Member Info for HeadInTheSand

Blimey... I take my eyes off the CTAG BB (unsurprisingly, because nothing ever happens, nor ever will) and it all kicks off. Whoda thunk? I'm not (quite) precious enough to choose to sit permanently in an ivory tower of my own making - and of course my curiosity is at least 25% as piquable as the next man's - so headinthesand99@gmail.com is a suitably throwaway account, if needs really be? I'll probably forget to check it though...

Romaron.... with 2 billion new shares about to be issued next quarter, you think that an SP of £1 is honestly realistic? A MCap of £2 billion? I think you're out by a factor of at least ten. Separately, there's no doubt in my mind that the D4E swap will go through - what choice do the bondholders have? None - they either agree or AVN goes pop (or the accounts don't get signed off by the auditors for reasons of viable going concern) This from the AVN RNS:- "If the Restructuring is not successful, then based on the projected cash flows of the Group or without generating additional cash flow from operations in the near to medium term, the Company could at some point in the future become unlikely to pay its debt obligations under the 2021 Notes and 2023 Notes as and when they fall due for payment. Should this occur, the existing equity may have little or no value."

Thanks Romaron. Excellent summary and your haircut comment fits in exactly with my read of the situation (as per my Xmas Panto post below). This is bad for the bondholders - well, actually it's not. It's more - as you rightly put it - a realisation and an acceptance of the reality of things. I'm still slightly baffled by this 4G/5G backhaul thing. Sure, satellite technology to the mast avoids the costly need to lay cable... but I'm mildly surprised that the inevitable latency inherent within any satellite-based service (typically 15 to 30 times that of terrestrial) would be acceptable to MNOs and their customers? Still, this restructuring gives AVN a much greater prospect for longevity and being able to trade its way out of its current situation. I'm fascinated to see what the market believes AVN's MCap should be, presuming this all goes through...

...well, at least for the company. I have long been surprised that any auditor has been prepared to sign off AVN's yearly accounts as a viable going concern, what with its continually cash-strapped and debt-laden balance sheet. As long-suffering AVN holders are by now used to, this has usually involved a desperate December deal last minute deal of some sort. Now that Williams has been forcibly exited stage left, this year's D4E deal (rather than incurring even more bond debt,if such was even available in the first place) is to me smarter than most. To me, this deal clearly proves the old adage that I and others have referrred to before: "If you owe the bank a bit of money, you've got a problem. If you owe the bank a shedload of money, the bank's got a problem". On that basis, I imagine the negotiations actually weren't that difficult: "Dear bondholders. Unfortunately and is ever more blindingly clear, you're going to get reamed, whatever happens. Your choice is whether to be reamed by a courgette or a pineapple... which is it to be?" Of course, this doesn't remove AVN's entire debt mountain - but it does make a sizeable hole in it. It also potentially allows the company now to operate more normally, without such a large and doom-laden sword of Damocles hanging by a thread overhead. I can also only presume that, having made (or at least looking to make, because the deal isn't signed off upon yet) such a dramatic reduction in the levels of interest needing to be repaid, AVN doesn't think it's going to need to make short-term calls for cash? It'll be interesting to see what MCap the market now views as being credible for AVN... So, this D4E swap is hardly a surprise and has long been predicted, but if it does go though. would also not a bad thing for the company's sustainable prospects. AIMO.

Dougal... "There is something of commercial value .........at some point". That my friend is the 13 million pound question. There is no doubt that such funds were a) raised and b) almost entirely spent - but just because a) and b) definitely did happen unfortunately does not automatically and inevitably lead to c) "there must be something to show for this". I strongly hope there is... but sadly equally strongly suspect there isn't. Anyhow, you have a good Christmas. ATB.

Dajjas, just the latest in a long line of IDs... I recognise the tone and the style.

Re "...the setup and installation can be sunk in £400 lobby to broadband UK with that model and get some of that capital before the government closes the door." BDUK has very recently announced that the Better Broadband Subsidy Scheme (providing up to £400 to cover upfront capex costs of getting a faster broadband service (but as it happens only £350 in the case of satellite broadband) has been extended to the end of 2018. So that's good. What's not quite so good in terms of the UK at least is that satellite broadband has over the last 12 months been getting more and more marginalised by services like FWA and especially 4G. According to my info, early in the Better Broadband scheme, around 85%+ of subsidised installs were satellite based, but now by Oct 17 this has sunk to less than 25% and is still falling. Of course if AVN is set to provide serious amounts of fit-for-purpose backhaul to MNOs like EE, then that's not necessarily damaging. However, I've never really understood technically how that's meant to work - unless the MNOs and their customers are suddenly going to accept a tenfold increase in latency? Anyhow... Specifically with regard to latency, I am also told that the much-discussed and still not finalised USO (that's the Universal Service Obligation to deliver a minimum of 10 Mbps, rather than the USC's 2 Mbps) may well have a maximum latency criterion enshrined within it - BT is certainly (and unsurprisingly) lobbying hard for that. If so, that will exclude all satellite technology - apart maybe from LEO technology, but that's hardly either ready or commercially viable. On that basis - and given what the EutelSat/ViaSat JV has coming down the line for Europe in a couple of years, I agree with several posters that Africa would seem a much more feasible market.

