Member Info for RKBeekeeper

Annual Results

Part 3

Good Morning BigDano

I am just beginning to get into the actual numbers and I need to ensure they are accurate and unfortunately whenever I post lots and lots of numbers it can put some Posters off as they don’t like the maths /arithmetic as they just want to focus on one liners which adheres to their view point but I will attempt not to bamboozle them. (I think the wife wants to go out today so I will not be able to number crunch much today)

It may help if I say a little more about Fred’s Bank that he controlled in Glasgow before he took the M8 for a bigger dinner. I need to be careful what I say as they made us all sign a “Bond of Secrecy” so anything I post relates to a fictional Bank that had its roots in the Farming Community in the North of Scotland and then was taking over by a Bank with its roots in the “Middle” of England.

So that Posters can confirm that I did work at A Fictional Bank, all you need to do when you are on Companies House is to search for “Lord Sanderson” and he pops up twice and the one with 17 appointments you click on the 7th company and even though the date of appointment says he was appointed on 1/04/03 he was on the Board before. Look at the people and look for RKB, I no longer live at that address.

RKB

Good evening Cyberdog

Your expectations are too low.

Try reading the Annual Accounts and factor in that Vernon the Second is no longer on the gravy-train.

If you had been paying attention Vernon lost his “the second” just like Fred lost his gong and when people realise the potential then the shorters will be caught with their underwear down.

If only you knew what I know.

RKB

Thanks Cuddothisnow & Jtmacs, I will attempt to dissect the Annual Accounts (worts & all) and I will continue to post till I have completed but Mrs gets a little irritated if I spend 24/7 on laptop.

I used to work for a Bank but not as a Banker and Fred outsourced our department just to get me to resign as a Trustee Director of the Pension Fund (after I had fought them for 3 years to hold an election) I only attended one Board Meeting on Thursday 12th Feb 1998 and there were I believe 12 other Directors present (Fred was there but he was not able to vote due to a conflict of interest as it was going to benefit him personally but not in a financial way) Ten Directors all sat on the fence and would not go against Fred, I stood up against him and disagreed and Fred stormed out the meeting.

Lord Sanderson was chairing the Board Meeting and asked everyone present if they disagreed with RKB and as nobody did we made a decision. Fred stormed out the meeting and flew immediately to Melbourne. I flew on Friday the 13th to Australia to visit my mother and I had a meeting at NAB Head Office in Melbourne a few weeks later and it was all over the place (internally as it was kept quite) that Fred was fired. Six weeks later he joined RBS and everyone thought he had been head-hunted! What was it that Fred wanted to do that resulted in him not being part of the NAB Group? Answer, £250 Million that was to be moved under the table out of sight and all Pensioners would have been disadvantaged. (USA Mortgage problem long before the financial crises)

RKB

PS After I was outsourced I trained as an Auditor but only internally not official qualifications, but I sat many financial qualifications over the years and became a Financial Adviser but one week before I became self-employed Northern Rock went bust and Fred lost his Sir.

Annual Results

Part 2

Now when I look at the current Annual Results the first thing you see is a link to the Webcast of the Results Presentation and then directly below that you can see how you can download the results in PDF form.

The 2019 Results are a lot easier on the eyes than the 2018 Results and as there are no photos there is less to get irritated by.

There is a summary on page 1 of our current loss £11.7 million then when you factor in all the other bits the loss comes to £130.8 million which initially would appear to be a little bit concerning but then when you understand how we get to the loss of £130.8 million then imo it is not too bad. (Other posters can “drill down” if they want but I understand why the losses are there and going forward many of them will not be repeated (there will be some “new losses” which I may allude to in further posts)

I know I will be repeating some figures that were posted on the day and may be posted again before my tome is “Posted” but I feel that certain facts should be posted here for future reference (well most posters don’t even look at the Annual Results and probably do not even reconcile their own Bank Statement)

Highlights:

21% Growth in retail and SME core deposits to £10.2 billion.

Net Fee & other income up 43% (driven by customer growth & the launch of fee earning services) more on this later.

