see how my 'speculation' has come to fruition on this share over the last 3 years. Bit of a silly thing to say seeing as this is all essentially speculation. What is not speculation is that the share price is £0.10p and it was £3.70. There is no backing from a supplier they have no USP and can not compete with any other broker out there who only " has to pay for his own supper" and not that of the management, marketing, admin, legal, facilities, catering, security, compliance etc. Have a look on government stats on SME failure within the first 18 months, worse than divorce rates! Although that was one of many points I raised. Also since when have SME's "restructured"? ....."Oh Mrs Smith's Flower Shop is going through restructuring at the moment- they have to decide on PwC or Deloitte".....have a walk down the high street chief! Changes like the wind. Many suppliers now no longer even offer 5 year contracts for this exact reason. You will now find 3 or 4 of the 40 (ish) suppliers offering more than 3 years, obviously they have decided to do this for a logical reason. Theoretically it would make sense to lock a business in as long as possible, reality is very different as the supplier has to buy the entire predicted contract consumption upfront.......oh and there are an absolute s**t load of brokers compared to 5 years ago, big and small and many in the North East originated at UW.

If there is to be an investor/buyer then what are they getting? Saying that they could retain/renew 50% customers @ £1500 revenue commission per deal is not realistic. 90% of their customers are SME with vast majority on 3-5 year contracts. First issue is how many SME business' survive 5 years! Walk down your local high street and then remember what was/wasn't there 5 years ago. Then factor in the huge competition that now exists that wasn't there 5 years ago. There are a huge amount of brokers out there now and the suppliers themselves are relying less on third parties and increasing their own internal sales teams. The margin in uplift (especially in electricity) is far tighter now, consumers will be looking to reduce or maintain prices (where possible), the base price has shifted about 4p per unit upward in the last 3 years alone, so for those customers that would renew, the revenue margin would be substantially less. How many of their customers sold on huge uplift contracts will.even want to engage with UW?. There will be zero personal relationship as the guy/girl you signed up with no longer works there. Lastly of course a simple 'Google' of UW wouldn't/doesn't exactly inspire confidence!......The most likely outcome would be for the infrastructure to be purchased as a ready made call center/sales operation.

No. I'm saying the share price was £3.40 and is now £0.16. I'm also saying the prevailing factors that got the company to that success are gone - and have been for some time. The difference between the large brokerage/consultancies has been the backing of one or more suppliers through cash injections via upfront payments, favourable terms or cash bonuses. These agreements are not industry standard and were agreed/negotiated based upon the volume of business placed with said supplier. Without this, this industry is far more challenging to work in. They now have to wait around 6 weeks AFTER a contract has gone live to get paid. Consider a gas/electric contract is between 1-5 years in duration, now consider how many calls each sales agent has to make to get interest, now consider the probability of that business' gas/electric contract being up in the next week/month/3 months! Pretty low. There are then further considerations and potential pit falls e.g. every business is credit checked for a gas/electric contract, some such as British gas require fairly high scores. Certain industry types are flat out rejected by many suppliers. Contracts can be agreed up to 12 months in advance of their end, however no payment is made from the supplier until it has gone live - and industry data has been received confirming consumption. Previously UW were getting paid the same month a customer agreed the contract, regardless of when it actually went live. This difference is unbelievably significant to cash flow. The sales staff still need to receive monthly salaries, and they may well be hitting their targets but they simultaneously may not have actually bought in any revenue. Then consider the inflated back office costs that organisations of this size - and those that do not grow organically or intelligently - carry. The HR, administration, payroll, management, marketing, catering, staff welfare, legal, facilities etc are not revenue generating, they are purely cost. As I've said writing was on the wall over 2 years ago, and people should have sold then. There's a guy on ADVFN goes by "Bennywin" who kept arguing against every advisement to sell by posting links every time they announced "good news". Guys like that with zero insight are the problem on these forums.

