Member Info for MaccGaz

Welcome to the board. I don't think that there is any chance of them re-negotiating the deal following the drop in price. Share prices can go up or down - for everyone! This, in a way, makes it a better deal... but where we are now is after the point where may expected (and hoped) for a sale and then didn't get one. We've bought $3.5m income and a raised revenue, which is often used as a multiplier on gauging a value on the business... although seemingly not in our case! The next points of interest are how we are going to take advantage of the synergies between the two companies. I do half remember reading that we will continue with our registry provider (although I can't find it now), but that makes little sense when Afilias is now a major stakeholder and provides registry services. We've spent the last year getting renewal revenues over fixed costs and now we'd be doubling up on them. Perhaps the cost of transition is too prohibitive, or long contracts are in place with Nominet. The second factor is about bringing in new business. VIP is our superstar, 900k domains at a very good 75% renewal rate... but that does mean we need to sell over 200k domains to maintain the income and, of course, we really want growth! There's a few more gtld's to be launched and they are becoming more familiar to the public as well as some big name companies starting to use them... so hopefully the sales will see a boost. A dividend will be welcomed, if only to boost the desirability of the share, so that the company can be sold at a decent price!

Yeah I don't think it will be anywhere near the .vip success and I do agree that .shopping is the wrong tense in English. I'm hoping that it makes more sense in Chinese and will earn a decent amount. The string length won't be a problem as it's just 2 Chinese characters.

The share needs some coverage to boost it up. It's a pretty small company sitting comfortable, making a small profit. It's not something that is going to excite AIM investors. The company needs to start reporting at a quarterly level. We've got a few gTLD's to launch, but apart form that... what news can we expect in the next year? A sale was the only profit that we could have made as shareholders in the short term and I think now we're left in a position where we have to sit and wait again for another year or so for something half decent. The company is under-valued by half, compared to other similar businesses, but it's a share that hasn't gathered much interest and without some coverage we're going to struggle to get back over 10-12p for some time, unfortunately. Perhaps a Chinese listing would transform the value to something more appropriate.

I'm not as optimistic as you guys and suspect it might be a slight premium on the 52 week high... so maybe 15-16p. Since it's a guessing game, I'll go in for Wednesday 9th.

I am pleased that the discussions are continuing. We would, of course, have liked all of this to be resolved by now, but the worse case (in my opinion) is that nothing comes of it. I think with the share price languishing at 9.5p, even a rise of 20-30% on maiden profits still doesn't put us into a great position considering how far the company has come and so I have my fingers crossed that this is all about a takeover above the 13p mark. I'd be smiling with 15p or above. It's been a long wait, so I can wait another week or two.

I've always wondered about the issue of going through the (super long) process of applying for a gTLD and then selling it at the end of it. Changing ownership of the gTLD half way through the application may cause the it to reset or move back a bit (several months) further, so I wonder if they need to wait until the Chinese shopping gets to it's launch phase before completing a deal.

Last year it was in the last week of April. If it goes that late it may be bitter-sweet. Good that it will show an operating profit, but bad that any takeover deal remains unresolved. If discussions are still ongoing, they still probably will not be able to reveal too much about it - just sentiment. If they're not that will disappoint too. Ideally, they board will be telling us we made an operating profit and recommending that we accept a negotiated bid price!

The last RNS does say that he hopes it comes to a "successful conclusion", which I would count a sale or merger as a success - based on the deal! My figure for a sale is lower than seemingly everyone else's... I'd still happily take 15p, but the more, the better of course.

I'm not sure we should be expecting Chinese.shopping to get anywhere near .vip. VIP is a superstar gTLD with a strong meaning in China. We don't know how well China will take to the Chinese characters. The best is selling 200k+ and Id be delighted if it reached that. Im still not sure that it's the correct tense .shop in English is much better than .shopping, but our language is very different. Maybe dweill knows? Either way I think we'd get best value from a Chinese buyer. They're a rapidly growing economy and there's a lot of money to be made there and the internet is going to be a massive part of that. I do also think there's something on the move and hopefully the deal will cross the line at a decent price.

It's a bit of a shame really (not that we would have won it, but might have got something on the auction). "home" is synonymous with the internet since the early days and could have been a really big top level domain. Of course, this is the reason that it isn't being allowed.

