Member Info for peakyblinders

To be honest, even if Woodford had lost £20-£30m here it would be a drop in the ocean compared with his other losses so I for one wouldn’t expect this to even feature on the radar

Interesting to see that they’ve re-branded Corporate Division as Energy Intelligence Centre. EIC was the companybthat became Corporate Division when it was acquired 5 years ago (though it was Energy Information Centre back then).

Article in the Business section of The Sunday Times. I suspect he has bigger investments to worry about than Utilitywise

Not sure what your point is. I have already stated that I held a few shares. I bought 200,000 at IPO and sold most at £2.00’ish. I retain a small number but I have written them off. I have shared my thoughts regarding the current strategy regarding trying to cross-sell other services. I have expressed my views regarding the potential value of the Client-base. The points regarding the special terms they had with certain Suppliers are well documented. The information around their revised accounting treatment is in the public domain so you haven’t told us anything new. I would love to know what your point is? Are you cheesed off because you’ve liost money? Are you desperately trying to ramp (good luck with that!).

It’s well known in the industry that they had ‘special terms’ in place with at least 1 Supplier whereby they could place new (or renewal) contracts with that Supplier and receive 80% of the commission value shortly after contract signature. So without proper validation in place their sales staff were incentivised to nominate unrealistically high usage figures to generate huge commissions for UTW (and therefore themselves). By the time this was unearthed many had pocketed their money and jumped ship. Of course the Suppliers in question have to take responsibility for allowing this to happen.

Just to play devil's advocate, he can't have had a clue what he was walking into when he took the role. On paper (and purely on the basis of past results) he can't have known what horrors would emerge. Remember, their accounts were independently audited twice per year. And what about the non-Exec' Directors? Where were they in all of this? I bet Jeremy Middleton is wishing he'd asked more questions? He's about £7m out of pocket from what I can tell. Back to BF, I don't know what he could (can) possibly do to reverse this slide. Cost-cutting is important. Trying to cross-sell other (lower margin) services is all very well if the customer-base is growing but there are no signs that this is happening. Trying to sell these services to existing customers will be slow and hard.

Fair enough. I think the critical points now are around the FY18 numbers. They are already late in publishing their final results. This doesn't bode well. It's clear that the customer volume targets they shared with Investors are totally unachievable. They have cut-back on their Outbound Team Managers and suggest that their strategy will be to focus on inbound lead generation. I find this baffling. Trying to engage with prospective Customers and persuade them to contact UTW for energy, insurance, etc will be REALLY difficult. It's hard enough for the price comparison websites and they spend £millions on advertising. So how do they drive that inbound traffic? MakeItCheaper were successful because they provided the back-end service for the likes of Gocompare, etc. If UTW can become the preferred Partner to an organisation like that then maybe they stand a chance but how likely is it? In my experience, when an organisation initiates a large redundancy programme just before their annual results it's a means of softening the blow in terms of their numbers (ie "we are behind target BUT we are taking steps to deal with it").

Who said anything about “propping up” his son’s business? My personal suggestion was that selling-down his remaining stake could have been motivated by a desire to remove any remaining links to UTW (emotional or financial). I wasn’t suggesting he needs the money. As you state, the money he’s made thus far is already in the public domain.

Still, it's gonna hurt when you sell a bunch of shares that were once worth £25m for less than £1m.....

They can't be 'forced' to sell. If they own the shares then it's entirely at their discretion if / when they buy or sell shares. He will have sold at a significant discount in order to get them away but I guess his view is that he'd rather bail-out than wait for the price to drop further. Also, if he has no link with UTW then he can aggressively target their customer-base via his son's business (Business Energy Claims). I assume that they would have had to agree a timeline within which they can't contact UTW Clients. After that time it becomes open season.

I see that Flummoxed2000's post re Thompson's sale of shares is no longer on here. The rules around buying / selling shares in a listed business are very clear. If an organisation or individual holds 3% or more of the issued share capital then the company MUST inform the markets if that position changes, irrespective of whether that person is still an employee of the company.

I have to agree. As I have said before, if they only retained 50% of their Clients and had an average order value of £1,500 that’s £30m of future commission (revenue). But they need to cut costs further to maintain a decent margin.

Because no investors would be interested in a business that had no plans to grow its revenue and profit. You would only invest in a business that had growth potential and / or a steady dividend.

I’m not convinced much has really changed. The IPO was over 6 years ago. They still have volume targets in place with certain Suppliers. They’re getting rid of a bunch of Outbound Sales Team Managers. With the best will in the World, trying to re-sell insurance via Towergate is never going to set the world alight. Remember, Towergate is also a broker so they both need to make a margin whilst being able to compete with cheaper alternatives. In my view they will either shrink the business and focus on the current client base (but to do this they would probably need to de-list) or someone buys them.

Interestingly more and more Suppliers are changing their commission payment terms as they've been burnt by brokers. There's a lot of bad behaviour out there with sales people flitting from one broker to another, carrying-out changes of tenancy and re-contracting Clients so they get a double hit of commission. The Suppliers have FINALLY cottoned-on so a lot of them will only pay commission on a month-by-month basis as opposed to the old days when they would pay up to 80% up-front.

Let’s hope you’re right for the sake of the employees and Investors. I don’t have any connection with the company or the Thompson family. I did hold a reasonable volume of shares but I bailed-out at £2.00’ish, thankfully. I hold a very small number so still have a small vested interest but I’m not holding out much hope.

Also, UTW isn’t independent so why use them when you can use an established price comparison site and obtain a wide range of offers from different suppliers?

The main price comparison websites spend over £150m per year on advertising. Utilitywise doesn’t have the resources to compete in that space. Fact!

Waste of time and effort in my opinion. BF is trying to treat UTW like Sage but they’re totally different businesses. Sage locks-in customers because they don’t want the disruption of switching software. That’s why they can then cross dell loads of other products and services. UTW is simply a broker. If you seith Supplier (via them or direct) there is no disruption.

They’re trying to sell other products/ services (broadband, IT and insurance) to their Clients but it smacks of desperation. Flattery thinks he can replicate the Sage business model but he’s deluded. They are so far behind in what they’re trying to do. MakeItCheaper and Great Annual Savings have been doing this for years. UTW is playing catch-up. Wouldn’t surprise me if the Thompson family made a bid and took it back into private ownership.