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- Revenue down from last year.

- EBITDA largely flat.

- Margin from volume business in India continues to be squeezed.

- Positive gains from Turkey all but swallowed up by currency devaluations.

- Net cash burn, despite divestments in Globiva and Kynd.

- A growing Board and Executive overhead adding no tangible value.

- Blink making progress but not quickly enough to justify its positioning as ‘leading the Group’.

- Continued erosion of shareholder value.

- Annual Board executive costs remain unjustifiably high - CEO £500k+, CFO £300k+, full year of COO £250k+.

- Annual Board NED costs of £300k+.

- Shareholder value eroded by 75% over the last 3 years (£3+ to 85p per share) with no dividend.

- Market cap of sub £8m from £25m+ 3 years ago with £5m+ being spent on Board overheads over that period.

- Blink looks to be a good business which is being mired with all this corporate / non-relevant cost.

- Similar sized Technology / Software businesses with half of Blink’s customer base and roadmap potential are being invested in giving valuations of multiples of what we see here.

The major shareholders need to get rid of this half-witted Board and get some people in who know what they’re doing.

My view is that this Board are very unlikely to pay a dividend. The only chance of getting some return here, obviously dependent on the average price of your holding, will be in price appreciation, which unfortunately has been going in the wrong direction in recent years.

However, the Blink business has shown good traction of late - see news release this morning which mentions a few recent deals / business wins including Axa Partners - so it’s hopefully only a matter of time before these deals translate into revenue / profit / breakeven such that confidence in the longer term prospects of the business then translates into demand for the stock.

Management have stock options that are effectively worthless until the price gets above £3/£4, and they only really start to be worth something to them at £6/£7.

I’m holding until this time next year to see where this could go.

Credit where credit is due - diversifying the Board composition is a good thing.

However, adding more cost to an already very weighty Board overhead does not seem like good value for shareholders.

An iNED has been recruited with an insurance broking background who has recent experience of parametric insurance. However, Blink is not a parametric insurer, it is a SAAS business which, amongst other markets, services the insurance industry by providing parametric capability. The business needs more credible individuals at the most senior level who have an in depth knowledge of these relevant environments.

The other Executive appointment of the COO to the main Board is also strange, unless she is being lined up as a successor to the incumbent underperforming CEO. There seems to be an ongoing habit of rewarding failure - this COO has been in role for a while, during which time the share price has fallen by 70%.

It’s all a bit deserted on here these days, but I had a spare few minutes to go through the interims the other day - a summary and some thoughts as follows:

Positives

- Completion of the change programme. Now only a small element of UK legacy remains.

- Successful exits of KYND & Globiva giving positive cash injections.

- Exits from all non-core / legacy markets.

- Individual parts of the business now also free from legacy systems.

- Turkey is performing well despite all the adverse macroeconomic factors. It’s still a small and volatile part of the business, but is currently additive which is a positive.

- Bajaj has signed a contract extension to 2027, albeit at tight margins and with a restricted product set. But this agreement generates a decent positive cash flow.

- Continued new business progress with Blink as well as renewal of existing partnerships.

- Continued reduction in central overheads in line with a reduction in the geographic footprint.

Negatives

- Slower progress than hoped for with Blink, and a continued investment requirement. This business is now carrying a hefty overhead and the EBITDA position is still going the wrong way. It’s not clear when EBITDA break even will be achieved.

- Cash reserves, despite recent injections from KYND and Globiva exits, continue to fall.

- Central management / executive costs are too high for a business of this size. This is both at the base pay and bonus / options level. The CEO and CFO take out £1m pa between them when the business is only making that at an overall EBITDA level. This is not sustainable, nor does it represent shareholder value.

- Question marks over the value extracted from the KYND and Globiva exits. It’s less clear about KYND, but Globiva was certainly showing healthy EBITDA performance.

I’ve not seen the latest Broker note, but it would be interesting to see what their write up consists of, and how optimistic they are for future performance.

As a footnote, the current market cap of c.£13m roughly represents the cash reserves in the business. The lack of liquidity, which has been an issue for some time, does not look likely to be resolved in the short term, and therefore this stock will continue to suffer.

Although Phoenix and Schroders appear to have traded some stock and now hold around 20% each, Ogston’s shareholding hasn’t moved for years. Given the recent allegations against him, his mind is probably on other things, however, this inactivity / uncertainty will make it very difficult for this stock to attract new investors. He’s dogged this company for far too long now, it’s time he woke up to the fact that it’s him who’s playing a large part in holding this business back.

Finally some decent news from the company and some evidence that a sensible strategy is being developed. Whether or not the price represents good value - the Broker saying it represents fair value is about as valid as me saying it doesn’t - is subjective, but at least it demonstrates a positive movement to focusing on the core elements of the business.

It does however highlight the complete failure of management to be able to generate a representative share price / market valuation for the company. If this deal represents a value of a non-core part of the Group - and one which you would think the market didn’t really value at all - at £5m and one which hasn’t been factored into any of the company’s budgets then, even after recent sp jumps, why is the company valued at less than £14m??

Don’t forget it’s got more than that in cash reserves, most of which are accessible, and a business in India with £100m+ turnover and that’s before you get to what the Board keep referring to as the future / core of the business in Blink……management recently stated that it thinks India and Blink could be worth as much as £30m each which would give a sp of c. £7…..they need to get out there and bang the drum a bit more to get the market to buy into this and to get more retail shareholders wanting to invest. Central to this is liquidity and at least the prospect of returning to a dividend flow at some point in the foreseeable future.

Quote from the Sunday Times last week:

"David Morrison, the chairman of CPP, the publicly listed insurance giant Ogston founded before leaving in disgrace a decade ago, said he had severed ties with the millionaire. The pair had a secretive agreement whereby he served as Ogston's representative on the board in exchange for £30,000 a year."

Is this on top of the £110,000 he took from the company last year??

For doing what exactly? - apart from overseeing the share price fall by over 50% during his tenure.

He needs to go. A grubby back door arrangement with Ogston which has never been disclosed to shareholders. The FCA should be investigating this.

Ogston also needs to go, and the sooner the better - he is dragging the company down to his level by his ongoing association. The company needs to be free of these characters to be able to get on and deliver value to its other shareholders.

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To quote from the above article which has reported on the last RNS from the company: "Hamish Ogston left the Board on 28 June 2013 and since that time, and save for those rights reserved for shareholders, has had no involvement in the management or operations of the group."

Strange then that in 2020 the Board appointed David Morrison as Ogston's representative as a non-independent, non-executive Director. David Morrison then quickly went on to become Chair of the Board less than 3 weeks later.

See both RNS announcements below:

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How does that tally with having no involvement in the company since 2013?