Member Info for HeadInTheSand

Murkier and murkier. Although I'm not setting any store by the original post being allegedly penned by Huge Eyebrow, I suspect that the actual content is pretty close to being accurate, regardless of whoever the author was.

Dougal, the sight of that deliberately poorly disguised bio which of course mentioned no specific names but which equally of course was very easily identifiable to one specific individual did just a tad more than make you all tingle...

That 24th August update came (naturally) just as existing PIs were being cajoled into investing more of their hard-earned in the amazing "pre-IPO" opportunity - so with an easily identifiable senior healthcare executive apparently being involved, that will no doubt have helped persuade a few of the less wary.

This is so continuing to pan out like an absolutely classic 419...

Happy New Year, all. Let's see what it brings re CTAG... but perhaps best not to hold one's breath.

Yes it does feel like that. Except the surprising thing - given today's sharp downwards movement - is that nothing has changed. Unless some people with an inside track know something the rest of us don't, there is no new news to occasion today's steep SP fall.

Okay I and several others and have long thought that AVN got itself fatally and irrecoverably holed below the waterline ages ago, during the DW spin- and borrowing-crazed days and it was therefore just a matter of time before it went under... but again this is not new news. AVN's no more shagged today than it was yesterday, or last week or last month or indeed since the day of the D4E swap. So why it seems all of a sudden to have entered an accelerating
dearth spiral, with new all-time lows seemingly being plumbed on a daily basis, God alone knows.

AIMO

The devil's in the detail to my mind.

As of end Nov 2017, BBB (or SAT as then was) had got up to 100,000 customers worldwide primarily through bolt-on acquisition, as per the RNSed SAT Jan 18 trading update.

As of the Dec 12th 2018 RNSed BBB trading update, it had 113,000 customers worldwide.

However, in the intervening year, BBB had made two bolt-on acqusitions giving it a further 21,000 customers in Italy, Germany, Austria and a few in Portugal - as per the SAT April 26 2018 RNS.

It also sold off 11,000 Australian fibre customers.- as per the BBB June 11 2018 RNS.

So BBB "gained" a nett 10,000 extra subscribers following the above deals within this FY.

On that basis, I'm only seeing a max 2.5 to 3% organic gain on its customer base. That's very slim and fragile IMO - especially given that BBB is still so European centric and - as AIMforprofit has said, satellite broadband is becoming ever more rapidly marginalised in such territories.

I'd be happier seeing them maximise more in Australia (where the geography/population densities fit their service much more neatly and also branching out into Africa if they can.

AIMO.

Looks like it's going to drop through 2.60.

It is going to take a literal miracle to turn this around, I feel... anyone know three wise men or a virgin?

Zzzzzz ad hominem again.

One ought never diss AC/DC.

Tyche, those accusations are a tad banal, no? When faced with an opinion you don't like, it serves nothing to play the man not the ball. That's a classic example of an ad hominem attack - which is the usual last resort of those groping for and failing to find a counter argument.

"Offer nothing but attacks"? I'd say instead "are prepared to confront the hard and fast reality of things"... but hey, each to their own.

As to Tanzanian children getting a better education, who wouldn't support that whole-heartedly? And may it continue as long as possible.

But that's really not the core point - in a capitalist economic system, this and similar demands need fulfilling in a way that covers the fulfiller's costs.

Matt, although you may well be right, I am still having trouble believing that anyone could possibly be so wilfully ignorant and/or so irredeemably dumb over such a protracted period and in the face of countless undeniable cold hard facts.

Which is why I think there is some slim chance that said individual is not in fact a genuine LTH of Avanti, but instead the world's most clumsy, most talentless and thus most ineffectual ramper.

Nobody can be this permanently thick...

...can they?

GCCRa, feel free to point about one single factual inaccuracy in my preceding post.

Have you been assuring all that AVN's SP is about to significantly rise for the last 3+ years, despite it falling from c. £2.50 to current levels over that same period?

Is AVN still saddled with c. $500m of bond debt, even after April's D4E swap?

Regarding that D4E swap back in Aprll, given that the debt holders exchanged c. $450m of bond debt for a 92.5% equity stake in AVN and today the whole company has a market cap of c. £62m, would you agree that the percentage loss that can be ascribed to such a decision is in excess of 80%?

Answers on a postcard please...

The problem here is that GCCRa has been predicting an inmminent corner for the last 3+ years on this share. There's nor been one and there's no sign of one - AVN remains resolutely on the dead straight highway to hell.

I suppose a corner may eventually appear - but sadly I think the wheels wlll have fallen off the AVN clown car long before that.

He is at least a little bit right about what he calls the "ex-bondholders", but to educate him on this, they're not "ex-bondholders". They still hold around $500m of bond-based lending into AVN, so they're still very definitely bondholders. And as such, still first in the queue for any potential future asset fire-sale divvy up.

They did however provide the cliff-edge rescue to AVN with the D4E swap (which has cost them a fortune - they swapped around $450m of bond debt into equity which is now worth only $75m - so they can't be too delighted at that 80%+ loss). I doubt they'll do the same again - there comes a time when there is literally no point throwing good money after bad.

Dougal as ever your continued hopefulness is legendary.

To be fair though, a little looking back is both understandable and necessary for those who have far larger sums than I locked into CTAG - from the 2016 debacle, let alone the pre-IPO "opportunity".

Kind of impossible (and irrational) to pretend none of that happened and to instead view CTAG 2019 as a completely blank sheet of paper, no?

