Member Info for skittish

Amazing strength at the close. Let's see where we open tomorrow.

- but in the wrong direction at present.. Pity it appears weak at present when in contrast Mastercard appear so bullish on Homesend - "The U.S. market was the next evolution, she said, and the company plans to do P2P, disbursements and a variety of other use cases in that market to provide a full-service value proposition to its customers to reach any consumer, not just those using Mastercard-branded products. She said Mastercard is also working on growing and expanding Send in markets around the world to ignite card-based push payments" https://www.pymnts.com/mastercard/2018/send-b2b-p2p-push-payments-b2smb/

If recent chart history is any guide, I'd say this may remain soft until July/August, when strength should return. Then we may see an assault on the 900p region.

A bit old, 20th September 2017, but interesting nontheless - "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: The new set of rails offers MA different business models. Being an infrastructure provider is important and offers the foundation for more sophisticated products. The real money in faster payments is in the overlay capabilities (scheme and apps) added on top of the rails, with pricing similar to a card transaction, a % of the transaction value" https://www.barrons.com/articles/is-mastercard-better-positioned-than-visa-in-the-fintech-space-1505915159

Mastercard Q118 results - "Of particular note was cross-border volume, which gained 21 percent as measured in local currency, and driven by Europe. That growth has moderated slightly through April 28 and stands at about 19 percent, said management" "The company is making progress with Vocalink, he said, with RFPs out in the field. As illumination of the potential of faster payments, he offered the example of the PromptPay mobile system in Thailand, where the international payments function is underpinned by Vocalink. As of April of this year, said Banga, 14 million customers have signed up, with 170 million transactions logged cumulatively since January 2017, and $16 billion in business and consumer payments seen in the past six months" https://www.pymnts.com/mastercard/2018/earnings-q1-stocks-wall-street-cross-border/ And from lomontang on ADVFN - The President and CEO of MasterCard, Ajay Banga, said "And then the last one which we're actually quite focused on and which shouldn't be the last but it's just that way I'm talking about it is actually capturing cross-border B2B payments. That's where Mastercard Send and HomeSend on the one hand combined with Vocalink on the other is to me the killer app.'

In FY 2017 this had revenue of �10.8M and profit �3.6M EBITDA �4.7M. H1 2018 saw revenue �7.5M profit �2.6M EBITDA �3.3M with revenue and profit growth of 30% over a year earlier. The update suggested FY18 revenue �16m EBITDA �7M, with both roughly up 50% on a year earlier. I suspect the EBITDA may be slightly cautious as in December 2017 EBITDA was �1M, but maybe the start of the year is slightly "soft" in any event. If FY profits are around �6M this year, then at the present price this gives a p/e of 22.8. K3C appear to be the No 1 player this their particular niche, and at 50% growth I'd say a p/e of 20-25 was cheap. They could probably sustain a p/e of 40-45 giving a sp of 568p-639p. Counting against such a valuation would be their relatively brief time on the market, and the need to sustain such a high growth rate. So I'd say a p/e of 30 in the present year would be reasonable for now giving a price around 425p at present. So this should be due a bounce from here. We are due an update after the y/e at the end of May, so the various assumptions above would need to be reviewed then, either upwards or downwards.

"Mastercard announced news that former United States Trade Representative Michael Froman will join the company as vice chairman and president of strategic growth. In a press release, the payments company said the newly created role will be effective as of Monday (April 16). Mastercard noted that back in 2015, it set a goal to bring 500 million new consumers and 40 million small and medium-sized businesses into the financial mainstream by 2020. The effort, it said, starts with access to financial tools and services From 2013 to 2017, Froman served as the U.S. Trade Representative � President Barack Obama�s principal advisor and negotiator on international trade and investment issues." https://www.pymnts.com/personnel/2018/mastercard-services-michael-froman/ Remember when Obama specifically referred to Homesend in a speech while in (I think) Kenya?

Went a bit wobbly after breaking through each of 200p and 300p, before resuming the climb. Will history repeat now we're at 400p?

