Roundtable Discussion; The Future of Mineral Sands. Watch the video here.
Short positions are negligible at the moment. The price is low because investors have seen through the BS and most have now took their rose tinted glasses off. The miracle money machine Mr Truell promised never materialised and will never materialise. Reality is they've burnt over £100M and ended up with revenues slightly above where the OB10 trajectory would have naturally carried on to. Probably solely down to the price increases rather than any ROI on the 100 big ones of our money that have quite literally been burnt. Turned a company that was running with a small loss into a hugely loss making company and saddled it with a portfolio of services to maintain that no one is buying - aside from the original core e-Invoicing service. They are out of ideas, soon to be out of cash and if you believe Glassdoor, out of the game. Very soon the shorters will be back in force.
Interesting debate. Firstly, Glassdoor is a load of moaning staff. However, ignore 90% of it and there is some very interesting things coming out in the wash. Company becoming a laggard, being smashed by competitors, flaky IT and no one to fix it, market conflicting information like the Salesforce story etc. Difference between Apple and co is they are wildly successful, every new product/service is a smash hit and they're profitable. TUNG is none of the above. Incidentally, Apple care massively about Glassdoor, especially since the the scandals at Foxconn. Anything that effects their brand or them attracting talent is a top priority. Its simple. The best employers attract the best employees. TUNG is bottom of the Glassdoor league to its competitors, by a country mile. I also find the network growth very opaque. If they've added almost 25% again of their network, have the transactions and supplier revenue increased by the same? I said it before, its all very smoke and mirrors and inconsistent reporting on this side of the business. TUNG should report more like Facebook. They have login at least once a week users as their key metric. In TUNG's case it should probably be every month or couple of months. Aside from revenue, everything else is almost academic on that side of the business. Though, given the level of visibility it will give, I know we'll never see that stat. The whole EBITDA is comedy. There isn't a loss making subscription company that couldn't make that statement. BS76 you need to recheck the IPO submission documents. It was £18M rev but only £2M loss and narrowing. The £35M loss was the first year of TUNG. They've spent £100M in the last 3 years to increase revenue by average of £8M pa over 3 years. Not exactly a stellar performance from the new management. And what has TUNG got to show for it now?
Theme is far too consistent to be a couple of disgruntled employees. Just sold out on this week's rise. Now shorting all the way down! No good news from the plethora of new products launched over the last few years, APU. Existing customers squeezed 60% over the last 12 months falsely giving the impression of growth. No one left to squeeze this year and no new customers to speak of. It's all down hill from here!
Looks like there is light at the end of the tunnel now. Its just a shame gold has lost all its luster in the last few weeks. Hopefully tomorrow's FOMC announcement will move the gold price in the right direction?
I've held on to my shares and am now waiting for my negativity to be corrected in TUNG's report. This is certainly one occasion where I won't mind eating my words. Fingers crossed
I think somewhere between 80-90p is a realistic short term TP. I don't think we are going to return much higher due to the hammering golds had in the last couple of weeks.
Guess that answered my question! Not a bad gain for the day!
The recent news is very doom and gloom on this one. Whilst the share price has taken a beating. I would have expected a lot bigger drop that we have seen. There must still be a lot of confidence out there that this will get resolved fairly soon. Could this be a good speculative entry point?
@K3 I've been in, out, long and short several times on this one in a bid to get back some of the initial hammering I took. I'm holding two lots at the moment bought close-ish to the bottom. With all the talk of the bank sale going through I thought it would be some easy money once it was announced the sale is approved. Negativity is due to getting sucked into the hype and throwing in money I couldn't really afford when it was rocketing after IPO.
@Burnt - Another great extension to what I was talking about. Its not much effort on their behalf to be totally transparent on each solution. When they aren't it raises suspicions. @BS - I understand what you're saying. Though, I and probably most others on this board have read the reports and we are still unclear, debating and asking to know more. That in its self should tell you that TUNG need to be clearer and more consistent with the metrics they are providing the market.
@BPSF I think thats a fair and balanced appraisal. @K3 I wouldn't know how to contact these people. Even if I was able to blag their email address, I'm sure an unknown retail investor's email would get short shrift. Though, it would be good to officially call them out on this. If they don't take up the challenge and report as was suggested below then we know they are window dressing. They can't knock back the request due to already having a standard set of reporting data points, because they change every time!
