Member Info for HeadInTheSand

Can't see this being sold as a going concern for any worthwhile value at the moment... not with the level of (sure recently reduced but still sky high) debt.. The assets however (in-orbit hardware and spectrum rights) would be of interest to more than one. But what an asset sale would return to PIs, God alone knows. Nope, to deliver a return to PIs, AVN needs to weather the current funding shortfall and prove that it can operate profitably/

Yep. It's all about the market cap ( defined by the number of shares in issue multiplied by the SP). Simple example. Say a company has 100 shares in issue at �10 each. Market cap is therefore �1,000. Say you've bought and own 10 shares. You "own" 10% of that company. But the company sees it needs more money, so it issues 50 more shares for anyone to buy. It can't realistically make these shares available at �10 each (because the total market cap value is rated to be �1,000), so it issues them at whatever discount to the current SP it believes is necessary to get them sold and the money incoming. The overall SP will fall - at least in the short-term - because a) there are more shares in issue - simple supply and demand economics - and b) because the newly issued shares have been sold and bought more cheaply. The nett result of the above? You still own 10 shares, but now you only own 6.67% of the company. And the value of your shareholding will almost certainly fall at least temporarily in tandem.

IKVL, that's kinda the whole thing that any PI is trying to work out to the best of his/her ability. Get it right and you'll make money. Get it wrong and you'll lose. Your estimate is as good as anyone else's.

SS is suggesting that in his opinion, the SP hasn't yet finished falling to its natural and realistic level, so don't go buying in on the way down (aka "don't try catching a falling knife" because that'd be painful)..

Fully agreed re rural/remote and 5G. Already it's the lowest (c. 800MHz) 4G frequency bands that tend to offer the reach into more remote locations (unsurprisingly, being longer wavelengths), so 5G getting out there at its millimeter 20GHz+ wave bands? No chance in any foreseeable future. As to BBB selling phone hardware? Not in a million years. As before, I doubt they'll even dabble in voice contracts. They deal in fixed location broadband - so whyever would they look to move into a massively oversubscribed and ultra-aggressive market that's handled direct by the Mobile Network Operators themselves? AIMO of course.

Sense of humour failure, Dougal?

Okay, it's generally known that I'm a tad OCD when it comes to semantics, grammar and spelling. In my own defence, I've always claimed that it can often be really important to be crystal-clear and correct in what one says - and leave zero wiggle room for misinterpretation or misunderstanding. Well, reading last night's posts, I can tell you all, ladies and gentlemen, that we have the perfect example to support my own thinking. This from everyone's favourite Old Faithful, Dougal66 (Thursday 22:42):- Dougal66 Thu 22:42 "dougb189 Just give me a minute........... Let me get to my zimmer frame to anaiise that. All hail Amit xxx." Dougal my man... unless you seriously intended to communicate the fact that you were about to perform a staggeringly unlikeiy but definitely eye-watering proctological action with your Zimmer frame, I'm next to certain that we word you ACTUALLY wanted was "analyze". Just a two letter difference in spelling makes such a huge difference - as I've said before, the Devil is always in the detail. Mind you, I could be wrong. There are certainly many who post on this board that would agree that ABH has vigorously analised them. Oh PS a word of advice to all... don't go typing "analise" into your Google search engines. You may find the delivered results a bit too mind-expanding. Well, definitely something expanding anyways.

Typo. MNO, not MNP. D'oh!

Sairfecht, you're absolutely right. I'd forgotten VoLTE and was focussing on the more normal MNP voice frequencies. However, I'd rephrase your final sentence as follows:- "For broadband, if you can't get an FTTP service, or an FTTC-based one, or a FWA service at your location from a WISP, or a 4G-based service (let alone 5G), then VSAT satellite broadband is always there as the option of last resort. But it'll be the slowest, have the most latency, the least stability and it'll cost by far the most per GB consumed,"

Standard speeding tickets.... auto-issued by AIm when there's too high a percentage of trades in too short a time.

Precisely zero inside knowledge here. Just that it seemed to be a guaranteed banker that AVN was gonna have to raise a fair few million bucks via a placing. I pulled the figure of 4.5p out of the air, just because a) at the time it looked like a reasonable discount against the then SP and b) and because it made the maths easier (4.5 pence = 6 cents). But as usual WTFDIK. It's all pure supposition on my part.

Naaah, the spiv was Walker.... 2nd youngest actor (after Pike), but the first to die in r/l, sadly. The sweet old doddery bloke was Godfrey. Then the other old ones were Corporal Jones (don't panic) and the miserable Scottish one, Fraser (we're doomed...doomed). Doug, I'd actually bet I'm pretty damn close to your age.

