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Thats my 2021 prediction (just to be clear).

Sparky, my oats are aimed at providing balance to the board and thats my only motive.
If I see genuine indictators the company is turning around my opinion will state that.
In all of your responses of late you have attacked the person rather than the arguments provided.
This is disappointing and does lead me to believe you are in very deep with this business and now desperate for a share price turn around.

I don't know these other two gentlemen but if theres any truth in their reports I hope your eyes start to open just a little wider.

Revenue down from £56M to £45M (21% reduction) in the previous H1 period. My previous prediction is on track for 2021 revenue to be less than £60M if these declines continue. Look out for the cash balance in the next announcements post Aug 31st.

& finally WAKE THE F**K UP mate.

Not boring. Its what you call doing your own analysis and drawing your own conclusions..

Balance on this board is important.

Do you remember a company called Flow Energy, they really did a job on retail investors by being very careful with the numbers and the way they reported them to present a certain picture. In the end it tanked and investors lost a fortune.

I don't want to see any of you guys lose money and yes it would be great if it 10 bagged in the future but maintain a healthy skepticism at all times.

In the mean time I'll take any insults that come my way :-)

Moneyspider is on the nose.
Margin wasn't mentioned because it was obviously low but you can have a stab at back working it from two figures:

1. They reported a 6 month loss of £2M
2. They reported revenue at £45M
3. Overheads based on FY report = 6.3%
4. 6.3% of £45M = £2.84M
5. £45M- 2.84M - (x direct costs) = -£2M loss
6. X therefore = £44.16M direct costs of energy supply.
7. Gross margin therefore = 1.87%

THATS 1.87% MARGIN ON £45M turnover. SHOCKING. and thats why it wasn't mentioned.

Hello Sparky, hope all is well.
Two positives - 99.5% cash collection (which is unheard of ) is exceptional debt collection rate.
Bookings up also positive.
£11M is an error on my half - it should be 11% of their electricity turnover as RO isn't payable on gas revenues.
The number you refer to on the Ofgem site refers to the previous period Apr -18 to March 19.

Sparky you previously posted YU pay their renewable obligations in advance this is clearly not the case. Read yesterday's RNS!!!!

And please don't argue that they previously made an advance payment against future obligations, if I paid £50k off a £5M debt in advance in means zip!!

Gents, a £2M loss is never a good result.
Note the RNS states that they have sufficient funds to make their annual industry payments (this refers to the Renewable Obligations), this cost will be around 11% of turnover between the months of April 19 to March 20. So lets say Yu turned over £90M, thats an industry payment due by the end of August of around £9M.
The cash in hand is currently £11M, this means the business will only have around a £2M cash balance (plus £6M held as collateral but that can't be touched) at the end of August.
My view hasn't changed on YU, the overheads are too high and the margin is too low for it to make a profit. I look forward to the detail in September.

Food for thought - if Yu collected 100% of its revenue outstanding and paid 100% of its obligations today, how much cash do you think would be left in the bank?

Its probably nothing that Yu are doing, market sentiment is turning bearish across the globe and all markets are set for a big correction.

It could have been a turning point if Covid hadn't't hit.
My expectation is a loss of around £2-3M for FY 2020.
Possible breakeven in 2021
Then move into profit from 2022 on on the assumption of continuing to acquire higher margin customers. Ability to at least maintain the existing level of business and significantly reduce total operating costs which have been circa £11M for the last 2 years.
You cannot under estimate the level of work that needs to be completed against a deteriorating UK SME climate.

Thats fine with me Sparky, genuinely hope your right and the stock rebounds.
I think however that global markets will fall significantly over the next 6-12 months before the economic recovery begins and the Yu share price will fall (through no fault of its own) once this happens and on the positive Yu continues to improve operational efficiencies there could be a very good opportunity to invest here in the future.
All the best

One more point, overheads are 6.3% and bad debt is 2.7% of turnover. That makes 9% total.
Yu therefore need to make a minimum of 9% gross margin across the entire contracted revenue base to make it to break even.

A lot of work to be done by the board and it is possible for them to get to 10 or 11% margin, its also possible for them to reduce bad debt further. A lot of work to be done to achieve this though.

Do you see what I mean here about how unclear Yu's revenue and customer kpi reporting is. They use smoke and mirrors in the language.

Who has ever heard of the term monthly bookings in financial reporting??
They should be able to clearly state as follows for each reporting period:

1. Number of customers.
2. Churn rate
2. Gas and electricity consumption under contract for the period.
3. net customer adds including meters
4. net customer losses including meters
5. Billed revenue

As Yu report in arrears, all of these reports are possible yet they don't provide! Wonder why...

You must therefore believe that Yu have additional revenue in excess of £5.7 per month.... I'm not buying it otherwise it would be in their report.

Morning Sparky,

You have some good counter points here. I await to see the next report on booked revenues.
If YU are currently at £5.7M per month thats a projected annualised revenue of £68.4M for FY2020 and my projection for 2021 are revenues of £52M ish based on a declining (churning)customer base, higher bad debt rates due to business failures.