Strong Capital Position CET 1 is 15.6% (which to most will mean nothing but it is good news)

Customer accounts increased almost 25% to 2 million (will also expand on this later)

Metro Bank Rated Number One for customer service in Stores and for online & mobile banking. (Will expand on this later)

Strategic ambition to become the UK’s best community bank (will expand on this too)

Strategic plan revised to achieve statutory RoTE >8.5% by 2024 but this is a little bit remiss because they did not say what it was originally. RoTE is Return on Tangible Equity or technically “Return on Tangible Common Shareholders’ Equity”. Well if you dig around then last year they just use ROE and say “Low double digit RoE by 2023”.

To be continued.

RKB

Annual Results

Part 1

I am always impressed when any Company produces their annual results within 3 months of their year end and for Metro Bank they managed it within 2 months.

Compared to the 2018 Annual Report there are only 54 pages versus 172 pages which is quite a reduction.

I prefer to access a Company’s website for financial information and I like to see what the website is like. I have said on other B.B. I do not like dark or black background colour as it can seem a bid depressing but Metro Bank’s website is bright and colourful.

Before I would read in full the most recent Annual Results I will have already have read the prior year’s results.

Accessing 2018 Annual Results is an eye-opener. As you may expect from our departed (not deceased!) Chairman Vernon W. Hill II he has the first photo (along with some dog) that you see on PAGE 2. In this large tome of 172 pages there are many photos. I always look at who is in the photos and why (normally vanity and often the people are 10 years younger than they actually are) I estimate there are about 13 photos of Directors and senior staff and then there are about 18 other photos of customers, colleagues and others. There are two almost identical photos of Lord Flight & Danielle Harmer (they swapped places) and in my opinion there was no valid reason (apart for vanity imo) to have two photos of the Lord. (You and I paid for these pictures as we own the Company) Finally there is one page of 10 photos which I actually think is appropriate and that is on page 168 which has a small photo of our 10 new locations that opened in 2018 (note not 11 as Vernon likes to inform us)

To be continued.

RKB

Hello Ian12

Can ask you a question? You say you have been here 6 years and you feel nothing has come to anything! Do you really mean “nothing has come to anything”?

A Clayton & J Taylor-Firth joined less than 6 years ago so basically you were in a completely different company then, would you not agree?

If you have actually done some proper research then you obviously know that three directors have 1.8 million Warrants that expire at the end of this year.

Have you any idea the price of the Warrants? I will save you the effort 6p. Yes more than 100% of the current share price.

Do you not think that the BoD are working for capital appreciation?

If you did some basic research then maybe you would have some knowledge that you could use to your advantage.

RKB

PS if you really knew how wealth is created and retained by a few then you would know where PRIM is heading, (6.75 years) so you only have about 9 months to see what has transpired on your investment.

Truespine Technologies

How appropriate is the announcement this morning that a second director has been buying in The Market some Primorus Investment Shares?

Please note the directors name (surname in particular) as it is important for anyone who knows anything about our investments and in particular our £500,000 investment in Truespine Technologies.

Truespine Technologies began life in 2015 and we invested in 2017 when there was only three shareholders; Haleride Ltd 97.1% Primorus Ltd 2.59% and Early Equity Plc 0.31%

No Truespine shares were issued in 2018 but Haleride Ltd “divested” some shares 8,858,293 and they were “acquired” by 21 new shareholders (people and private companies)

In 2019 Truespine issued an additional 5,765,896 shares and Haleride Ltd actually increased theirs by 1,026,667 and had 54,564,167 or about 78.02% of the total shares then in issue (note this is a controlling shareholding) Also 13 new shareholders joined but significantly in my opinion no existing shareholder decreased, what do you think this could mean for our investment?

In 2020 Truespine issued an additional 11,216,660 shares and Haleride Ltd on this occasion decreased by 9,735,667 but still had 55.24%. Three other shareholders exited and disposed of their shares of 66,667 166,667 & 666,611. There were also an additional 133 new shareholders, the one who’s surname above you were to note and an Director (now Ex Director) is new on register with 1,670,000 shares and another Ex Director with 500,000 shares.