A sale of the business is still the best way to get some investor value in my opinion and so I think they should continue on as planned.

Yes, this is a good result. Profitability, renewals covering the fixed operating costs and a conclusion to the strategic review in 3 months. Hopefully that will be a takeover! �11m in the bank and making money leaves us in a comfortable position.

I think we will start to see a rise in the share price as we're 2 weeks away from (hopefully!) announcing profitability. Then, hopefully, we'll get another rise after the announcement and we'll see where we're at. More details on how the review is going at that point would help (if it's positive!), but not long to wait now.

A lot of sales die down over the Christmas period as people focus on presents and I'm not sure a domain name would go down too well in your stocking! The boost before will have been a push to grow the full year figures. We're not much worse off than we were before the review announcement in terms of the share price (1.5p or so), but it is frustrating that the review has failed to materialise anything as a sale was always the end-game for me. I was hoping we'd get an offer of 15p or above and I'd have taken it. We'll get an announcement towards the end of January to confirm profitability and I hope it's a profit after all exceptions and tax. This will be a great opportunity for the company to highlight themselves to all sorts of places where investors can read about the company and buy in. With a repeat that the review is on-going, lots of money in the bank and profitability, it will hopefully bring in more investors and raise the price back to something more appropriate.

7 years is a long wait and I'm something similar and clearly, so far, it's not been a great investment for either of us - my average is about 8p. I still think it's a bit strange to have exited at maybe 8 weeks before we get an RNS to say the company is officially profitable for the full year. Sure, it might not go sky high, but there's been support at around 9p for 2 years (meaning we're probably at or around the low point). 2 months further on I'd expect it to be worth quite a bit more. Anything with AIM is a gamble but it seemed a better bet to hold on a bit longer, but maybe not so if it was frustrating you on a daily basis.

Yes, I was just thinking it was a gtld that I didn't think we applied for and had been waiting for .shopping, which is taking forever but close. It will be interesting to see how they embrace Chinese characters to the left of the dot.

Was that definitely a real thing? I know an RNS mentioned it, but I suspected it was an error (They mean't to say shopping?) as I don't think we applied for it.

There's no real way of knowing that things are progressing as the company would be obligated to keep it quiet until either someone makes a bid that the board recommends that we accept; or that they have decided it is "best" to continue without a merger/takeover. Investors did dive in on the expectation of a takeover and some quick and easy profits, but these "AIMers" are the sort that go in and out of shares quickly and it's been too long for many of them to stick around, which has led to the declining price. The volume has still been very low, but it still seems to have a big effect on the share price. What we do know is that the company is on course to make a post-tax profit. That will build up a bit of excitement during December and it will be announced as a trading update in January and hopefully we will see another rise from there as a profitable business. Hopefully, the news will be spread far and wide in investor circles to try to bring more money in.

I'm not sure of your point there - they've basically said that every time. Today's RNS was just confirmation that we will most likely to make a profit and costs are still low. Some of us have been invested for a long time (too long) and some getting quite frustrated with it all. The key point in the history of the share is when they write the numbers to show that a profit has been made - and we've only got 3 months left of the year, with the basic announcement a month or so after that. In the meantime, they're continuing to look for a buyer because the business is now in the BAU mode and a sale was the plan from the start. There's no guarantee that it will happen and over 20p is unlikely in my opinion, but 15-20p is reasonable and a good profit from here. So, unless investors have a great pick to choose elsewhere, it doesn't make a great deal of sense to move on at this point. There was less than £100k sales from what is a £75m market cap for today's drop. I don't see that as significant, just AIM investors.

To the external investor (and us really), we haven't made a profit yet. Last year had the restructuring costs and this is the first period where we will see the benefit. We know that most of the money comes in the second half of the year, but the "billings" may reflect better what we expect to see throughout the year. I also expect to see some comments on this second half weighting and how confident they are of achieving a profit. The high renewal percentage and relatively large income from premium sales should help make that clear. I think that there's a very low chance of a dividend at this point. There are still auctions to take place and it's important to have cash in the bank, even if they don't expect to win the auction (and take the cash instead). For me, the dividends should occur if a takeover is no longer an option and we've had a full year with comfortable profit. Income from lost auctions would be a good source of money to use for one-off dividends, whilst keeping a very healthy bank balance in reserve.