As before, reaching the 100k customer level is nice and adds to BoD credibility... but nothing more. It's a largely cosmetic achievement which will help with sentiment and not much else. From a cold hard fundamentals point of view, there's no significant difference at all between say 98.5k and 101k customers. The two far more meaningful take-outs from recent RNSes are:- SSW now effectively owns all mass market vsat connectivity in the UK. Apart from Bentley Walker (whose attention largely lies elsewhere in the Middle East and others), there are only one or two very small sat-based UK ISPs left. I wonder if they're being spoken with too? Far more important is that announced agreement with the Eutelsat/Viasat JV. This seems to give SSW effective customer-acquiring exclusivity in (currently) 4 European markets in which SSW is already busily operational. If successful, I would expect other Euro geographies to be added. That is of course already all good - but as I've said before, the game-changing holy grail in European VSAT connectivity is due to come on stream in 2020. I cannot recommend strongly enough that people research the claimed performance and deliverable costs of that new bird. If as it seems SSW has already won itself the role of the primary customer acquisition arm for the JV, that's exciting and significant news indeed. AIMO

No surprise that Andrew W and his boys had the 100k customers in the bag already - that's nice but actually no more than cosmetic. The bigger news is the commercial agreement with the ViaSat/EutelSat JV. When that new gigabit bird goes up and comes online in 2020, that represents a proper stepchange for broadband delivered over satellite in terms both of available speeds and costs per GB. It makes sense for SSW to get into bed with the JV right now. The following link may be of interest to those wanting to know more about the 2020 service... https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0020/76403/viasat_supporting_slide_pack.pdf

Given that AVN is planning to launch its new satellite fairly shortly, I suspect that the very last thing the BoD hopes for is anything even remotely resembling a fireworks display...

Brants, just to clarify... When you say "Aberdeen trial", you do mean the conclusion of the small sample test done at the University of Aberdeen, rather than the fractious outcome of some courtroom showdown between the FCA and a legendarily prolific Scottish ramper of CTAG and other shares, right? (Heh... couldn't resist)

Polly, the reason this particular BB is not an absolutely classic ur-example of the behaviours to which you refer is simply because you've turned up 12 months too late to find not much more than a dried up husk of a share in an arid wasteland of inaction and stasis. Man, if you'd been here in 2H 2016... then you'd have found a buzzing hive of exemplars... enough to fuel a dozen theses or more. Now I know for a fact that similar events are occurring across AIM all the time - but none quite to the same extent and degree as what happened with CTAG... aah, heady days indeed. IMV, there's very little mass orchestration per se. What one does repeatedly come across is one or maybe two individuals working hard in tandem to influence mug punters in one direction or another solely for their own personal and relatively short-term gain. If one can engender, harness and thus direct logic-free sentiment for one's own ends - even if only temporarily - then a "rinse and repeat" strategy can produce a level of worthwhile reward pickpocketed from the unwary/unquestioning. Take a look at the BB on LVRT and then its morph into NFX from say Oct 10th to Oct 25th for a beautifully blatant example of the pump n dump side of such strategy. But hey, that's AIM for you.

Dougb, me old mucker... First off, you would know that I am incapable of resisting a well-turned phrase. Blame the linguistics... in fact, if ABH had come up with a device that when worn, instantly instilled an innate knowledge of the correct use of the apostrophe in English into the wearer, I'd have instantly invested my entire life savings (cue sudden and surprising CTAG "investor update"...) Secondly as to comparative cynicism, just as my Dad is definitely bigger than your Dad and my personal procreative equipment is doubtless far more generously proportioned than your own, my cynicism indubitably far outreaches yours :P Having said that, I did state that I had decided to take Polly's post at face value, for all the fact that he's just popped up suddenly out of nowhere. Moreover, my list of bulletin board archetypes was not complete as you've pointed out. Things are very rarely black and white and I didn't bother with listing the other side of the coin - so to keep you happy (which is as you'll know, something that I invariably and positively delight in doing), here goes:- The wannabe superhero complex, schadenfreude self-validation, idle cruelty/smart-assedness - and yes, but very rarely in my book destabilisation for personal reward. Here's a generic question though... conceptually, which is worse for mug punters' wealth? The extremely common pump n dump ramptastic brigade? Or the far more seldom seen and thus mainly (but not necessarily totallly) mythical Evil Global Shorting Conspiracy (TM)? My money's firmly on the former. Oh and Polly? Can I recommend both "thread view" and the use of the "reply" link to you when reading and making bulletin board posts? Otherwise the sudden spurt in apparent new topics and consequent BB length will get Dougal all overexcited and expecting Amit to produce an impossibly large and fat rabbit from his fast-shrinking (if not entirely vanished) hat.

