The latest Investing Matters Podcast episode featuring Jeremy Skillington, CEO of Poolbeg Pharma has just been released. Listen here.
@Gallmat, I totally agree. And from 6.5p the upside is comfortably more than 10x in my opinion. AIM is so unpopular right now that I genuinely don't think anyone is looking for opportunities like PAT, assuming they simply don't exist. If I hadn't been well aware of LIT then I very much doubt I'd have bought in, certainly not with conviction. And the flipside is that LIT didn't even RNS their investment here, so unless you know PAT are listed then you aren't going to buy in either!
Like you, the reasons given by India for not granting the license seemed very basic, i.e. this article
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/jaipur/rise-in-gold-prices-drawing-firms-interest-in-raj-mines/articleshow/80064983.cms
For LIT to do their DD and provide $13.6m in non recourse funding means we can be almost certain that the 'discrepancies in the name of the company' cited as apparent justification for not granting a permit for a mine valued at ~$1b, are utter nonsense.
The fact that the market cap is lower than the day the LIT funding was confirmed is also utter nonsese!
They can't simply bid their own shares up, as per the FCA rules, so they've taken when they can this week & that's fine by me. There has been a large buyer taking shares off a large seller most of the week, if that buyer wasn't taking 150-500k chunks (see delayed trades from Thursday, published midday yesterday) then FCH would have very likely bought back a lot more. Given the volume, I wouldn't be surprised to see some TR1's in the next few weeks.
Next week will be really interesting. You have to wonder where the share price would be if they hadn't been buying back as the selling pressure is near constant. I see Wise has risen further to £9.22, no doubt due to rates being higher for longer than expected - still hard to believe Alpha are happy to leave themselves so exposed to a low ball offer...
Nobody was taking their bids today at 48.5p so they has to up their buy price to 49p to get their fill. Excellent week with a rise of 13%, and with a mere 1.4% of the buyback completed - ~732k shares for £350k
CVSG isn't a market maker stock, it's on SETS. Looked back at the adjusted EBITDA margins from 2014 to present on the their vetinary segment, pre 2020 they averaged ~17%, post 2020 they've averaged ~21.5%. What has changed to justify a 25% uplift? Notable that the warned on EBITDA margins back in 2017/18 (which caused shares to crater from £15 to £3.60 over 18 months), this current stage 2 fall is similar to the pattern back then.
Could be, I suspect the 4 largest shareholders who have held since IPO were instrumental in initiating the share buyback as they wouldn't want a low ball offer coming in when shares were at their lows. The buyback also serves to increase their ownership stakes, which would be further supplemented if they are adding shares as well...
Again it's worth noting that there are at least two order book buyers here - FCH are placing bids on the book which are being filled by the seller, to the tune of 241k today. However there are other significant buyers taking blocks of 100k.
Once sellers are exhausted then the only way is up, and having additional large buyers is extremely helpful. Very interesting to watch it play out.
One key piece of information seems to be missing from the US expansion RNS; if the partner is going to cover all marketing costs, what do they get in return? Surely there has to be either an equity share or commission element?
I suspect T Rowe are the sellers, as they had been reducing their exposure to the UK for quite some time now. To get the best out of this investment I think you've got to take a 6-12 month view - i.e. give them time to buy the shares back and let the price squeeze higher. They have authority to buy back up to ~36m shares before the AGM in mid May, so it will be interesting to see how many they actually take out of circulation before then. The main takeaway is high volume = a good thing.
I think what's more notable today is the buying volume excluding the buyback, there is clearly a big buyer in the market hoovering up more shares than the company can...
Closing auction again interesting. A seller showed their hand early doors with 200k on the ask, this was matched pretty quickly with a 200k buy order at 50p, buys vs sells was about 2v1, with some 400k of buys left on the book at uncrossing. Again, it's easy to be bullish here just due to the fact that they could buy back 53m shares at these levels and the top 4 holders of >16m shares have held since the IPO at £4... Look forward to seeing how many they have bought back when the RNS lands later.
Indeed. Shares were trading at 70p in Feb 2023 during what was a far more uncertain economic environment, without any flexipay growth, without the genuine prospect of profitability post US exit & without a £25m buyback. It's just far too cheap down here.