To spenda - if you work in the energy sector you should know they have offered 3 rounds of voluntary redundancies in the past 2 years, they lost a lot (if not all) of their better and more experienced sales people to competitors during this time. The latest round of non-voluntary redundancies is aimed at middle management. They have also closed their Redditch office and let go of all staff there. To clarify this is NOT streamlining, streamlining has taken place on many levels over the past few years, this is desperation. I warned everybody about this on here about 18 months to 2 years ago (and on ADVFN) as the writing was clearly on the wall. It was clear to Stevie Wonder clawbacks were on the Horizon. Several morons clinged on to crumbs of positivity that were dripped out to appease/confuse those who did not know better e.g. a non-profitable deal with Iceland supermarket (purely for headlines), entering into the de-regulated water market (anyone in the industry realises the commission is pittance compared to gas/electric), ridiculous partnerships with various technology companies (Just not needed in SME market) - to name a few. The share price was about £1.40 then. I believe you were one of those being sceptical of my view point. As per on this forum my insight (like many others) was met with suspicion and ignored. People see and hear what they want to. The fact is Utilitywise had rapid success and growth through being heavily backed by 2 large suppliers. There was little compliance around the quality of deals placed and these suppliers accepted virtually every deal Utilitywise bought them, regardless of industry, uplift or general legitimacy. Considering at the time there were approx 35 suppliers to chose from UW's accounts for this period showed over 65% placed to 2/3 suppliers - they were paid huge amounts of commission upfront and this was passed on to staff, before deals had even gone live. The very minute the suppliers changed the terms and tried to clawback the commission's (on discovery most the business underwritten was crap) was the end of the road and time to sell.

To spenda - if you work in the energy sector you should know they have offered 3 rounds of voluntary redundancies in the past 2 years, they lost a lot (if not all) of their better and more experienced sales people to competitors during this time. The latest round of non-voluntary redundancies is aimed at middle management. They have also closed their Redditch office and let go of all staff there. To clarify this is NOT streamlining, streamlining has taken place on many levels over the past few years, this is desperation. I warned everybody about this on here about 18 months to 2 years ago (and on ADVFN) as the writing was clearly on the wall. It was clear to Stevie Wonder clawbacks were on the Horizon. Several morons clinged on to crumbs of positivity that were dripped out to appease/confuse those who did not know better e.g. a non-profitable deal with Iceland supermarket (purely for headlines), entering into the de-regulated water market (anyone in the industry realises the commission is pittance compared to gas/electric), ridiculous partnerships with various technology companies (Just not needed in SME market) - to name a few. The share price was about £1.40 then. I believe you were one of those being sceptical of my view point. As per on this forum my insight (like many others) was met with suspicion and ignored. People see and hear what they want to. The fact is Utilitywise had rapid success and growth through being heavily backed by 2 large suppliers. There was little compliance around the quality of deals placed and these suppliers accepted virtually every deal Utilitywise bought them, regardless of industry, uplift or general legitimacy. Considering at the time there were approx 35 suppliers to chose from UW's accounts for this period showed over 65% placed to 2/3 suppliers - they were paid huge amounts of commission upfront and this was passed on to staff, before deals had even gone live. The very minute the suppliers changed the terms and tried to clawback the commission's (on discovery most the business underwritten was crap) was the end of the road and time to sell.

Theiconadvantage.com isn't really diversifying, it's a ready made contact center, so just saves costs on recruitment/back office costs. They have operated in prague for some time, not successfully. They have teams of german/dutch/French native speakers and other nationalities within the Newcastle headquarters and have been unable to gain a significant footing within these markets. It would/will take significant investment and time to understand the complexities and regulation of other markets. UTW aren't in any position to be expanding. As I mentioned I believe they should be doing quite the opposite by 'streamlining' unnecessary back office costs, focussing on quality, rather than number of sales staff and getting the core SME business correct. Corporate hasn't worked and just lead to further expenditure in picking up T-mac tech for £10million which, at a cost of roughly £10k per customer was at best an 'impulse buy' considering 95% of your customers can't afford and or see a significant enough benefit to purchase. If they are looking at genuine and more realistic long term diversification, then renewable energy sources would be the route to go down in my opinion.

