Member Info for MaccGaz

8.25p intraday peak!

Looks like twitter pump and dumps on various shares. Each one the best thing in the world, ever(!)

No worries, it was just a very minor thing and I only mentioned it as helped me realise that my interest in the share had almost completely gone. I've wanted a good exit point for some time, but eventually had hoped we'd get back to around 8p at least for a break even point!

Thanks for the kind words and I do hope that it does turn the corner for everyone as we have all suffered the same pain! There's certainly potential here, it's just taken too long for me, with too many steps back. It needs a clean run for a bit, build up a bit of a price and then get that sale. Good luck!

To answer Bakky's question... I sold the last of my shares on Friday morning. I didn't make it too subtle that I was looking for the tender offer and was pleased that they confirmed it was coming but then, of course, this mess came along and ended any hopes of that!

I saw the threads on Thursday, with BolivianBanks converting 1 thread into 75 by being the only one not using thread view (Sorry, long time annoyance!), saw the gist of it and thought... that's enough now.

The whole thing has been a big disappointment. I saw this is as low cost company, with relatively easy recurring revenue and the main gamble was how well the internet took to the idea of the new gTLDs. I didn't think the gamble would be the people in control!

It seems to have been 10 years of waiting for the next thing, then the next, all the time with a positive future combined with a "but". I'm still annoyed about how FK's development team was paid a premium rate to create really poor, bug ridden software. I think it was $6m in one year... crazy. I consider that to be a bigger fraud than this China stuff.

Ultimately, I feel that there's never been much interest in the share and it's looking like the future revenue/earnings is flat and I don't see how that is going to attract many investors. For years, the only successful way out for us has been selling the company. The big reason that the share price dropped after we bought ICM is because we bought instead of selling.

AdultBlock is the only X-Factor left that could bring some high revenues, but I think the situation is very different from when .xxx was initially released and companies, colleges, universities, etc panicked and I imagine a huge portion of the revenue was defensive registrations. I don't think that panic is there now and I'm sure this was a big part of ICM's decision to sell.

On the China issues, I guess SJL will need to prove that TH knew for sure that the Chinese would not pay. I imagine that is going to be hard to do. As for not being allowed to get the information, SJL is no longer part of the company in any way and writes often on a public forum (Usually to our benefit), but I'm not sure any decent manager (even one that is a friend) that would open the books to him. However, with the legal approach he may well get the information that he is looking for.

I've accepted my losses here and made the decision to move the money elsewhere, but I wish everyone luck and I hope it does do well in the end. It should still be profitable and I'm sure the costs can be much, much lower and, eventually, that sale will come!

Nice to see Ryken appear, who always made quality posts... although really, I guess it would be nicest for us all if we'd got out years ago!

I'm not sure whether Fred or Freddie would have been more damaging to my dreams for MMX!

It is a good RNS. Confirmation that nothing else has been found at that we are, indeed, comfortably profitable.

Shares are supposed to be all about supply and demand and £2.3m is a lot of money to put in. However, FinnCap haven't done a good job in the past with buybacks, but perhaps that was the direction by TH? We'll see... but it's a good news day.

I do agree that VIP carried the business for a while, especially the premiums, but clearly there were a huge number of domains (mostly low cost, maybe some premiums) that we never received payment for. We might not ever know how much was actually received from this.

As you say, it's in the past now. MMX 3.0 as SJL coins it!

I presume, that your karma title is aimed at TH & MS?

Well, they certainly deserved to go - not only for this incident. With the technical stuff outsourced, and sales coming from registrars, hopefully the costs can be reduced further and we can see clean profit from here on out.

No more billings, just book the revenue now that we're stable and mostly renewals for income.

And most importantly, the goal should be to set the company up to be sold to someone bigger looking to consolidate. The company is clearly cash generative and worth much more than this.

Hehe

Everything is down at the moment.

I suspect that the other party involved with the contract wasn't happy to see that there was no return of their money and so the company tried to announce something first, rather than have it leak out and potentially be even more damaging.

I am waiting to see what the tender offer comes in at. It will not be pretty, but I would hope that it is a premium on the average of the last 6 months at least. If their recent mistake and the subsequent drop is taken into account, I won't be happy! I'd be grabbing my pitchfork if they come in at 5-6p.

A big part of the financial issues in the past was the Chinese brokered deals for big money... and then they didn't pay up. The company has been clear that they are no longer doing deals like this anymore.

I think the company is in a good position to continue making profits. It seems to me that this issue is about an interpretation of the terms of the deal. Although the RNS was as clear as mud as usual.

This statement... "The Board emphasizes that the investigation relates to revenue recognition and the Board does not expect it to have any impact on cash" ... ok no worries ... " save for a maximum exposure of approximately $1.0m." What??