Some smart boys will have made a fair few shekels on today's swings, no doubt.

New all-time low at the moment... market cap now below £60m...

I think that's Amit's version of "Merry Christmas and thanks!" to all existing PIs - and especially to those who were persuaded to put even more of their funds into the end Aug "pre-IPO opportunity".

It does seem that the nett result of investing more at that stage has been - so far at least - to lock in even more of one's capital without any sign of when one might be able to release it, let alone release it with a profit.

However, I suppose that short and substance-free update was at least less "slap in the face" than an Advent Calendar...

I still reckon that certain parties are doing their best to prepare the ground for a second amazing "pre-IPO opportunity". That'd be classic 419 stuff.

Guess what? After almost 2 years of PIs having no choice but to sit on their hands and wait, we're entering yet another year with more of the same and no sign of things changing.

Tyche, to be totally clear, I don't disbelieve - and have never disbelieved - the AVN/EE deal (it's there in black and white). What I'm exceptionally doubtful of is that AVN will ever earn more than the minimum stated value out of this - and that's down to my awareness of the limitations of the technology.

As to the USO, I agree it's a stepping stone (or a stopgap, if one is to be harsh about it). But an intermediate stage is almost necessary - realistically we're not going to get the whole UK connected with NGA-compliant connections any time soon (and especially not to those who start off in the most broadband-disadvantaged positions). So an intermediate stage is almost an essential, no?

And if you're up for quoting Ofcom, try page 85 of the Ofcom original "Advice to Government" report on the USO:-

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0028/95581/final-report.pdf

I can't copy n paste that, because it's a table, but you'll see that Ofcom (and subsequently the Government) excluded satellite from the USO Option 2 that got selected - pretty much for the self-same reasons that HEO satellite got excluded as an NGA-compliant technology.

Tyche, re USO, the real and un-get-roundable killer for satellite broadband is this...

Ofcom specifically excluded geostationary satellite from the USO by enshrining maximum latency criteria in allowable delivery technologies.

Separately however, agreed that AVN needs to exclusively chase corporate/network operator/public sector/government business - and in geographies that are appropriate to deliver the sizeable increases in revenues that it urgently needs.

My view - as you know - on the AVN-EE ESN relationship is that AVN will only be used to provide temporary backhaul to new EE 4G masts (and thus allowing faster roll-out), unti lsuch a time as EE implements a much more fit for purpose means of backhaul bandwidth. That won't take them long (especially given their being owned by the big and ugly BT with its fibre infrastructure), so it's just not going to be a major earner for AVN IMV.

Which is why territories such as Africa are - and have always been - such an appropriate market for AVN. It's just that they were very late in realising the most sensible rabbits to chase. Hopefully not too late...

Tyche, my point is I think highlighted by AVN CHOOSING to point most of the fleet's capacity over Africa! Definitely a wise move - and shows (I believe) where AVN expects the most readily available pickings now to be.

I'm not going to fall out with you again re 4G backhaul. I'm (of course) aware of the deal - but I really don't believe that EE will look to double down on capacity needs. EE and its bigger uglier parent have got their eyes firmly fixed on much bigger things than the ESN - namely the government's new(ish) USO policy. That very specifically excludes HEO geostationary satellite as an allowable broadband delivery technology under its published criteria - so I just can't see EE majoring on delivering an emergency services network that then simply cannot be utilised to fulfil an even more lucrative governmental opportunity.

We'll agree to differ here on this (as usual). But GL to you too.

It'll all be about Africa if AVN is to turn around, Tyche, which I know you agree with already.

On developments in W. Europe - or the UK at least - I note that Big Blu Broadband (Epic: BBB) the renamed Europasat vehicle and one of AVN's larger European customers, has stopped listing AVN SuperFast tariffs on its website in favour of cheaper, faster Eutelsat Konnect variants @ up to 50 Mbps.

Quite what Eutelsat is now doing with Viasat and that "off again, on again" JV, given that the former has also gone ahead with its Konnect program, I am entirely unsure. However, another mark that AVN needs to concentrate on geographies where its offered solutions make sense.

The thing with GCCRa is that, if he really is a genuine investor (a thing which is becoming ever harder to believe - because surely nobody can be this deluded for this long in the face of quite literally all the impartial factual evidence), he has to keep on believing in the mythology that he's created... even if this must mean that he's the only person in step and it's just the whole rest of the world that's off-time.

If the penny drops (and there's a fitting expression in relation to AVN's SP level), GCCRa is going to suddenly be confronted with the fact that he's been idiotically misguided for years. And that's something he just can't allow any possibility of - hence his continuing and ever more desperate zealotry, now with added wild conspiracy theories..

Mind you, he could still be the world's least competent, least convincing and therefore most ineffectual ramper, I suppose...

Objecting to facts now, Hubba? The CTAG pump primers have never been fond of those, so no surprise there.

I suppose we should be thankful you picked the right login name...

Two teeny point-ettes here, both of which anyone with a braincell will have spotted already.

1. How the hell does does one short a delisted share?

2. LoadOfTosh... member since Oct 17th 2018. 9 posts, all on the long suspended CTAG, all full of encouragement.
HairyGrotBox... member since Aug 24th 2018 (just as the first amazing "pre-IPO" investment opportunity was being offered). 19 posts, all on the long suspended CTAG, all full of encouragement.

I offer no opinion on the above presented facts... people may draw their own conclusions.

One or two snake oil salesmen seem to have returned to Cloudtagville... gee, I can't possibly imagine why.