Continued.............8/11/16 These suppliers are large blue chip companies and they operate on their non-negotiable, established terms. Several smaller and new suppliers have obviously decided to operate differently in an effort to grow their customer base. They take on more risky business' such as pubs, takeaways and restaurants, and as they do not have the purchsing capacity of the large corporate suppliers the price is higher to the consumer. These are the suppliers utilitywise use as they will pay a) 80% total contract value before the contracts are live and b) pay upfront rather than in arrears. The fundimental point to all this is the customer would get the pre-uplift added price if they contacted the supplier directly and so are financially worse off by using utilitywise as they are not under any circumstances given cheaper rates than the if the client contacted directly. The only reason for using utilitywise or any broker, is not for a financial saving but for the time saved contacting suppliers and obtaining prices which can fluctuate daily. A broker is therefore only as useful/valuable to a client as the number of suppliers they have access to. With 53% of utilitywise' business going to just 3 suppliers and increasing, there ethics and morale standards have to be considered. The ideal utilitywise customer is thetefore not a large company like Iceland who will already be able to negotiate incredibly low rates and will indeed have staff in place purely for procurement issues. The likelyhood is no profit would have been made on the unit rates whatsoever and that any profit (assuming there is any and it wasn't a pr exercise) would be from the dashboard controls and t-mac. That would cost between £5-10k. The ideal customer (and bread and butter to utilitywise) is an SME that has little understanding of the marketplace, is very busy and sure as hell doesn't have a procurement specialist. As an example an average restaurant would use 60,000 units per year in gas, if they can get 2p uplift on a 5 year contract that equate to £4800 upfront with £1200 risidual and of course the electric still to come. As the vast majority of business' in the uk is SME or 'enterprise' this is where the profit is made, they do not require or need t-mac or dashboard technology. These huge profit margins are acquired from customers and business' who usually can't afford it and as a small business owner, is one of the reasons I am fairly passionate about this. It could be the diference between a business staying afloat or having to lay someone off. I hope my motives have been explained and you will consider the points i have made.

Posts didn't paste for some reason.........try again. Refering to my username as 'handjob' and 'talking through his rear end' really negates any inteligible discussion you may have and is frankly embarassing. I really didn't think keyboard warrior/trolls such as yourself would be on such a forum. Should you not be off bullying a 13 year old on twitter or vehemently campaigning for trump? I'm slightly disappointed in myself for engaging at all, however I wished to clarify my motive. I initially looked to purchse shares in utilitywise last year when price had dropped fron 3.47 to 2.20. As the company operates in a market that is unregulated and relatively new to the AIM I chose to conduct my own research. Having done this I chose not to invest, yet it has remained on my watch list and I again considered investing when it reached 1.27. At this point they released info on new supplier contracts and I looked further into how they actually make money, which you and others really don't seem to have grasped, hence not understanding that the icelabd deal will not be profitable, but a good headline. I believe the deal has actually cost money but has achieved good publicity, thus slightly increasing share price which is currently their ultimate objective. The reason I initially went against my instinct to post was looking through this forum and others and realising there was an incredible ammount of poorly informed investors. On this forum alone there were posts stating the cash owed from future deals is 'as good as cash in the bank as it's owed by the big 6'. This obviously is incorrect and one of many examples. The real issue in investors no longer do their own leg work but merely rely on investment fund managers (such as woodford) or read a quick 2 page editorial review. This is not normally a huge issue when dealing in established, regulated markets, however this is neither. The big difference of course is the impact of an investment going south to a large diverse fund vs the impact to a single investor. If woodford were to sell his stake in utilitywose today he would lose millions. Utilitywise make money on the uplift on a unit of gas and or electricity. The uplift is the difference between the cost of the unit issued by the supplier and the cost to the customer. E.g. supplier price is 12p kwh utilitywise add 1p. Cost to customer 13p. On average they make £3000 per customer. The customer pays utilitywise not the supplier which is why regulation will be paramount as this commission is currently not disclosed. The reason utilitywise use certain suppliers over others is the benefucial payment terms received e.g. most suppliers will not pay any amount upfront, but will only 'drip feed' in arrears either monthly or quarterly and more importantly will only begin this process when the customers current contract ends and new one begins. This does not fit utilitywise' business model as it causes huge cashflow issues predominantly due to staffing costs.

