Member Info for HeadInTheSand

The language of irritation at what I have to put up with at work, SS.

Slightly odd what's going on with the AVN SP at the moment. Apparently drifting ever downwards and looking like it's going to plumb new lows... except on no significant volume. On that basis, it's going to take quite a bit from the new BoD to reverse sentiment.

DW remains having a lot to answer for as his unfortunate legacy clearly lives on, from the looks of things.

Dougal,

"I do not think it is Cloudtag relisting as such. My gut feeling it is AnOther (powered by Cloudtag) Now that would be an IPO
Just musing"

Agreed it would be... except surely you'd already know this for definite, Dougal? If only because you must know exactly what company you've recently bought "pre IPO" shares in? You must know whether you've recently swapped more of your hard-earned for more shares in CTAG or in an entirely new company?

MTB, strangely not date conversation. I reserve said knowledge strictly for the hours between 9:00 and 17:30 (or thereabouts) Mon to Fri... and actually such indepth experience usually serves to do nothing apart from irritate the living daylights out of me. If it's not a satellite operator being droolingly moronic on one side, it's a mobile network operator being slack-jawedly cretinous on the other, or a hardware vendor making a dramatic and utterly unannounced spec change that farks things up, or Her Majesty's government being eye-swivellingly idiotic.

So after such endless irritations at work, I usually just go home and kick the dog. Which although therapeutic, isn't particularly humane... but better than picking a fight with my better half.

Brad, it might even be worth the wait...

Okaaay... and this has wasted too much time.

How about...

50 x 8 = 400

3 x 3 = 9

400 - 9 = 391

391 x 2 = 782

782 + 75 = 857

Ta-daaaaa. Now if you could just send me Ms. Riley's mobile number, I'll take it from there.

If the prize was a date with Ms. Riley, that'd be worth having...

Dougal, I agree that, solely taking Amit's promotion and assurances at face value, it would be reasonable for PIs to expect an IPO. It is presumably because they've taken this at face value, that certain PIs have been inspired to invest extra funding.

None of which answers the question of whether it's a good idea to take Amit's promotion and assurances at face value in the first place. To get an answer on that one requires waiting and seeing (as ever with CTAG).

Again harking back to Rktech's post a week or so back, it's hard to see how this can be accurately described as an "IPO", given the fact that so many shares are already in PI and other investor hands from AIM listing days. There's not much "initial" about it, to be frank. And presumably there's inevitably going to be a significant level of dilution applied to existing investors' holdings, if/when this "IPO" finally occurs (if ever)?

All will eventually become clear... one day...

Given the reliability of past CTAG promises, assurances and guarantees, I personally would not go anywhere near as far as stating "there is a very clear intent to relist". Just because CTAG has said something really doesn't mean that it's in any way remotely true. "History shows us.." etc etc etc..

The ONLY thing that can currently be said with any confidence is that Amit has promised that the company will relist (in Nov... allegedly, and on Nasdaq First North out of Stockholm... allegedly).

That latest set of promises, assurances and guarantees has apparently led some existing PIs to buy more shares in what is still an ujntradeable, private, Caymans listed company, prior to seeing any prospectus or firm listing information.

It remains to be seen what happens next. I'm equally interested in discovering the answer to an earlier pointed question from Rktech, where he asked:-

If the company does relist, what status/nominal value will already held shares in PI hands and purchased while CTAG was still AIM listed and tradeable have, in relation to any newly issued "pre IPO" shares ?

Which of course will turn out to be a completely irrelevant and academic question if this latest set of CTAG issued promises, assurances and guarantees turn out to hold as little water as all the other CTAG issued ones, but still...

You're actually wrong, AL. I'm pretty sure you'll find that nobody's changed their mind at all.

Those who have always been cynical about AVN remain cynical about AVN. Those who have always believed in jam tomorrow promises no doubt remain believing in jam tomorrow promises..

Such is all too much of the investing on AIM.

Matt I take the point - and have mentioned the same "rock and a hard place" scenario before to explain the D4E swap approval from the bondholders.

Having said that - and taking into account that hindsight is of course an exact science - the phrase "good money after bad" inevitably now springs to mind.

Things are of course even worse for the bondholders. They still hold well over US$400 million of bond debt over and above their 92.5% of shares in the company (on which they've currently lost over US$350 million anyway).

And all that on a company whose total market cap is now only around US$120 million... it's not looking pretty and it does make you wonder where it's all going to end up.

Plumbing new all-time lows.. but with no traded volume worth talking about.

I wonder what's going on? Perhaps the market's apathy, cynicism and mistrust caused by AVN's much chequered history runs even deeper than first expected?

I can't help wondering what the bondholders, who as recently as Q2 this year swapped US$557 million for equity valued at the time at 11.225 pence per share. are making of their current US$325 million loss?

As primarily investment funds, it's not really a stellar performance by them on behalf of their clients to lose 60% of sums invested in AVN over less than 6 months...

Casius & DanSteely, agree with you both. It looks like a gradual slide down to hitting new 52 week lows - but based on nothing dramatic and with no notable volumes traded.

IMV this is liable to be the foreseeable pattern, unless and until something positive, significant and concrete emerges (as opposed to all the usual puff and substance-free nonsense cut n posted by the usual swivel-eyed zealots, which amounts to precisely diddly squat of any meaningfulness).

The market in general has very obviously contracted apathy as regards AVN (which is completely unsurprising given all the "jam tomorrow" undelivered promises over the company's history). This is an unfortunate historic millstone around the neck of the new BoD regime, who will now have to work harder in terms of reversing current sentiment/boredom.

