Member Info for shandypants2

Uncle D - do you go in the pubs? They are never empty - the issue is can the cheap prices be maintained with rising costs.
Was in a small town Spoons on Sat for lunch and it was pretty packed, as it always is TBH. Situated near a Travelodge so guaranteed to get a decent footfall as TL don't do food.

Not sure WC will be beneficial for Spoons. They are not sports venue so although the games will be on terrestrial TV not sure many will be inclined to watch it there. Also most Spoons have limited TVs.

agree, i thought this was a reasonably positive update.
Revenue is going back up but costs are also rising across the board - much of it outside the company's control.

The debt position clearly isn't great but is being managed and reduced, where possible.

they can actually as it's outside market hours (so can then be RNSed at 7am tomorrow), however, surely this would have been included in today's RNS if there was anything to say.

Are the BOD trying to run this company into the ground? We already knew the results so the outlook statement was of particular interest, however, there was no positivity here at all and no mention of trading in the c4 months since YE. One can only conclude trading is still poor.
This company is now valued at £7m, yet has net assets of over £31m, excluding the non tangibles it still has net assets of over £12m. Last year cash used in operations was c£5m so essentially a loss of a similar amount is already factored into the current price.
What a shame

Do you think the extension is partly, if not mainly due to the FDA undertaking their inspection quite late in the day? Based on the RNS on 22/9, below, it refers to a recent inspection, and we know the FDA is quite busy, so potentially this should have occurred a few months earlier. Based on this the FDA appear to be admitting some liability and are giving this every chance of success via regular update meetings etc.
This gives me a level of confidence that we will get a successful outcome.
However, I am still struggling to understand what the issue with the gas manufacturing might be.


the U.S. Food and Drug Administration ("FDA") has requested additional information from Polarean's xenon-129 gas blend drug manufacturing partner. This request is related to the recent cGMP (Current Good Manufacturing Practice) pre-approval inspection at the partner's production facility. The FDA has suggested that the required information would constitute a major amendment to the New Drug Application ("NDA") that, if timely submitted, would allow for the FDA to grant a 90-day extension to the review timeline. The FDA has proposed frequent meetings to occur during the extended review period to ensure that any questions that arise during the review can be rapidly addressed to provide the best chance at a positive review decision by the extended date.

for me the TV ad campaign timing was poor, whilst we were moving to a new distributor.
So increase marketing spend whilst revenues are significantly down.

Has everything settled down for the big xmas season? Who knows, although outlook in last RNS seemed ok.

Cash is less than £1m now with no doubt some of this already earmarked for advertising as the £500k campaign is not all included in the H1 numbers. So any extra investment in Distillery will not be coming out of the company and little point placing at these prices.

A new whisky was earmarked for Q4 2022 - no news so clearly this has been delayed.

I think if there was any forthcoming news it would have been included in the H1 numbers a few weeks ago. Maybe we will need to wait until Jan for xmas trading news

Not surprised to see this bloke hasn't fallen on his sword.

He should have been keeping GB and CFO in check and has clearly failed.

He was an non- exec at IDP too, and a complete waste of time there too.

agree with the contracts. It would be nice to get a couple in the next month or so to keep the momentum and reinforce 2023 earnings.
Still also hoping some news on a spin off could drop too - knowing what the plan is for DIM, would be a start.

Thanks for the reply - it's Shandy btw

Surely the stated acquisitions for 2023 has now been completed - we've just bought 22 pubs (2023 year started in July 2022 for RBG).
Other than maybe adding 1 more Founders or converting a bar into a Playhouse i think it's now done.

Q1 performance YoY was partly impacted by 2021 being so high post lockdown easing. The reported revenue is still 10% higher than 2019, last normal year for comparison. Q2 is always the big quarter with the Christmas period. I'll wait until H1 results are announced before making a decision on performance.

Cash position is a concern to me too, especially as interest rates are rising, however, they are cash generative so could improve things quite quickly if they slowed the capex spend.

Was in Leeds this weekend - both a Rev Bar and a Cuba within a few hundred yards. At lunchtime/early afternoon neither was packed but both doing a steady trade. Was reasonably happy with what i saw. Similar position whenever i'm in Manchester.

revenue i.e. invoices, is different from cash in the bank. At last accounts there were £7m in trade receivables i.e £7m had been invoiced and not yet paid. As H1 revenue was £6m this is a concern.
If we had the cash the loan repayment wouldn't be an issue. It clearly is.

As they say cash is king.

The STC model is to test a customers skin on day 1 and then do repeat tests every 3 months.

So if we have 30k members that's 30k tests across 3 months, so c 10k tests a months. Obviously new customers will be coming on board too, but let's be honest not everyone will be re-testing, or will do so less frequently, as the 1st test is the main one as it tells you what products suit your skin.