Now you may think it is of no importance as to who holds how many shares in an Unlisted Company but when you understand who is actually on the Share Register (I have spreadsheets of thousands of shareholders in many unlisted companies that have gone on to list either on the Main Market or AIM)

My research all points to the likelihood that Truespine Technologies will actually achieve their IPO in the second half of this year and Primorus will see the value reflect their vision from 2017.

RKB

PS The dates 2018, 2019 & 2020 are taken from Companies House and technically some of the shares would have been issued in the previous year.

Good Morning Matlot

I posted I believe on our B.B. in late November last year about the pending Annual Results and yesterday only 8 weeks after the year end we have our results.

I have to say I have enjoyed your Posts and one or two others also but in general I am disappointed by the sheer lack of proper research, in fact it is almost zero and 90% + are posting basically nothing of note (over 420 Posts yesterday)

I managed to top-up this morning at £1.57 and my average is only £1.77 which I believe is an absolute steal. I am not a trader and I abhor shorters.

Whenever I divest any AIM share I will be putting all the funds into Metro Bank Shares as they are grossly undervalued.

I thought I would have been able to have compiled some detailed analysis of the Annual Accounts but I am not even half way through dissecting them and I will Post when I have completed my in-depth research.

RKB

PS Cuddothisnow: I agree 100% with your Post yesterday at 11:59am.

PPS I used to work for the Bank that Fred ran before he went for his dinner on the other side of Scotland and not only lost his Knighthood but his meal ticket and his wife, I know where they buried all the bodies over the years and I could tell you many things about Banks that would let you know how they crashed the world economy and I know Metro Bank is totally different, you just need to do proper research.

Farina Investments

We originally invested £100,000 in Farina Investments in August 2017 and this was written-down in our 2018 accounts to nil. AC said “The Directors have reviewed the carrying value of the unlisted investments, and have considered an impairment of £100,000 against the Company's investment in Farina Investments (UK) Limited is appropriate on the basis of Farina Investments (UK) Limited's current difficult trading position.”

I monitor all of our listed and un-listed investments in the UK and correspond with BoD if I see a discrepancy on Companies House such as a particular company is late in filing their accounts and there is a risk that this particular company may be struck-off.

Since our investment in Farina Investments in August 2017 there have been two occasions for “First Gazette notice for compulsory strike-off” once in July 2018 and secondly in December 2019.

Fortunately for our investment of £100,000 in Farina Investments it the company is still “surviving” and they recently filed their accounts for 2018. Although the accounts were filed late they are not a “basket-case”. I would like to think that we will recover some of this investment at some point in the future.

RKB

PS I am trying to get my nephew to visit our gold assets in Australia, which as we all know are doing extremely well.

Single Digit Trades

So far in February we have had five single digits share trades (1,1,1,1 & 7)

The total value of these five trades = £0.0224.

If there had been a trade of say 10 shares at say 0.2 then that would be a monetary value of £0.02p which could legally be settled by a monetary transfer but how do you settle a trade for £0.0021 £0.0025 £0.0021 £0.002 and £0.014?

Looking at the Rules Manuel of London Stock Exchange which covers AIM Companies: Page 24: General Conduct: Misleading acts, conducts and prohibited practices (1400)

G 1400 A member firm shall not, in respect of its on Exchange business:

1400.1 do any act or engage in any course of conduct which creates or is likely to create a false or misleading impression as to the market in, or the price or value of, any security;

1400.2 cause a fictitious trade or a false price to be input into the trading system;

1400.3 effect a trade at any price which differs to an unreasonable extent from any firm price displayed on the trading system in that security;

1400.4 do, or attempt, any act or engage in any course of conduct, which constitutes or is likely to constitute market abuse under Regulation 596/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council on market abuse (MAR);

1400.5 do any act or engage in any course of conduct which is likely to damage the fairness or integrity of the Exchange’s markets; or 1400.6 do any act or engage in any course of conduct which causes, or contributes to, a breach of the Exchange’s rules by another member firm.

