Member Info for HeadInTheSand

Brad, just for info, the company I work for and the others I referred to weren't and aren't end users.

As ever and of course, anyone and everyone can wait for as long as they have the patience to - a statement which also begs the implicit question "What the hell else can they do anyway?". And if some choose to redraw or blur previous lines drawn in the sand, if that's what they want, then that's what they want. I do actually hope that this comes to some decisive conclusion before everyone dies of tedium. At the moment, it's like waiting for bloody AGES the concluding final episode of a log-running series that one's chosen to watch through... you know, the one that's going to explain everything and tie all the loose ends up one way or the other. Shame you can't just get it on Catch-Up TV or DVD. By the way and in slightly similar vein, just rewatched the entirety of Life On Mars and Ashes To Ashes over the last fortnight. Bloody hell, was that great TV or what?

Can I just say that the following post by Graham Wales: "So are you another ex flow products employee who was happy to take investors money while working there yet want to come clean now you�ve been made redundant." ...is both utterly abhorrent, clueless and crashingly naive. It show precisely zero grasp of how an R&D or engineering team works within a manufacturer, or of departmental responsibilities, or of reporting lines. Effing ignorant, effing classless and as a result effing shameful.

People here are pointing out that AVN (obviously) needs more revenues - and fast. Some are blaming the AVN sales teams.. I'm not sure that's entirely fair. Thing is IMO, commerce abhors a vacuum. So if there's a demand for something at a price, supply will fill that if at all possible. Basic common sense... First and foremost, it's always very dangerous to presume that personal experience is a true reflection of the whole damn shooting match. That's very fair comment. However... I and a number of colleagues in the industry I work in have been pitched to more than once by AVN... unsuccessfully. The problem wasn't just the offered cost of data being uncompetitive at that time (although it was, that was potentially negotiable down to levels offered then by AVN direct competitors). Nope it was the other commercial terms that AVN insisted on placing every time in the deal - namely guaranteed and irrevocable revenue commitments that we'd have had to pay, regardless of our actual requirements or usage at the time. Basically AVN would absolutely not budge from such a business model - removing all variability from the proposal and thus placing all commercial risk upon us. Fair enough - nice terms (for AVN) if they can be imposed... but the problem was that both of their direct competitors were far FAR more flexible and offered a fully variable commitment-free arrangement. Hence, no business for AVN from either us or the several other businesses that industry colleagues worked in - their terms were unrealistic. Now okay in the grander scheme of things, the level of business that the company I work for could have done with AVN was pretty small - and even aggregating the opportunities wouldn't have been huge. But I couldn't help thinking that such rigid commercial inflexibility made no sense? AVN had (and has) several dramatically underutilised assets, which cost them several zillions in capex and ongoing millions in opex. It's not like they were in any position to rigidly dictate to potential customers - and surely if you have an underutilised asset that continues to mount up running costs, some revenue is better than none, no? Basicially If you've got an asset with unused capacity, sweat the living bejasus out of it. So maybe it'd be fairer to blame whoever created such an unrealistic and rigid commercial proposal rather than the sales force who were simply ordered to take that to market? And hopefully they're a lot more realistic these days.

So maybe investigate potential legal recourse against the BoD or the Nomad - or both?

Couple of questions from me in relation to K27M's post above. Firstly, does anyone know for 100% certain that there are still open short positions that have still not been paid out against? I'd be rather surprised if there were, after over a year of being delisted, but I for one certainly don't know for sure. Second, I too have lost the plot on where this "midnight on June 30th" inexorable line in the sand originates from? Is it an arbitrarily chosen date, or is it based on some promise or guarantee emanating from Amit or Bligh, which some have decided it's sensible to believe in (again)?

Too right, MTB. It's actually incredibly valuable as well as educational to have someone with the clear detailed tech, networking, comms and VSat smarts of Shake posting on here. To back that up, I'll happily admit that I now have a much better understanding of what jitter actually is, thanks to Shake's original and almost entirely excellent post.

Romaron, I'd absolutely agree that the bond-holders supported the D4E swap because in their view it represented the best - or if you're a tad more cynical, the least worst - possibility of the size of any return for them. I - and I bet many others - am still on tenterhooks regarding the short-term need for an extra $45m (or $85m) and how that's going to come about. As before, AVN was as you say obliged (and I'm sure you're right) to notify the market on April 9th of what is to all intents and purposes a ticking timebomb. We know when it's set to go off, but we don't yet know what the defuse strategy is. As to most likely prospects for significant revenue generation for AVN? Western Europe is in my view no longer a natural volume market for VSat, leaving aside some specific vertical market applications. Although there is almost certainly some ongoing potential in the old Eastern bloc countries, where there never was much comms infrastructure, one then runs into economic and disposable income issues. Elsewhere, every satellite operator and his dog is busily chasing the in-flight connectivity market across the transatlantic flightpath corridor and not a small number of deals have already been signed up. That's going to be a bunfight in my view (and apparently a Ku-based one, counterintuitively). Nope, I still say that Africa is where the vast majority of effort should be focussed (and beams for that matter).