Now I'm no psychologist by training (instead I'm a cynic by experience). Having said that and also making the somewhat surprising decision tontake Polly's posts at face value, I rather like his/her sociopsychological analysis. Hardly groundbreaking, admittedly, but neatly summed up and well written (which is always worth an extra gold star in my book). Polly, confirmation bias is indeed a very appropriate mot juste re bulletin board mentality. If you're that interested, I'd suggest you could add suspension of disbelief, subjective perception, herd mentality, abrogation of responsibility, false comfort in gurus with feet of clay and any one of a number of pseudo-Jungian archetypes such as the oft-conjured bugbear of the Evil Global Shorting Conspiracy (TM). It'd make mildly interesting source material for a post-grad thesis on psychosocial group dynamics and their effects on the individual.

PS the 2 Mbps Better Broadband subsidy scheme has indeed today been confirmed as extending for another 12 months... https://www.gov.uk/government/news/better-broadband-scheme-extended-for-another-year .

Oops, typo. "... there's no reason why SSW.... shouldn't continue to...."

@ MPire there actually is government funding for fibre (not cable)... well, trial funding in 5 areas. "Full fibre" is a current ministerial buzzphrase (however and needless to say, completely unachievable in any remotely realistic timeframe and at any remotely realistic cost). More realistically speaking, there has been no statement on the ending of the existing BDUK Better Broadband subsidy scheme (that's the one with the 2Mbps threshold, also known as the Universal Service Commitment or USC), so there's no reason why SSW, with the 2 out of 3 non-terrestrial broadband delivery technologies that it has within its UK portfolio continuing to benefit from this throughout 2018. Moreover, it seems as if (though it is by no means confirmed as yet) BT will not be awarded a monopolistic stranglehold to fulfil the 10 Mbps threshold Universal Service Obligation or USO. That would then give SSW a much broader arena in which to operate, should fulfilling the USO become a multi-supplier engagement - as I strongly suspect it will be. If I were defining government policy, I'd be extremely nervous of several legal challenges from the likes of Sky, Talk Talk, Virgin and Vodafone, were responsibility to deliver the USO to be passed solely onto BT...

I reckon there's 4 weeks till a turning point - and that'll be an announcement pre end 2017 that SSW has managed to achieve its self-imposed 100k active customers target. The recent flurry of smaller acquisitions IMO shows that getting to this number is clearly on the BoD's agenda. I have no idea what such an announcement would do to the SP - it should do next to nothing of course, because the real world difference between say 99,000 customers and 100,000 customers is truly negligible in terms of fundamentals. Having said that, from a less clinically rational sentiment point of view (and we'll all know how important PI sentiment is on AIM), it might cause the start of an upward movement. If nothing else, given the usual empty hot air and oft-broken promises spouted by many an AIM BoD (and especially in the world of satellite-delivered broadband... AVN, anyone?) it'd make a refreshing and confidence-inspiring change. AIMO etc etc.

Here comes the new boss... same as the old boss... agreed, MTB I doubt that the voting electorate in Zimbabwe won't get fooled again.

So... the latest new "hinted at" business model/market for CTAG is as a "black box" manufacturer - except a wristband rather than a box, and fitted to people, rather than the cars of boy racers and other teenagers. Who knows? Maybe health insurers would buy into such a concept and reduce the premiums of those who behave themselves healthwise... just as their automotive counterparts do with drivers who are remotely monitorable as behaving themselves on the roads. It's not an unknown paradigm. Whether a) said health insurers would think this was viable to their commercial benefit and then b) even if so, select anything related to CTAG to enable such is a different matter altogether. Gotta hand it to Amit and his smoke and mirrors though - like an endlessly colour-changing chameleon, every time his script is shown to be full of holes, he slickly changes it to another that at least temporarily looks vaguely plausible and as such might briefly re-ignite the enthusiasm of the dwindling faithful. I did chuckle at the part in the latest release where the company's "attendance" at CES and Medica 18 was confidently and unequivocally stated. That's classic ABHspeak - I confidently and unequivocally attended an FA Cup Final at Wembley once. Perhaps surprisingly, I didn't feature on the pitch in the squad of either team - but hey that's just detail. Guess what? It's STILL wait and see (but don't hold your breath) time - whoda thunk that?