Now it so happens that I had the shareholder register of a particular company last year which had over 5 billion shares in issue. Well they actually had 5,332,221,134 shares in issue and the share register on that particular day came to exactly 5,332,221,134 which if you understand share registers is impossible.

So the question that I now ask, when will the single digit trades cease? What action will I have to undertake to understand why single digit trades are permissible?

RKB

https://www.londonstockexchange.com/traders-and-brokers/rules-regulations/order-book-trading/order-book-trading.htm

AIM Casino versus FOBT

AIM (formerly the Alternative Investment Market) is a sub-market of the London Stock Exchange that was launched on 19 June 1995

FOBT (A fixed odds betting terminal) were introduced in 199.

AIM “investing” you can lose all your money but there is a possibility to make substantial gains if you do your own research and top-slice when you are in profit.

FOBT officially has a return to player of 94%

AIM your stake can be whatever you like, for instance you could “invest” £0.01p like “someone” did last Monday (or this morning as LtdAxis has stated) and “bought” 1 share or if you want you could invest all your available funds and “invest” £thousands.

FOBT your stake used to be a maximum of £100 but recently it has been reduced to £2.

It is my opinion that as a result of the stake being reduced for FOBT to £2 there is a demand for the thrill of investing in AIM Companies, but unfortunately the odds appear to be nothing like a 94% return.

For example: Investor today spun the wheel for one week exactly with an “investment” of £42 they lost £9. Also a week ago another “investor” spun the wheel for £2,377 and they lost £694 the next day. Yet another “investor” on the same day spun the wheel for £272 and they lost £57 about 1hr 41 mins later and yet again another so called “investor” spun the wheel for £2,261 and they also lost £466 only 11 minutes later. I could give you many more examples but I think you may be getting a picture. (Note LtdAxis does not spin the wheel he spins his take like I spin my take: Opposites attract.)

As Long Term Holders we have to let the FOBT so called investors have their fix but it will not be long before the FCA take a look at minimum stakes for an initial investment in any listed Company.

RKB

Good Evening Spary1

Yes it is good, a small loan to tick us over till either Court Case settles before the end of April or FG sells the claim to “specialised legal claims buyers” as per RNS last Thursday.

One day LTH will be rewarded for their patience and I will have almost “unlimited” time available to “Access” particular shares that I will do a “Muddy Waters” and then he will maybe reflect on his past actions.

RKB

Now I Wonder

We had an RNS today about a small €150K loan from Eufingest and our Website has the information on it already. It is good to know that our Website is updated in a timely manner regardless if it is perceived as positive or negative.

Having information for current and possible future shareholders available is always advisable. Thank you.

RKB

Thats good, I like that.

RKB

Now I Wonder

I Posted on the 10th Feb 2020 at 6:54am about Bond Conversions and I used a calculation of £ and not € and said that in December 2018 Bonds were converted at 3.76p and at that particular time £1 million of Bonds were converted into 26,595,745 shares.

I then said if £1 million of Bonds could had been converted on 7th February
2020 then they would receive 85,470,085 shares.

Today Monday 17th February 2020 is the turning point and the maximum number of shares that would be issued for £1 million of Bonds would be 90,293,454 and if our spread remains at 0.2p – 0.25p for the whole of this week then it would not change the 90,293,454 calculation.

If FG is looking to issue a Bond Holders Conversion Notice it would have to be issued no later than a week today to ensure that “The Bond Holders” receive the maximum number of shares. By next Monday if the spread remains at 0.2 – 0.25p then it drops below 90 million shares per £1 million of Bonds.

Now I wonder if FG is going to issue a Bond Conversion or is he going to use the 395,573,824 current share authority to buy a few “watery” assets?

RKB

Sunday Times

There is an article today in the Sunday Times Business Section by Sabah Meddings & Emma Dunkley “Riddle of the FTSE hospital operator’s missing shares” which you may find interesting.

