Member Info for lavenonews

The mid period acquisitions, structure of the acquisitions and phasing of costs makes these interim accounts a bit of a nightmare to get to grips with, even for existing investors who know the situation quite well.
However, I remain a happy holder who sees good value that will one day start to come out.

I hope so, but in my view this will languish until it becomes evident that they will have the resources (either cash or bank borrowing ability) to repay the MXC loan note at maturity in October 2024. That will be a debt north of £5m by then, with rolled up interest at 12% a year. £1m of Trading EBITDA is not enough. However, any sign that Project IGNITE is pushing top line growth through to cashflow and profits, then I agree, a significant re-rating would be merited. I believe the story, the management team and their strategy, and look forward to much more colour on profit expectations with a full year of acquisitions bedded in and sales focus, then we might start getting somewhere on the share price.

Agree. It would be helpful to get more detailed guidance on financial aspirations from Allenby and also a presentation at year end results time. At the moment, we are still buying into a story, but the company can move beyond this and into a more serious investment proposition now with a clear end game on getting rid of the MXC debt and making more acquisitions without diluting its minority 'supportive shareholders.'

What I really want to see is profit at a level that would support conventional bank debt to refinance the Mxc loan note in due course. I don't trust or like Mxc, and the company should say 'thank you for getting us through this stage (hopefully) but time to put some distance between us and grow into a serious business.'

Twitter/Linked in - we will be updating soon to our supportive shareholders on progress. Let's hope the business is moving in the right direction in terms of profitability and cashflow. From a supportive shareholders who wants to see this business succeed and a start up grow to something much bigger. That's meant to be the point of capital markets, not all this short term rubbish.

There's a lot of noise around energy costs , rightly so, but Boom Battle Bars is a very young business.
Does anyone actually know if it is in a position where it is facing renewing energy on much higher terms?
I'd have thought it more likely that they would be still on 1-5 year fixed term deals in many sites?
So, is the impact of energy hitting this business right now?
Just wondering...?
And Escape Hunt cannot be a huge energy user right?

Bang on about time horizon.
And you can bet your bottom dollar that private equity thinking 3-5 years from now will be running the slide rule on this.
You cannot just create the footprint that XPF have for their brands, both of which are good propositions and quite well refined products now, and have scope for roll out.
Would be such a shame, but typical, to see this sort of growth business fall off the public markets and into private hands when all the hard work has been done.

Happy to be on the buy side at this valuation.
Boom has executed a land grab of great sites.
Escape has a good footprint and product
Silly valuation.

Here is a positive thought.
Perhaps no one has been Cineworld because they are too busy having fun in Escape Hunt and Boom Battle Bar.
Mindless optimism but you never know!

I am curious how this plays out - I was invested in 2018 and backed the Open Offer, like many other shareholders at 2.5p thinking the ship could be turned around. It has been dead money for 4 years.
There was a line in the interim report in September 2021 about allowing the company ..".to prosper for ALL shareholders" that gave me heart that perhaps the major shareholders/debtholders and the company might reach a solution that is at least partially fair on the smaller shareholders who also helped out in 2018 in the shambles that had taken place.
Like I say, at the end of the day, it was a terrible investment on my part, but I remain with my holding waiting to see what happens and whether there is any honour in the capital structure solution, as undoubtedly the IDE business in its current format offers a good service to some good clients and makes money.
It crossed my mind whether MXC might push for a de-list but offer a tender to people like me at a small premium to 2.5p as a gesture.
Various options but MXC hold the cards as they put the most into the bail out in terms of debt and equity.

As a long-term investor, happy with this piece of business.
Daisy recently took a large chunk of the Sungard Data Centre estate from the administrators on a similar deal (i.e. customers need to contract with them on new terms), so was glad 3 have been picked up by Redcentric, it seemed a good opportunity to get a decent set of clients.
RCN strategy makes sense, management are credible - not sure why it is trading on a pretty low EBITDA multiple for something generating so much cash. I guess organic growth is a bit low but personally it's the cashflow that attracts me as they can get a blend of low steady organic + acquired growth via cash and debt at sensible leverage.
Good returns for shareholders.
Long term hold for me with the dividend in the meantime.

I always enjoy watching Peter Harris's face during Paul Hill's interviews - this was a much less excitable episode, which made for better and more balanced viewing.
Long term holder myself and no intention to change that.
Good to see they are looking for operating efficiencies, but I think the 'group' cost line is too high and far too many bodies at Group level once Tasman disposal is completed. This needs some scrutiny.

Agree, Santander have made a committed 5 year loan of £8m to a company with few hard assets if it goes belly up.
They must be comfortable with the cashflow and trading dynamics.
Start of a change in sentiment here, hopefully.

An updated cash position would have been helpful.
They had £3.5m cash before the last raise, raised £6-7m more than was spent on the acquisition and have now had another £1.5m from R&D credits plus EBITDA positive trading but perhaps some CAPEX on new sites and working capital unwind.
Just would be good to see how much cash they have to execute on the roll out in 2022.
Was it in the Shore Capital note? Anyone got any ideas?

Just to add that a lot of the staff (90% of the original Cloudcoco workforce according to the RNS at the time) were also included in options so they are also fully aligned to generating upside.
The sole criteria is a share price above 2p, shares vest at 1p, so this is a decent upside for everyone to really push.
We get diluted but better to have everyone wanting the same outcome.
Vesting period is Nov 2022 to 2030.
I agree - once there is any sign that IDE Connect is under control and not sinking the ship, then the 3.5-4p (perhaps 5p on sentiment) range looks fair enough to me.

Difficult looking situation in short term but they have plenty of cash to survive.
Not hard to visualise a very different situation in a few months, high levels of vaccination, high natural immunity - in short, conditions for a much more normal life including experiential leisure.
Price is reflecting a lot of short term bad news, any change to that and it is very cheap.
Just a thought.

Roxy Ball Bars also in this space backed by Foresight PE. It's not an open field but on the other hand would be more worried if no-one else wanted to build this type of offering.

That happened quickly.
Interesting the date was 5th Nov when the change of Gresham to Harwood at the Gresham Fund was supposed to go unconditional. So, did Gresham sell when they could still act and control this?
Wonder who took this stake on? We'll no doubt see fairly soon.
Seems to have happened more smoothly from an NBI perspective than I thought might be the case!

Looks like Gresham House Strategic are following an orderly 24 month wind up and disposal of their assets from their announcement today.
As 17.5% holders in NBI - the biggest shareholder - this is going to create an event of some form in the next 2 years and quite possibly a ceiling on the share price until such times. i.e. don't expect much upside short term but the potential for this to change within 24 months.
Gresham will not be giving their assets away so fair value on NBI should emerge.
I don't think NBI is big enough to attract enough institutions to take on the stake across the public markets, but that's just my view. And I think Crestichic will do far better off the public markets, allow Peter Harris to retire and so on!
If there is a different interpretation then I would be keen to hear it on any message board, as this is only my initial view and happy to think differently about this!

As a taxpayer I am still trying to figure out why an operator of escape rooms got an R&D tax credit.
As a shareholder I am thinking happy days, thanks to those mugs that designed the rules.
Playful, let me know if you are around here again. I am the inverse function of all the hot air and wind on here, always up for a bit of banter with my pal from the Gresham exit days. And I got the Pip thing without asking.... Chipmunks away!