So if insider is claiming the company doesn't have capacity for 60k tests a months, i'm ok with this as they don't need that capacity. I suspect a 20k capacity is more than sufficient based on current volumes.

This is all noise anyway. STC is a innovative brand that is still in it's infancy. It has made get strides in that time.

Let's focus on the main issue here - the need for cash.

Open - you clearly have an agenda.

Of course train strikes will have an impact. Many were on a Saturday and these are City Centre venues so less people will be travelling in on those days. Rev makes most of it's money at the weekend.
In the day the food keeps the bars going and is popular with the shoppers etc. People weren't going into town shopping during the week or so of extreme heat we had in August. If it's hot and you want a drink you are hardly going to reach for a co cktail .

Q2 is their biggest quarter for Rev and this was impacted last year by the soft lockdown. If things stay ok this year (and covid is still a concern, it's just not being reported) then hopefully H1 numbers will be ok.

I do agree with cash position, i would rather see the balance sheet improved a bit as although they are cah generative the BOD seem happy to use this cash rather than just sit on it.

This is valued at less than £25m. It has just reported EBITDA of over £10m and PBT of over £2m (impacted as it spent over £8m on capex). IMHO this looks cheap

sales in Q1 last year were up over 20% vs 2019 (last year before covid) so to be c10% down this year is not terrible as it's still c10% above 2019 levels, but i get your point. Also this year with the heatwave and train strikes etc there are mitigating circumstances.
As Q2 last year was impacted by covid and the 'soft' lockdown hopefully we can see a reversal this year with Q2 performing a lot better than Q1. I think we need to see the H1 numbers to get a better view of progress.

I do like RBG and feel they are quite cheap, however, with a fair bit of debt and confusing accounts i am not tempted to top up at this point. I really don't like EBITDA being used by the company as depreciation and interest will always be high with the business model. Ultimately it is PBT that is key IMHO.

Going forward, we need a covid free xmas, the new acquisition to be integrated ASAP and those proposed savings realised. I would also review the re-fit programme too as this is capex heavy so maybe slow the pace a little to strength the balance sheet.

Not sure how you can say it is a failing business as it made £2.7m profit last year, but i would have preferred some of the payment to be via shares rather than adding to the overdraft.
It does seem to be a good complement to the existing business although it's a shame none of the estate appears to be freehold.
The price? Difficult to know based on info provided. 6 x profit doesn't seem excessive but how much of that was due to reduced VAT and other covid relief?

In terms of RBG after good H1 numbers YE is a bit underwhelming IMHO. I also don't like having different EBITDA figures, it just creates confusion. Although revenues were ok in H2 (H1 74m so H2 was 66m) but EBITDA was much lower in H2 and £2.1m reported profit for the year was over £4m at H1.

Current trading hasn't been great this year, however, this is in comparison with a great trading period this time last year so maybe the xmas period will give us a clearer idea, especially as this was impacted by a near lockdown last year.

£8.3m on capex is a lot. No issue re-fitting bars but maybe the pace should slow a little.

it appears everyone, including the BOD are waiting for Q3 prescriptions numbers before financing can be resolved.

Couldn't pick a worse time to need money but maybe a JV/partnership could be agreed.

A placing at these prices would be terrible and just not sure debt is viable.

Fingers crossed

yes, glad he mentioned the malaria CS amongst others as this was added about a year ago and as of yet no contracts have been announced.
Never overly impressed by Leo in presentations, so hopefully this change is a positive one, in the same way Mo has been.

CEO did mention October in an interview a month or two ago, so hopefully not long to wait.

Need to see cash being managed and a positive H1 outlook and hopefully a re-iteration of being profitable this year

Price not prize - as in the current SP!!!

prize looks appealing but there is definitely potential fraud here.
EBITDA can be manipulated so should not be used as a LTIP target - many other companies base it on the share price.
The fact that the CFO has benefitted directly and he is the one doing the accounts looks really dodgy to me.
Look at REVB - a minor issue became quite big a few weeks later.
I think there may be more bad news to come

Agree, a bit surprised but no issues with the accounts so not necessarily a negative.

An acquisition may be a good idea if the price is right but with the low SP the timing may not be ideal. Hopefully an all share purchase with maybe cash add ons based on performance. I wonder if it might be sometime to complement the new brands such as Founders which seems to be doing well.
Other brands are not cheap compared to RBG. XPF is valued higher despite having minimal revenues (although is growing quickly) and Nightcap is almost the same value yet is less than half the size and has no cash. Can't believe it will be either of these two.

RBG is moving very quickly. The pace of bar re-fit is very aggressive and this must be costly. Now an acquisition. Maybe they need to slow down a little, make some money, pay off debt etc