I take a keen interest in the shareholder register of listed companies and I am of the opinion that if the information disclosed under significant shareholders is not up-to-date or is inaccurate then an investor or potential investor could or may be disadvantaged. At present the onus is on the individual (or nominee) to disclose. Listed companies are a bit lax in updating their share register or making enquires as to the true beneficial owner of the company’s shares.

I wish all LTH well and hopefully if an offer does materialise that it is substantially greater than the current price.

RKB

Resolution IV:

To adopt the Company’s new Investing Policy, as follows:

“As well as its historical investment sectors, namely, real estate, leisure and entertainment industries; the Company will now invest in the technology sector, with special focus on interactive media, blockchain and Artificial Intelligence.

The Company intends to identify and invest in and/or acquire companies, assets and/or projects which show excellent growth potential on a stand-alone basis and which would add value to the Company’s portfolio of investments, through the expertise of the Board or through the provision of ongoing funding.

The Company will make investments in target businesses at all development stages. The majority of investments will be made in unlisted companies, however, pre-IPO. Listed companies may, from time to time, be considered on a selective basis.

The geographical focus will be mainly Europe, but investments may also be considered in other regions to the extent that the Board considers that valuable opportunities exist and positive returns can be achieved.

The Board expects that investments will typically be held for the medium to long term, although short term disposal of assets cannot be ruled out.

The Company’s investments may range from a minority position with strategic influence up to a controlling position.

Any transaction constituting a reverse takeover under the AIM Rules will require Shareholder approval and the publication by the Company of an admission document meeting the requirements of the AIM Rules.

The Company believes that the broad collective experience of the Board together with its extensive network of contacts will assist them in the identification, evaluation and funding of investment targets. When necessary other external expert professionals will be engaged to assist in undertaking the appropriate due diligence of prospective targets and transaction analysis. The Board will also consider, as it sees fit, appointing additional directors and/or key employees with relevant experience as part of any specific investment.

Investments are expected to be in the form of equity, debt or convertible debt. The Company may offer shares as well as cash by way of consideration for prospective investments, thereby helping to preserve the Company’s cash for working capital purposes. The Company may, in appropriate circumstances, place shares, issue debt securities or borrow money to complete an investment.”

RKB

PS Note the bit about “appointing additional directors”

Finally as I said recently FG does not do placings / exchanging shares at Nominal value.

For the record FG has placed 451,962,070 shares at an average price of 1.1p. since 26th July 2016.

Firepower

Yesterday I posted that FG has 395,573,824 shares available to issue which at present is 59.72% of the current shares in issue, which is 662,371,447.

This is almost twice the normal authority that has been 200 million in 2016, 2017 which only lasted about 12 months but in May 2018 the 200 million lasted for 3 years then later in December another authority was given at the General Meeting for 200 million for 12 months and then the most recent authority was given in July 2019 again for 200 million for 3 years.

I can give a detailed breakdown, if anyone would like to know how many shares would have been issued from each authority granted by shareholders, if required.

So for ease of clarification let us assume that there was no leeway to issue shares because all the authority had been used up. Then FG calls a General Meeting and seeks authority for 400 million shares for 2 years. Why would he need such Firepower?

We could speculate that some shares may be issued for a Bond Conversion and some maybe to increase our stakes in PBV Monitor & ForCrowd and maybe even Geosim. Or we could re-visit last July’s Ordinary Resolutions and in particular Resolution IV.

RKB

Good morning Knigelk

I have to disagree with you on this one.

I have seen an RNS on the website one minute before it was officially issued. That was last year.

Just like the recent FG video it was not on our Website till FG deemed it should be.

News flow is being controlled for a reason.

For the record Eufingest will get their Bonds repaid in cash.

RKB

I wonder why

Yesterday’s excellent RNS about the Sipien Court Hearing is not on our Website?

Makes you wonder, does it not? Well it was brilliant news but anyone looking would not find this update that we have almost a full hand and the 8 defendants are a busted flush.

RKB