Since several here seem to be suffering from galloping idiocy,for the record, VSAT has no core place to play in developed markets for delivering 4G backhaul, apart from for emergency deployment, short-term temporary provision or redundant failover purposes to offer a level of network resilience. Try asking anyone at even infrastructure middle management level at EE and they'll confirm this. However, feel free to continue pretending this isn't the case.

In less developed geographies, it's a different story - as AVN has seemingly finally realised.

No u turns here, Tyche... it simply requires reading without the rose-tinteds you favour, but there's demonstrably no telling you that.

Although futile, a couple of quotes from that doc for you though (CAPS all mine):-

"For more remote and challenging locations, Satellite Backhaul becomes a MORE VIABLE option"

"Latency of the geostationary satellite round trip (approximately 550 milliseconds) which is an UNAVOIDABLE result of the speed of RF propagation"

Mansoor Hanif, Director of Convergent Networks and Innovation at BT stated: “We are delivering a highly RESILIENTt, truly nationwide 4G network and Avanti will play a key part in providing RESILIENCE and extending this network into rural areas”

If you can't work out what's being said by the above, that's not my problem.

However, on your other point, it is indeed again good news that AVN is concentrating on far more appropriate geographies where their service actually currently makes commercial sense. Beats chasing a shrinking/pro-tem/fallback market geopgraphy, that's for sure.

Yes an excellent and informative link Cassius.

Pretty much confirms my views entirely on the role that VSAT can play in providing 4G and 3G backhaul.

Not wanting to put a dampener on things but...

Dougal66: "Given all that has happened in the past Mr Ben-Haim cannot now promote a pre-IPO without a conclusion." Why not? After all, it'd be in character. He raised £9m via promoting a product and guaranteedd orders for such that did not exist.

Dougal66: "There is a reasonable expectation of newsflow." There's ALWAYS been a reasonable expectation of newsflow... and at least 9 million good reasons for expecting this. However, looking at CTAG's history, when has reasnoableness ever come into things?

Dougal66: " Everybody is much older and wiser about the Function and Purpose of AIM." Yes. It's often to remove cash from unwary PIs to fund start-up company CEO's salaries. I wonder if people are "older and wiser" about the function and purpose of a pre-IPO fundraise, where a company's not actually listed on any exchange, so no rules whatsoever apply?

Dougal66: "We do not have a clue what was going on @ CTAG HQ 2016." True - and nobody's got a clue now either... unless you're solely going to rely on now completely unregulated statements from the exact same guy who has already repeatedly misinformed investors.

Dougal66: "Mr Ben-Haim is no fool." Again true - he's got hold of £9 million+ of PI cash in exchange for nothing. That has to be seen as clever. It now looks like he's got hold of extra cash from some of the same PIs again. I have no clue how he's apparently managed to do that. It must be magic.

Look, I'm all for CTAG rising far enough from its entirely self-caused ashes to provide some sort of return for long-suffering PIs...

...But how about we inject a small note of inarguable reality - and most importantly, equally indisputable historical context - here?

IMO no of course the bondholders weren't foolish in agreeing to the D4E swap, which from memory wiped out about 55% of AVN's then near-on billion dollar debt.

And the reason they weren't foolish? What was the alternative?

There's still around $450m of bonds in place, all held pretty much by the same bondholders, so they've still got first dibs rights over assets if anything ever did go horribly wrong. And AVN was given the chance with the D4E swap to prove it can make something of itself, rather than being forcibly canned. Pretty much a no-brainer decision, I'd say.

If you owe a bank a million pounds, it's you with the problem. If you owe a bank a billion pounds, it's the bank with the problem.

Brad, that's a perfectly fair and well-reasoned post. If only other more swivel-eyed holders were as reasoned - but they're clearly not.

I agree that AVN has a service that should have a viable market. Almost certainly not not the market that the farcical Williams regime kept trumpeting on and on about and futilely pursuing, but a market nonetheless. I also agree that the new(ish) BoD seems to be showing a far better grasp of what opportunities the company should be chasing.

I'm still not entirely sure about how lucrative sub-Saharan opportunities will be - and as you very rightly say, AVN still has a very large debt mountain to contend with - but it's exactly those sorts of opportunities, together with government, military, verticals like redundant failover, remote telemetry, M2M/IoT etc etc, that AVN and other VSAT operators should now be hunting down.

Much smarter than forever barking up the wrong tree...

Brad, whereas I understand that no holder likes to see any negativity posted on shares that he's holding...

...surely balanced points of view discussing plus and minus points are what should be most welcomed?

I think any LTH would agree that AVN's track record from an SP point of view at least has been appalling since end Oct 2015 (so pretty much three years' worth of history there). So anyone critiquing them over that period has in gact been proven entirely right (and in contrast, GCCRa who's been promising jam tomorrow for that entire period has been entirely wrong).

I would like to see AVN do well, both from a personal POV and from a UK POV as well - but I reserve the right to criticize the company when it's doing things that I believe to be dumb or chasing markets that I believe to be inappropriate.

Pretending that everything's been rosy when it clearly hasn't been actually (and obviously) detracts from any poster's credibility IMV.

Let's hope the new(ish) BoD finally get it right, eh?

I'm all for sensible discussion.

As I stated, I actually think that, although neither new news nor having no monetary commitment, the memorandum of understanding signed with NuRAN is a positive thing for AVN - simply because it's an ideal use of its technology in a geography where no other technology is commercially feasible to deploy.

It's always encouraging when a company pursues the low-hanging fruit thats' most suited to what it's got and - again as I've said before - I have more belief in the current BoD than I ever did with the Williams regime.