M Pesa customers in Kenya from today linked to Paypal. https://www.pymnts.com/news/mobile-payments/2018/kenyans-connect-m-pesa-accounts-paypal-safaricom-mobile-wallet-transferto/ M Pesa is already linked to Homesend https://newsroom.mastercard.com/press-releases/homesend-and-vodafone-to-extend-m-pesa-remittance-agreement-to-five-new-markets-in-2016/ Interesting. Do they compete or are they complimentary?

Mastercard appears to be advertising for a new VP. Estimated salary $200K. https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/vp-mastercard-send-product-management-at-mastercard-642638339 The ad first appeared around 29th March 2018, which coincidentally was a couple of days after ESG announced that Mastercardserd had won the contract with one of the world's largest global financial institutions. Obviously "manning up" for growth.

Profit of $43M puts them on a 2018 FY p/e of 30. Plenty of value here for a swiftly growing tech co.

https://venturebeat.com/2018/04/01/keywords-acquired-11-game-services-firms-in-2017-as-external-development-grows/view-all/ A flavour - Day: We�re now 5,000 people around the world in 42 locations. We�re about a third in Asia, a third in North America, and a third in Europe. We have, for instance, about 700 [to] 800 people in China, 250 in Tokyo, 350 in Manila, and 500 in India. Here in North America, we have about 900 people in the U.S. and then about 1,500 in Canada. The U.S. people are in Seattle, Los Angeles, and Raleigh, North Carolina. Day: Our revenues for this year are expected to be round about $308 million (250 million euros). I have to be careful here. I think the consensus from the analysts is around $43 million (35 million euros) in profit margin. We�re publicly traded in London. But of course, those numbers are before any acquisitions. Any acquisitions we make this year will affect those. Looking forward, the numbers that you see exclude the effect of acquisitions. You have to add however many, six to 10 acquisitions that we might make during the year.

Miton reduced from 13.07% to 12.89% (RNS 3-4-18) on 29-3-18. They appear to have been reducing slightly over a whole range of stocks, so no doubt a fairly normal housekeeping exercise. K3C appears to be going from strength to strength in a fairly torrid market. My kind of stock.

Okay, for completeness they were 08.28 and 08.29 on your list. I'm not saying this won't come good - just too high risk for me. I've gone down with several ships in the past, so am a little more risk averse these days.

The price of tungsten could be $1M/tonne, but if they aren't mining it ........

Fairly typical - instead of dealing with the issues in my post - ask a silly question so as to deflect attention. Really confirms I've made the right decision.

I'm out of these now. I did buy in mainly because of Fastbase and the NAV support. Much of the NAV support could have gone now due to the accident at BTHL. Of course the mine could be in operation again fairly soon, but in the absence of news, I suspect it might not be. And I'm not sure how long BTHL can keep going if income is lacking. I did a bit of research on Fastbase over the weekend. Difficult to get anything independent ie not Fastbase issued, but drilling down revealed what appears to be a confused picture. https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/fastbase.com https://www.zoominfo.com/c/fastbase-inc/370930565 https://www.peakdemand.co.uk/blog/the-curious-case-of-fastbase/ The continuing extensions of the discounted share offer also unnerved me. I can understand dates can slip, but I'd like an explanation as to why. In this case nothing - merely never ending massively upbeat releases, delayed dates and independent information (which may be right or wrong) which doesn't entirely accord with the Fastbase releases. Good luck to all holders - there could be a treasure trove here - but after some nasty experiences on the market I simply haven't the stomach for this one any more.

The Times Softcat listed today as the 6th best performing share in the FTSE250 this year up 30.6%, whilst the market is down 6%. The top 3 Nex, Fenner, Fidessa are up 63%, 54% and 44% rise on the back of takeovers, 4th and 5th Ocado and Sirius, 38% and 32%. So hats off to Softcat. A remarkable performance in all the circumstances.

A bit of a wobbly start, but closed up on the day. Remains a long term holding for me.

1.8m sold today by Mr Hellawell @ 630p off exchange. Presumably gone to a good home. Let's see what the market thinks tomorrow.