"... if the amounts received under the contract were to be refundable and no further revenue was generated."

I'm not clear on what the revenue generation has to do with it. It's like they want to tell us something, but they can't tell us anything about it. Great.

I'm guessing it can only be the London contract or something to do with Adult Block for the values to be at around $1m.

It will disappear one way or another and the profits will continue, but the share price has struggled for a long time, despite the performance. I think we'd be lucky to get 10p / share for the company and I'm not sure why there hasn't been a bid already as we've barely been over 8p in 2.5 years. The synergies will be there for certain companies and I doubt that too many of the staff would need to be kept on, leading to very healthy profits for years to come.

I just hope that the tender offer reflects on the period before they revealed their accounting mistake and not on the price after it.

I'm pleased that they took the opportunity to return money to shareholders. We know it's a profitable, debt free business now, but I was really hoping that we would get something on top of a tick box exercise.

Hopefully the tender offer will be a good one.

The reduction in costs is also welcomed as they still do seem too high. I think it's hard to grow considerably from here and so that should be a way to increase profits further.

So, perhaps we're now in a position where continued profits will be returned to shareholders, until someone finally comes in and buys us out!

For me, we need to hear something positive this month about how the company is going to benefit investors. It's quite clear that the market has never been interested in the company - even with this profitability.

We need money to be returned as dividends (Maybe that will spark life into the price?), or talk of someone buying the company out. The buyout is the only real end-game that benefits everyone - apart from some of the staff working there.

The company could sit in the same position for the next 5 years, making a bit of money and getting enough new business to cover the cancellations (renewal rate of 75% means 25% have to be replaced).

Holding this share has been about waiting for a takeover for several years now and the money has all been dead money for that time. Something needs to change!

Certainly nice to see this 20% rise, there must be something going on. Perhaps a decision has been made in preparation for the interim results. We know there will be profits and there is pressure to return money to investors, so perhaps the dividend, tender offer or maybe a buyout is on the cards. Someone knows something, that's for sure!

Hopefully we'll see more next week and more!

I've always wondered how you can go out and actively try to sell a domain to someone and I can imagine that it wastes a lot of time to do this. The only thing I can think is that they sell a quantity to someone, who re-sells at a profit. The problem that they've had there is that some of those big sales just weren't paid for - and quite a lot by the sound of it... considering the "savings" from the .London deal would be wiped out with these written off sales. (At least they're gone after the next results).

The way I've always seen it is that people who want to buy a domain will go to a registrar and so that's the place to advertise and offer deals. This is the automated channels and they basically do the work for you, you just need to make sure some people choose your domains.

So I agree with an earlier post about the sales team. I really don't think we need one - and certainly not a big one. There are certain areas like .law where these need to be targeted directly, but I can imagine it's hard to find someone who wants a domain. When they need one, they'll go and find one.

This was all part of my original feeling that this business would be very low cost and, once the fees are covered it should be mostly profit with the sales generated by the registrars. However, whilst there are profits, the costs are still way too high and the 30% rise in domains didn't result in a large rise in income... although this could be the billings factor again where we just can't see how much has been earned in the period.

Ultimately, I just hope someone in the industry sees the synergy & excess fat here and makes a decent bid for them. I think the money being made here makes the company worth at least where we are now. £56m valuation with maybe £5-6m "cash generated". That sounds pretty good, but it's been almost 3 years since we were above 10p it's going to be a struggle getting anything above that.

Let's see if the dividends come through next month. I think it's important, otherwise we've got 6 months of nothing to wait through again!

I'm also less keen on the billings approach now. It helped before because of the huge spikes in brokered sales that could really have scared investors during the dips, but now it's much more stable and they're avoiding those sales... maybe it's time to just state how much revenue was brought in. Booking income now to next year doesn't help the current figures and keeps the progress of the business in muddy waters. It's like we have to just trust based on the cash generation after the one-offs that seem to appear every time.

I also wonder if the organic growth approach will affect the size of the team. Costs do still feel like they're too high.

https://*********************/media/minds-machines-toby-hall-says-first-half-has-demonstrated-robustness-of-its-business-model

Lots of interest there with 12 view so far! See if you can spot the point where the interviewer forgets who this little company was for a moment, but she asked decent questions to be fair.

He's just finalising the September dividend payout and then he'll turn his attentions to selling the company at a reasonable share price.

Well... we can hope anyway!

With only 1,000 domains between them according to nTLD stats. Those numbers are very surprising and they must be premium renewals - something we stopped doing a while ago.

I'd steer clear.

It's possible that a chunk of that are the Chinese domains which were never paid for in the first place. Not that we'll get clarity of that information. We'll have to wait until September to get our "quarterly" update.