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Bit of a stampede for the gate this morning, 6.4M sells vs 2.3M buys, but the price is holding up.

Remarkable considering stocks are pretty battered all round today.

Maybe institutions are willing to take up the slack for longer term rewards?

No doubt we will find out in due course.

Quite a few appear to be bailing here this morning - although the share price is up 4.8% - obviously frustrated holders who have no doubt waited a number of years for real progress.

Similar to what we've been getting over the last number of months, with the steady drip drip of shares into the market.

I'm prepared to hang on a while longer. Progress on the core business appears to be real in H1, with orders outstripping operating costs by 350% - although of course that isn't the bottom line.

Homesend figures aren't pretty, but the potential is massive, and ongoing costs at around 15M euro pa appear minimal compared to the potential.

We also appear to have large institutions who hold, so I'll be staying here a while longer.

From the pdf the figures for Homesend with y/e 31-12 appear to be as follows, in euro, for 2017 and 2016 appear to be as follows:

Current assets..........20,423,621.............12,384,118

Total assets...............23,054,215.............17,135,824

Turnover......................6,742,632...............4,243,896 (that appears to be the 59%)

Cost of sales.............15,324,366.............12,533,873

Loss............................8,581,734...............8,289,977

Cumulative losses.....30,582,518.............21,569,765 (for tax?)

The company was incorporated in April 2014, so presumably with the initial setup costs in 2014 and 2015 losses were running at an average of 1,078,488 euro per month. In 2017 they were running at 715,144 euro per month.

IMHO, DYOR etc

Looks reasonably good.

Orders for H1 are more than twice recognised revenues - so that should mean that once we reach break even we should stay in the black.

Still looks like we'll be loss making in H1 tho'.

Lots of talk about "corporate activity" and "ongoing conversations" so that should reduce the necessity for any cash calls.

And at last some figures for Homesend, revenues up 59%. I'll have to see if a can decipher the pdf to see what the actual figures are.

Hopefully the market will appreciate what is going on here.

Yes - they are very reticent to say exactly what they'll receive from Homesend.

And we're still waiting to reach break even on what was the core business. Hopefully this year.

Half year results are due out on 31st August 2018, so not long to wait for some concrete news.

My own investment rationale is based on Homesend and the link with Mastercard, which is one of the dominant payment facilitators in the world. If Mastercard cannot make Homesend work then no one can.

The evidence, such as it is (and it is fairly opaque), is that they can - with Mastercard cross border volumes rising at twice the rate of Visa cross border volumes (but how much [all or just some] of it is driven by Homesend is not clear), and bullish comments from the Mastercard CEO specifically indicating that Homesend is one of the core platforms upon which their present and future offerings will be based, together with recruitment of a VP for MastercardSend - a newly created position.

The opaqueness of the evidence is no doubt why ESG is languishing at its present capitalisation, £77M, and the possibility of a further cash call, until such time as they are actually profitable, cannot be ruled out.

No doubt all this weighs on the share price and frustrated long term holders are selling out - I get the impression from the share trades that there is a steady drip drip of pi sells into the market.

However payments for the large global financial institution, RNS'd on 27th March 2018, should now be live, they said "by Q3".

I suspect that once significant Homesend volumes are proven ($5bn+pa) then the share price will go up vertically as the relationship with Mastercard will have borne fruit, and fears over cash raising and the core business will evaporate.

But yes, the "jam tomorrow" scenario has been valid for far too long at ESG.

Hopefully, at the end of August it will be a thing of the past..

We will see.

Visa Q3FY18 results were out on 26th July showing cross border volumes up 10% -

"Payments giant Visa reported fiscal third quarter results that showed continued momentum on the international stage, with cross-border transactions up 10 percent year on year. That number was a slight deceleration from 11 percent in previous quarters, owing to the strength of the dollar."

https://www.pymnts.com/visa/2018/payments-volume-earnings-stocks-cross-border-europe/

Gross $ volumes for Mastercard were $1.5trillion, for Visa $2trillion.

Could this be a sign that the Mastercard offering is gaining greater traction, with cross border volumes up 19% vs 10% for Visa, as predicted here in September 2017 -

https://www.barrons.com/articles/is-mastercard-better-positioned-than-visa-in-the-fintech-space-1505915159

"Ultimately, he writes that MasterCard, with HomeSend (that reaches beyond card-linked accounts), Vocalink (a "truly new payment forms"), and Mastercard Send, is better positioned than Visa, which has Visa Direct, to take advantage of this new opportunity"

It is this combination of Homesend, Vocalink and Mastercard Send which the Mastercard CEO described as "the killer app".

For ESG it is the cross border volumes which actually matter as these are sent via the Homesend network.