Shake, I am absolutely not offended in the least! I am absolutely well aware that your technical knowledge far FAR surpasses mine. My perhaps slightlly mischievous dig was aimed fair and square at WhatsOccurring (WO)... but hey, he started it... and anyway my Dad's bigger than his Dad... etc etc Okay enough with the playground politics :)

Shake, given that I will invariably bow to your far superior technical knowledge in all things Vsat which massively surpasses my own, I'm pleased just once to have been of some teeny help :). Thanks for confirming that I wasn't going slightly nuts with my "back of a fag packet" GCSE physics calculations. WO... apparently I clearly do understand, which is equally clearly more than can be said for you in this matter. Perhaps you should have paid a little more attention in GSCE physics? Anyhow for the record, I am not trying to run anything down,. Instead I am just trying to get my head around which opportunities are well-suited to VSat and which are not - and also establish that the figures and exclusions published in the recent Ofcom USO consultation are accurate (they are).

Gents... Legal recourse against any or all of the BoD would be tricky, even if they have provably outright lied. I'm pretty sure that they're well-versed enough in sharp practice to have left just enough wiggle room to weasel out of any claim or action. I still say that the best target (though still offering a vanishingly slim chance of any success) to go after would be the Nomad. The Nomad signed off on all issued RNSes (NB not RNS-Rs) as being true and accurate to the best of its ability to establish. It had an indisputable legal obligation to do this. Dragging Cenkos down a legal route might also compel it to reveal details that would remove any of the above-mentioned wiggle room that the BoD were hoping to benefit from. There's no honour amongst thieves... just saying. AIMO..

Shake I was hoping you'd reply. Leaving aside packet prioritisation and just concentrating ion basic physics for a moment... By my reckoning, a geostationary satellite is roughly linearly 40,000 km away from say London. That's accurate to say 10%. The speed of light is 300,000 km per second. Presuming no other lag whatsoever anywhere in the system, a ping for example sent over satellite has to travel 80,000 km to get to its destination - as does the reply. A one way trip of 80,000 km surely then has to take a minimum of 267ms, no? Isn't that the utterly unavoidable minimum latency inherent?

Is there even a word "fifthly"? Separately, technically I simply just don't get how geostationary satellites can be used to provide adequately performing backhaul for MNOs like EE and Vodafone. How do they get round the latency (and to a lesser extent the jitter) issues? I mean, Ofcom's Universal Service Obligation consultation conclusion (published a few weeks back and which is set to become government policy very shortly) specifically excluded geostationary satellite-delivered broadband as a viable technology to play any role in delivering the USO on those two unavoidably inherent criteria alone? It's baffling. Mind you, what with AVN isn't these days....

So that's that. End of. Seen a fair few similar disgraces on AIM before. I'd recommend moving on and putting it down to experience as well, if at all possible. This is usually the point where PIs look to start up shareholder action groups - feel free, but these almost never have any point. I doubt that there's any chance of or point in legally going after any of the FLOW BoD. One of them at least seems to be an old hand at insolvency. If any issued RNSes were provable to be downright lies, then perhaps a case could be made against the Nomad. Nomads have - and I'm trying to say this with a straight face, because this is the pig-trough that is AIM - a clear and explicit legal obligation to ensure the accuracy of RNS-issued info so that the interests of PIs and other investors are protected. However, that'd truly be the faintest of faint hopes.

I agree, Kpatel4. That remains the elephant in the room, the $64 million question. (Or the $45 million question... or the $85 million question, if that "infrequently recurring revenue" doesn't drop in time). There were some posts over the weekend about this, with some reckoning that Solus has already agreed to put its hand even deeper into its pocket, some reckoning that new bonds will need to be issued and some thinking that there'll need to be a fresh rights issue. Thing is, nobody knows yet - and given that the AVN BoD were obliged to alert the market to what is effectively a ticking timebomb in the Apr 9th RNS, it is pretty unsettling not to know whether this has been defused yet and if it hasn't, what the plans are to stop it going off. All we currently know is when the timer is set to reach zero... ...and that's now only 61 days away

Presumably people will bring up subjects that they believe are of interest and current relevance to AVN? If those are positive, so be it. If not so positive, also so be it, surely? Leaving aside those who are perma-zealots and perma-cynics, I'd say that the tone of the BB reflects the sentiment around the company - and where's the harm in that?

Romaron, thanks for your kind words. To my mind however, the point isn't that directors can't buy in a closed period or that directors didn't buy more than their entitlement under the OO (can they even do that?)... ...Nope, it's that the two executive drectors didn't buy their full entitlement - and in David Bestwick's case, he only put his hand up for around 3% of what he could have bought. Make of that what you will.. but I'd say it's a pretty clear sign that Mr Bestwick at least doesn't think that AVN shares are going to exceed 11.223p any time soon.

Oh, if anyone wants to fact-check my post above, just compare and contrast:- The 9th April "Clarification on Potential Director Holdings" RNS - and especially the difference between columns 1 and 3 that'll give you the full entitlement under the OO for each BoD member and Today's "Director/PDMR Shareholding" RNS that gives you the amount under the OO that each Board member actually took up.

WO, thanks... but you're not entirely right. Yes the chairman and the two non-execs took up their full entitlement under the OO (spending seven grand between them). However, the two executive directors seem to have less confidence... Nigel Fox only took up 20k shares / �2.2k out of his c 32k share / �3.6k entitlement - hardly significant, but... David Bestwick only took up c 9k shares / �1.0k out of his c 310k share / �35.0k entitlement.. Hardly a ringing endorsement?

Murkier and murkier. The 2nd RNS gives Palm's opinion that it's Shell that's blocking the OVO sale. Reading between the lines, it would seem that a sale to OVO would be more beneficial to creditors as a whole, but less specifically beneficial to Shell in terms of future trading. This one's going to get a lot nastier before the dust finally settles... except what'll remain true in every event of course is that normal PIs will get sweet FA in any scenario.