Bet they have... like Toblerone and Wagon Wheels. Probably the same bustards that want to rename Salad Cream as Sandwich Cream. Shooting would be too good for them, IMO.

Correction.... my post below should read "...of a US$30 million placement...", but the other numbers (eg half a billion extra shares) are correct. AIMO

buko, that's a good spot. Looks like by maxing out on the two draw-down facilities, that's US$44.5 million. Forget the Open Offer, because that only raised about US$0.6 million. But then there's the confimation that AVN does have the existing authority (which if it's got any sense, it'll use first, rather than increasing indebtedness) to raise an extra US$30 million via an equity placing. You can ignore any cash in the bank, because that (naturally enough) will have already been factored in by the BoD. However, add to that potentially securable US$75 million detailed above the US$20m they've just announced they've been awarded (providing the Indonesians pay) and that's US$95 million, which would definitely see them over their short-term cash requirement line. cassius, I reckon that's almost a cast-iron guarantee of a �30 million placement/dilution at I'm guessing 4.5p (= US$0.06) per share... but that'd then only be an extra half a billion shares, so only a 20% ish dilution. Still not nice, but better than the 33% we were fearing. I'm now expecting a couple of RNSes confirming which of the above-stated funding vehicles have been utilised within the very near future. AIMO.

Hemingway, although you've only got my word for it, the churn on mass market (consumer and SME) satellite broadband in the UK and Western Europe as a whole is literally terrifying - and rapidly getting worse. Now the old Eastern bloc - where there's been next to no historic investment in comms infrastructure - and other geographies (such as Australia) where expanse of territory and population density are completely different are other matters altogether for sat broadband.

Oh God... I'm getting my tin hat on.

Yes, Rodney

Beebop, BigBlu's recent moves into 4G may well mean that they're going to do just fine - I think it was exactly the right thing to do (about 2 years overdue, but hey, better late than never). The issue they will face will be IMO - can they maintain the same levels of overall customers (in W. Europe) by transitioning existing ones and acquiring new ones onto newer more efficient technologies such as 4G? Will this offset the huge and ever-increasing customer churn rate that's befallen satellite-delivered broadband over the same 2 year period? And if they can achieve the above, can they maintain the same pound note gross margin levels per customer? Available percentage margins are substantially lower on 4G-delivered broadband, combined with the fact that average customer revenues are equally far FAR lower (100GB over satellite = c �100 per month, 100GB over 4G = c �50 per month). . And then there's the 2 recent European sat customer acquisitions.... 21,000 customers for 11 million Euros, or 525 Euros per customer, or 460 pounds per customer. Given churn rates, that's a surprisingly long payback period on acquisition outlay. Or to look at it another way, BBB bought a combined 1.6 million Euros of EBITDA for 11 million Euros in developed W. European geographies... that's nigh on a 7x P/E ratio and that seems surprisingly high, even with any delivered efficiencies of scale. We'll see. And no, BBB aren't going to offer mobile phone hardware - they'd be mad to. I doubt they'll even offer mobile voice contracts - to do so would be completely alien to their core business and would simply be a "me too" venture into a market dominated by direct sales from the network owners themselves, from whom BBB are (indirectly) sourcing their monthly 4G broadband packages. Anyhow, as I said, overall a good and essential move, but one that's going to present other challenges.

Good to see that the boys in Bicester have woken up, smelled the coffee and - although a bit late in the day - are now doing their level best to transition their core business (at least in Western Europe) away from satellite. As anything other than a specialist vertical market comms technology, in W. Europe, satellite broadband has been very rapidly declining for at least two years now, so BBB really needed to do something, because it will have been suffering simply MASSIVE customer churn rates. So they've sensibly jumped on the 4G bandwagon (at long last). Okay, there'll be a big drop in average percentage GM as their 4G customer base increases and their satellite one drops, but still, better a growing again number of smaller slices than a declining number of bigger ones. BTW I have literally no idea why they've planned two more W. European satellite ISP acquisitions - unless to short-term prop up overall customer base numbers... very odd. As for selling phones? No chance. First, 4G has literally nothing to do with voice (completely different frequencies). Secondly, BBB's sole interest is broadband (there's a clue in their chosen new name). Third, they're just using the same MNO-owned 4G networks that the other UK-based 4G ISPs are also leveraging. I doubt they'll even look to offer voice contracts. They're way too small to mount the triple or quad play (broadband + landline + TV + mobile voice) now required. They ain't gonna look to go for to toe with the likes of BT/EE, Sky or Virgin. So, very late in the day, but absolutely not a stupid move. In fact, one they had to make. AIMO.