From Mastercard Q218 results today - cross border volumes up 19%

"Powering All Payments – We continue to provide choice to consumers, corporates, merchants and issuing partners, both with our core card rails and in driving account-based payments. In the past few weeks, we noted how we are bringing our Mastercard and Vocalink assets together to offer one, convenient, end-to-end solution in the UK. Mastercard Send will be connected to Faster Payments to enable a variety of P2P and B2C payments. And, as Worldpay makes our Pay by Bank app available to its merchant customers in 2019, they will benefit from the increased convenience and security"

"As a result of this encouraging first half performance, and current positive sales momentum, the Board now anticipates that the Group's performance for the current full year will be ahead of its previous expectations"

Again!

Trading statement 20-7-2018. Half year results 11-9-2018.

Between 12-7 and today Canaccord, OM and Herald have sold around 3.5M shares, or about 4.7% of the issued share capital.

The share price has risen significantly in that period. The share price now appears to have paused momentarily whilst the sales are absorbed.

I suspect that there will be continued significant strength in the share price, once the institutions have finished re balancing their portfolios.

Hellawell (Chairman) and family sell 3.2M shares @715p (11-7-18) and the shares continue to climb.

Hopefully all gone to a good home.

Quality stuff.

and Helen Gilder not Diana Quilter!

I must have been ****ed.

Should be 500,000, of course.

So it looks like Old Mutuals holding of 4,541,811 6.16% has now increased to 5,167,344 7%, an increase of 625,533.

Presumably they picked up all the shares sold by Diana Quilter and the others (5000,000) and then some.

No wonder the share price didn't go down, and interesting to see significant institutional demand.

They bought at 115p, so good to see that they see value at that price.

Part of pymnts H118 B2B summary - "Best of B2B so far"

"Mastercard Sent Steps Into B2B

Mastercard, too, has been making deeper inroads in the commercial payments space. Last May, the company explored how its Mastercard Send solution, which began as a peer-to-peer (P2P) push payments tool, would break into the B2B market.

As part of that effort, Mastercard enabled push payments to small businesses from other companies via the Send solution. For instance, the tool can be used by insurance firms to push payouts to small business policy holders, adding funds to a client’s small business debit card.

On-demand payroll is also emerging as a top use case for Mastercard Send, according to Shari Krikorian, senior vice president at Mastercard Worldwide.

“On-demand payroll is big,” Krikorian told PYMNTS. “It reflects where the world is going in terms of freelance workers and 1099 workers.”

As Mastercard looks to broaden Send throughout the globe, Krikorian explained that the firm will also introduce new capabilities for the solution, including disbursements and micro-loans."

https://www.pymnts.com/news/b2b-payments/2018/visa-mastercard-gdpr-amex-boa-blockchain/

Homesend and ESG appear to be getting little credit for this potential.

RNS's are like buses............

Old Mutual got the 6.22%.

" As of 29th June 2018, Old Mutual Global Investors (UK) Limited is no longer
owned by Quilter Plc. As a result of this, Old Mutual Global Investors
(UK) Limited will disclose its reportable positions via TR1 reporting
independently of Quilter Plc. Quilter Plc has disclosed a closing position
and this disclosure serves as an opening disclosure for Old Mutual Global
Investors (UK) Limited."

Perhaps doesn't explain the recent weakness - but we are heading upwards.

And Old Mutual sound like a really solid outfit to have on the shareholder register.

Neat little contract win for the legacy business - $1.25m over 3 years. Not life changing, hence the non regulatory announcement, but showing it is still ticking over nicely.

Ticks up 0.425p on very little activity.

I think patience will be rewarded eventually on Homesend, although the wait drives me nuts sometimes.

If the "boulders" do eventually arrive, then this could well blow skywards in a massive way - a very small percentage of $trillions will be a dazzling amount of money.

Looks like Quilter has sold out - 6.22% to below 3%, quite possibly down to zero.

That is a lot of shares to get rid of in a relatively short space of time.

Would explain the decline from 108p to 94p over the last month or so, prior to results which have boosted us back to 112p!

Who has taken Quilters 3.22-6.22 percentage?

With the selling apparently over we should see a significant rise from here on.

Weakness today (-3.3%) likely explained by the sale of 1.9M shares by Lord Nash, announced by RNS after close.

Hopefully, all gone to a good home.

1% of the issued share capital.

Onwards and upwards.

Indeed. And the revenues generated by games are just staggering. "The people making money from Fortnite It managed to generate $296m (�222m) in April from in-app purchases alone. And that's more than double the revenue for February, according to market research firm SuperData Research" https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-44395095 Could be some big acquisitions coming up - KWS now has really significant firepower - cash, the new facility and a sky high share price.

The half year update was 11 days after the half year end - and the last FY update was 14th June 2017. So, if the recently established pattern is followed, that should mean a FY update mid next week. Director family buying and the recent recovery should hopefully mean a sparkling update to come. Fingers crossed.