Yesterday's news didn't move the needle much. Question is now, do I hold out until December's results? I have an issue with the inconsistencies in their reporting. Its not the numbers, but the metrics they choose change. Sometimes we get figures on cancelations, other times its stopped transacting, one report we'll get a breakout of numbers between the different solutions, other times its high level numbers. What are the chances they will start reporting on each solution with all of the below? Active in community of solution Stopped transacting in period Cancelled in period New accounts added Dipping in and out of metrics does smell like window dressing. To my earlier post, if we have this information we will have a lot clearer picture on whats going. If several thousand free suppliers cancel, who really cares. But if they are subscription suppliers thats a big issue. Can't even back calculate this as a cancelled annual subscription wouldn't show up as a hole until next year's report.
@K3 You've become too emotionally attached, you're ignoring all the warning signs and only pay attention to anything that supports your positive hypothesis. One way ticket to getting burnt. Did you see a retraction statement from HMRC for their 'erroneous' computer error that could potentially destroy a company's reputation? Or a very rapid rescinding of the winding up order? It's hard to respect a group of people who have failed epically and cost me and many other so much money in the process. Its their cash position not full year liabilities. So if the bank sale hasn't gone through by reporting time they will want to show they've got plenty in the bank. The company is soon to have half its market cap value as cash in the bank and the share price is still dropping. There must be a good reason for this. Apart from the paid analyst, there's not a single article that has been positive about this company for over 18 months. There comes a time when we all have to stop doubling down, accept our losses and that we got it wrong. @BS I can only go off what their website says. There is a presentation that talks about their IDC service. Which looks to me like outsourcing accounts payable for manual invoice processing. TUNG don't have a supplier targeted paper processing solution. Its something the buyer takes, not suppliers. So cancelled accounts can't be for paper processing. Plus, if they weren't subscription accounts that cancelled, I'm sure TUNG would make it crystal clear that they weren't.
I'm inclined to agree or go one further and speculate that they were deliberately putting off paying until the half year close to make the books look better? It back fired and the FD could have been lent on to make a public display of confidence? It can't be of inside knowledge of the bank sale as that would be insider trading. After reading the annual report I'm giving up on TUNG. Net number of buyers hasn’t gone up. 3,500 suppliers canceled, you have to assume they are subscription ones as the other service is free, therefore nothing to cancel? They reported adding 1,000 subscription suppliers in the same period. The recent analyst report was uninspiring and shows painfully slow growth projections. Glassdoor reviews (which are always a great insight into a company) are alarming. Far too much smoke here for my liking. I’ll hold until the bank sale goes through. We should get a little bump from that and then I’m cutting my losses. It would take a miracle to get even close to where I originally bought in!
Donald was a genuine mistake. I was following his latest capers on TV at the time of writing that post. Funny though! Shorters did help to bring this price down. However, so did lots of holders ditching their shares when they started to see through the BS and hype. No offence meant by this either. But you're in here at an average of c50p? Most of us people having a whinge have bought as high as £3.70. Wouldn't you feel a little short changed if you were as much underwater as so many others?
An article today stated that Donald Truell has offered 80p per share or ownership of a combination of other companies valued at £1.11 per share. That's a great business model. I'll sell you shares in my company, then in a couple of years I'll buy them back for a third of the price you paid. Best short selling trade on this stock to date.
Mr Truell's exit should restore some more investor confidence and help to reverse this recent downward trend. The one line of thanks in the RNS statement says it all. Though, I have a question. If he is not a board member anymore, will that affect the price he would have to pay for the company if he found the cash to take it private? Do the rules of a minimum purchase price in relation to previous trades, no longer apply now?
@$£ Indeed I do! I don't think we will ever get full disclosure. But aside from the occasional haunting from the past, its the future that counts and the new CEO appears to be a lot more careful about his statements. The misleading days of RNS's with 'addressable' and '£2.7 Trillion' in the same sentence should be a thing of the past now. Lesson learnt for everyone there.
I'm not referring to the RNS about the passport, its this RNS statement. The lack of any caveat would suggest the solution is live and ready for use in these countries with more just around the corner. If they were truly authorised to do it in these countries why sit on their hands for a year. Given that invoice finance is going to make or break the company and the technology solution was built and working? "Tungsten has recently received authorisation to offer invoice financing in Germany, France and Italy, with more territories planned."
@K3 - The fact remains there are RNS's stating live in France, Germany etc. However, the recent presentations from TUNG would suggest these were never live and aren't going to be in the near term, let alone 18-24 months ago when they were being claimed. Lots of public statements of over £100B addressable with a target to get 10% financed in the relative near term. Never a caveat of "however, the solution we have built can only address £900M". You'll have to wait a couple of years for a new management team to come in and think up, develop and then launch an invoice finance 2.0 for that ever to happen. We can debate if that is out right lying or being very economical with the truth. Though, whichever way you cut it, its wholly mis-leading and put a lot of people out of pocket. BTW - I'm liking the puns. How about this one "A Truell and your money are easily parted"