Suggest you check again. My last post on that forum in relation to this share was on 8/11/2016. I shall copy that post below. Before I do, I am intrigued as to why individuals such as yourself look at the supposed 'conspiracy' as to why somebody has chosen to share their input rather than the actual content! The reason I stopped 'sharing' was due to this ridiculous notion that anyone who has a contradictory opinion must be sitting in a dark room with mulder, scully and the 'cigarette smoking man'......I don't mean to be fasecous as I know the answer to the hostility, it's purely and simply easier to externalise than have to actually contemplate our internal short comings and admit we have made poor decisions! Anyway the posts from my original interaction.......... Search Stock Logged out default avatar Login Register Monitor Quote Charts Trades News Financials Toplists Alerts Portfolio Level 2 Free BB PBB ADVFN Logo Copyright © 2017 ADVFN plc Switch to Desktop View Utilitywise Share Chat - UTW Current Price 48.75p -0.50p -1.02% Bid Price Offer Price 48.75p 49.75p High Price Low Price Open Price 49.00p 48.50p 49.00p Shares Traded Last Trade Market Cap (m) 44,001 12:28:29 38.26 Utilitywise Share Discussion Threads Previous Page Next Page Date Subject 17/11/2016 12:07 qs99: that would be good....presume it wasn't tipped anywhere today? Read Full ThreadFollowReply 17/11/2016 12:03 qs99: so wonder where this will lead us?! Read Full ThreadFollowReply 17/11/2016 11:53 qs99: well it has broken £1.70.. Read Full ThreadFollowReply 16/11/2016 22:16 brucie5: Break 1.70 and the signal is good. Read Full ThreadFollowReply 11/11/2016 13:15 bennywin: One trick pony ? I think not. Here is a list of other services that UTW provide. They all offer the potential for plenty of additional revenue from existing and new customers. Procurement & Tendering Portfolio Energy Procurement Risk Management Carbon Zero MOP Contracts and Data Collection Tendering P272 OJEU Tendering Public Sector Portfolio Energy Commodity Trading Export Contracts  Monitoring & Reporting Monitoring & Reporting Bill Validation Budget Forecasting Monitoring and Targeting Market Intelligence Utility Insight  Controls & Reduction Controls & Reduction Efficiency Audits and Surveys Staff Awareness Training Energy Solutions Projects Building Energy Management Systems Energy Health Check Energy Audit  Compliance & Accreditations Compliance & Accreditations ESOS Compliance Climate Change Agreements Carbon Reduction Commitment Energy Efficiency Scheme European Union Emissions

I was prev a member on here and ADVN under same username. Had a running commentary/debate on this share around 18 months ago when the share was around £1.30. I offered advice on this share as I was fairly certain that the worst was far from over but as per, nobody wants to admit to making mistakes!. Fella on ADVFN under username 'bennywin' was making all sorts of assertions as many do when contradictory advice/info is put on the table. I sold my brokerage/client base to another consultancy as I had several other business interests but also because there are so many unscrupulous characters in this industry, far more than the average in my opinion. The industry is unregulated and attracts a certain 'type', generally out to make a quick £ and it is incredibly easy to get into and set up, no technical skills are required, no previous experience or qualification which is one of the many reasons to stay away from, from an investment perspective. There are so many companies out there now offering the same exact service as UTW, they have zero USP. In particularl the North East is home to and has spawned an astronomical amount of brokers, many of which formerly were employed there!!

Jesus, don't know where to start with this. You really have zero understanding of this industry, IF you have gained from previous deals It merely suggests you fall into the category of 'better lucky than good'. I have previously owned an energy brokerage company and Utilitywise's business model is/was unbelievable. The initial issue was they took advantage of a few (one in particular)'greedy' suppliers and named their own consumption levels and received commissions upfront for total contract consumption (approx 80% total revenue). This is how they grew so rapidly. They were selling 5 year contracts to SME and getting paid upfront, which is just ridiculous and unheard of. This then resulted in the large payback. The second issue is that now this gravy train has ended they are in the majority of cases, unable to sell 5 year contracts as any sound minded supplier would not agree to this in this SME market, based on the fact many SME's do not last 5 years. The industry maximum standard is 3 years, which immediately takes 40% off revenue on comparable agreement. If they can agree these long-term contracts they will have to have either have a large cash surplus to repay the commission if /when the deal goes bad (difficult for many reasons, one such being getting claw back off the employee) or receive the commission from the supplier on a monthly or quarterly basis. This is 'drip-feed' system is standard practice as it poses less risk to broker and suppliet. This option simply is not feasible as their overheads in terms of staff etc are enormous and large payments are needed to maintain cash flow. The only way to survive is to scale down back office functions and streamline the sales staff whilst also restructuring how they pay and receive commissions. Just not going to happen. As to your standing charge comment, that accounts for around 0.5% of revenue for an SME energy contract so really don't know where you've got that from. They have also touted themselves around to all manor of suppliers to get upfront cash payments for a guaranteed level of business that will be submitted on a quarterly/annual basis. Again this will lead to further issues with clawbacks if the targets are missed and possible misrepresentation of accounts and is a fairly desperate move. The fact is the share was £3.50 a few years ago and has steadily dwindled away, the CEO has left, his son left 18 months ago and liquidated his share capital and most of the original board have sold up and made a quick buck. The only reason it has lasted as long as this is investors clinging on to the 'woodford factor', but we all make mistakes!