One KPI YU do not but SHOULD report on is the customer churn rate.
I'm having to estimate this so have used 1.8% per month in my calculations which means between now and the end of 2021 Yu's revenues could decline by annual 21.6%

If you have a line into the company are you able to find out what the monthly churn rate is? This would be helpful as we need to take this into account with new customer bookings to ascertain whether the business is growing or declining.

My view remains the business customers numbers and revenue is probably in decline but is attempting a turn around.

I should also point out it is of course possible to have a smaller base of customers, less revenue and still be more profitable but Yu have a substantial overhead which currently wipes out any profit in 2021.

Revenue is Vanity, Profit is Sanity.

Hi Sparky. I'm neither of those.
I have a view and understanding on this particular industry and market and would consider investing in the business once I see a meaningful turnaround.
Unless you are able to debunk my hypothesis that both Yu's customer base and revenues have declined by a third over the last year my mind will remain skeptical about investing here.

As I previously said I would like to believe that Yu can turn things around but believing and knowing are two different things.

Further if monthly bookings have declined to the £4.4M per month mark I suspect, that puts annualised revenues for 2021 at around £52M and that is making a big assumption that YU can maintain bookings at that level each month.

Yu state that they are expecting to make high single digit margins so lets say they get to 9%.....9% margin on £52M is around £4.5M gross margin. Yu's overheads have been significantly more than this in the previous two years so where my friend are the net profits you expect to see in 2021 coming from???

Finally, all of Yu's customers are SME's, what do you expect the business failure rate to be over the next two years - ie how much of their base will go pop and have you factored this in?

If we can stick to debating the arguments and leave out slurs and any suspicion on motives that would be useful.

How do you know they haven't lost a third of their customer base?
One customer doesn't necessarily mean one meter, one customer could have 60 meters for example.
Agree theres been carnage and no doubt a lot more to come but at the moment I can't say Yu are doing okay for sure. I hope they are and can turn the corner.
You say their was a lot of optimism at the AGM and that that they answered your questions, I'm not being funny but Trump is optimistic that the economy will turn in the third quarter! Don't dig me for quoting Trump ;-)

Hi Sparky, Firstly - every meter is not equal in revenue - for example the loss of Bolton Wanderers football was a very high consumption site compared to the loss of a small high street hairdressers. One of the sites could have annual revenue of £1M where as the small hairdressers might have an annual bill of £1200.00.

Yu class monthly bookings as renewal of (existing customers) and new business acquired in the month, I'm suspicious that they've quoted the average monthly figure for this period of four months. I'll explain why.

Consider this; Jan 20 bookings £6.9M, Feb 20 bookings £6.1M, Mar 20 bookings £5.3M, April 20 bookings £4.4M. If you average these out that equates to an average booking rate per month of £5.7M however the worrying trend is downwards.

Of course its possible that YU are indeed booking £5.7M every month in renewals and new business which if they are then great.

Until I see further data I remain skeptical and tend to favour a declining revenue scenario which if correct means Yu could be falling into a deeper hole.

Are we able to obtain a breakdown of monthly bookings or at least the monthly revenue bookings for May 20? This will then confirm what is happening with the Yu base.

It isn't mate, unfortunately its currently shrinking. Lost a third of its customer base and continues to lose more customers that its adding.
Its trying to grow though and I hope it does.

Hi sparky, Yu may state that they source 96% of energy from renewable sources but it doesn't mean that they have paid for their REGO/RO certificates in full. Think about it - how can a company that has greater costs than revenue be cash generative - it can't!!!

This indicates that Yu has not paid for all of its liabilities relating to the RO year which runs from March 19 to April 20 payable in August 20.
The reason is YU gets to hold taxes levied on customers for upto 18 months before its paid to Ofgem.

RO liability is typically 10-11% of turnover.

YU turnover for proie Mar 19 to April 20 circa £100M hence 10% liability should be around £10M

Good move to furlough hopefully majority of staff = cost savings

however note

* Approx £10M due to Ofgem for renewables, cash balance closer to 7M.

* 35% reduction in consumption is significant as Yu will have hedged the majority of the bases expected consumption and therefore would have bought higher and will be selling excess volume back to market at current low prices. This will further decrease gross margin until SME's return to business as normal.

Yu have just been hit with an additional cost of almost £0.4M based on their share of the costs of suppliers going bust over the last 12 months. Further increasing losses.
https://utilityweek.co.uk/ofgem-confirms-mutualisation-will-triggered/

The majority of cash in the bank does not belong to Yu as of todays date. Yu is currently holding my guess £6M of RO payments and another million of feed in tariff/capacity charge payments. This belongs to Ofgem and other industry bodies. Please stop citing cash in the bank as a reason the share price and market cap should be higher. there is a failure on this board to understand how energy suppliers collect cash from end users and pay this to the industry bodies. We have not seen any financial report to show Yu is moving forwards. I expect further losses, both in customer numbers and profitability. In todays day and age hiring an expensive direct sales force is a terrible idea to acquire new customers. Would you switch supplier off a cold call?