@gallmat, it's just a bureaucratic nightmare, where nepotism appears to be the preferred currency
Not sure if you've read this 2007 times of india article before but it gives a good idea of the optimism there was back the re. Bhukia / Indo Gold;
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/indo-golds-finding-to-lure-foreign-firms/articleshow/1653943.cms
It discloses some important information re. a point you were asking about a couple of days ago;
"The site of the discovery is in an uninhabited area, requiring no relocation"
Brilliant late RNS - 237k shares bought back today, make sure you scroll down for the itemized buys. What's notable is that they were bidding shares up this morning paying 47.75p and then taking the bids off the order book this afternoon at 46.6p, as well as the 50k buy at 47.5p. Makes sense if you want to buy as many as possible at current levels.
Have spent a decent amount of time looking at the accounts this morning and my conclusion is this isn't anywhere close to being cheap. Adjusted EBITDA / EBITDA & 'underlying EPS' are completely irrelevant when amortising large acquisition costs and they still have >£300m to put through the P&L.
Basic EPS in the interims was 20.4p, annualised that puts the current PE at >25x. And they have material debt to boot.
This has been an incredible journey for early investors who have held for 10+ years, back in 2012 it traded at just over £1 a share, but until the outcome of the CMA saga becomes clear it's unattractive IMO, especially with the aforementioned debt.
Nope, that's the consultation period to get industry feedback on lunching a formal market investigation...
Next steps
"The CMA has launched a four-week consultation to seek views from the sector on the proposal to launch a market investigation. The consultation closes on 11 April 2023 at which point it will consider the responses received and a decision will be made on how to proceed."
From this mornings RNS;
"Concentrated local markets, in part driven by sector consolidation, may be leading to weak competition in some areas.
Market concentration measures how many competitors operate in a particular market - the fewer firms operating in a market, the more concentrated it is.
· In 2013, around 10% of vet practices belonged to large groups, but that share is now almost 60%, and many of the large groups have expressed an intention to continue expanding their business through acquisition of independently owned practices.
· To illustrate this another way, since 2013 1,500 of the 5,000 vet practices in the UK have been acquired by the six large corporate groups (CVS, IVC, Linnaeus, Medivet, Pets at Home and VetPartners).
· This may reduce the number of business models in locations where most or all of the first opinion practices are owned by one large corporate group, giving less choice to consumers because they tend to choose practices close to home."
Ed, it's not just that LCM think we can win, it's that they've provided $13.6m in non recourse funding & our current market cap is pricing in a ~1.5% chance of winning...
The timeline is an unknown, Poland aren't in ISCID either and it hasn't unduly impacted Greenx's timeline, which saw them go from signing the LCM funding agreement in July 2020 to completion of the hearing against Poland in November 2022.
The main points in the near term are claim quantum & the outcome of the May auction.
Closing auction again interesting, 100k buy order at 45p went unfilled (as if someone is testing the waters after the 450k at 42p on Friday) and then a 50k buy order came in at 45.5 right at the end. Neither were filled, not a seller in sight.
Very strong trading into close, quoted 47.78p for size, there appears to be limited stock available & why should there be at these distressed levels with a buyback initiated?!
They hadn't started the buyback as of Friday close as they have to RNS each day the amount of shares acquired, once they do it will be really interesting to see how many they can buy at these levels.
The KPI's for Flexipay look really good indeed;
H2 Income per active account grew to £861 (6500 accounts, £5.6m income), vs H1 which was £605 (3800 accounts, £2.3m income)
Average month end balances per active account held steady (£56m / 6500 = £8600, vs H1 which was £34m / 3800 = £8900), I'd say this stat is especially impressive given the 71% growth in active accounts during the half who wouldn't have been using the product for a whole period.
In H123 they added a net 1800 active accounts, in H223 this increased to a net 2700. Should this cadence continue for the next 12 months, FY24 would end with 14600 active accounts, if income per active account stays at £861 per 6 months (£1723 annualised) , then revenue would hit £25m
What we can say with a fair bit of certainty is that Flexipay has good product market fit, now it's about scaling this product to as many UK SME's as possible. As of YE22 they had lent to 84k UK SME's since 2010, so there is loads of runway...