Member Info for TheTrotsky

Getting live prices is not the same thing as trying to deal.

Have either of you actually tried to deal online this morning?

I have

I suggest that you try dealing online; I think you'll find that you can't (certainly not on AJ Bell)

A lot of the online brokers are still updating their systems and won't let investors deal online (telephone only).

As they say, a fool and their money are easily parted ;-)

Cut the bravado Chelsea. You've placed your bet and time will tell whether you're right. Personally, I hope you are right because I will then recoup some of the loss I've made to date. But, if you're wrong, I won't have put more money after bad.

GLA

HarChris, To suggest that there's no incentive for the pre-IPO warrant holders to exercise their warrants flies in the face of common sense. As they say, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Obviously they'd like to exercise and sell at 500p+ but, if the market says otherwise, buying at 2.5p and selling at (say) 50p is still a good return. Obviously the cost of their initial subscription shares may have some bearing on their decision, if they've not alreay sold them, but some might to decide to cut and run, even if generates a small overall loss. I think you're allowing your heart to rule over your head.

The warrant holders can't exercise before the end of April 2026 and, as you say, a lot can happen between now and then but if the share price continues to languish I suspect that many of the warrant holders will be exercising sooner rather than later (exercising sooner also gives them the flexibility to hold or sell as and when they choose rather than risk missing an opportunity because they are waiting for the company to issue their new shares) and I think the market is starting to factor some of that expectation, and the dilutive effect it will have, into the share price plus some doubt about the current direction of travel in the BTC price - tonight's closing price represnets a c22% discount to the current NAV (based on the current number of BTC held) but at roundabout par with the diluted NAV. Either that or the market is anticipating the BTC price falling a further c20% in the short-term. Take your pick

Given the discount to the apparent current NAV, now might be a good time to buy if you think the BTC is going to recover and selling before the warrants can be exercised. Even if you think the BTC price is going to continue to climb after the end of April 2026, it would make sense to sell beforehand, because even if the warrants aren't exercised immediately their potential dilutive effect (if not now) will definitely be factored into the share price once the commencement date passes (you could always sell before, and buy back in after, the commencement date if you thought the share price had further to go).

21ATS, Interesting. As far as I was aware the Aquis Stock Exchange wasn't designated as a recognised stock exchange by HMRC, at least that's what my search result threw up yesterday but today it says different! I'd blame AI but it's more likely "fat finger". Mea culpa.

HarChris, April 2026 is now only 6 months away and I don't think the warrant holders will delay exercising until April 2028 particularly if the SWC share price is moving towards closer alignment with the underlying BTC price. Until the warrant situation is resolved it would appear that the market is now increasingly factoring in a discount to SWC's NAV to allow for the exercise of the warrants, as might be implied by the apparent c10p disparity between dilution based on current market price vs current NAV (once the warrants are exercised the share price should at least tend to parity with the NAV). Also, it's worth noting that once BTC ETF's can be bought in ISAs, SWC will be at a major disadvantage until it moves to the main market or AIM (at which time one would assume that it's shares could be bought in ISAs too).

Couerdelion, In my books, bad CEOs tend to broadly fit into two main categories - the incompetent and the downright fraudulent. The former can "recover" (but rarely do) whilst the latter are rotten to the core and should be avoided like the plague. Unfortunately you can't always spot the latter beforehand. I'm still invested here because Imogen, at worst, falls into the former category. The economy is the economy and there's not always much CEOs can do about it (despite what some investors think) other than batten down the hatches and ride out the storm. However, I expect my CEOs to frank and forthright and not hide away from the facts. I feel Imogen has tried (and failed) to hide the shortcomings at Vicon and failed to properly communicate to investors what's been going on. I'm still not certain whether this is a general sector malaise, issues specific to Vicon or a bit of both (as I say, I read about a peer that seemed to be thriving whilst Vicon's revenues and profits collapsed). This is Imogen's first CEO appointment (having been promoted from within the ranks) and I think her inexperience is reflected in the poor communication over the last 12-24 months. She might recover but, as yet, I haven't seen any indications to that effect. For me it will take more than a simple recovery of Vicon revenues and profits; I want to see a lot better communication and a lot less flim-flam in the face of adversity.

Chelsea11, I've doubled-down on bad investments before (by bad investments I mean shares that never seem to recover despite the company's potential) and now try to approach each and every investment decision on the basis of "would I invest in this share now" rather than "I've lost money and if I invest at this price I might recover my losses sooner". Based on the RNS this week there would appear to be some basis for optimism that Vicon's business may now have started to be recover (from whatever ailed it to start with) but I want to see the prelims before making any further decision (even if that means I may lose the opportunity to invest at a lower price). I'm particualrly concerned that any recovery may yet be nipped in the bud (that uncontrollable economic background again).

Trump is (IMHO) an obvious reason to be wary but I'm also concerned about the entertainment sector in general. We seem to be hearing a lot less about VR gaming over the last few years and, despite the initial heavy investment into VR gaming, many tech companies now seem to have changed their focus to AI. The gaming sector has had a number of false dawns in the past and, although gaming is now here to stay now, if VR gaming has started to lose traction then I think that will have an inevitable impact on Vicon's entertainment revenues for the foreseeable future. If VR gaming has lost traction then it could easily be another 5-10 years before it comes back to the fore again as the hardware eventually catches up with the software.

Foot and mouth come to mind ;-)

On page 15 of the interim results to 31-Dec-24 SSIT refers to ICEYE accounting for 21.9% of its NAV whereas on page 29 it refers to having a "stake category" of 5-10%. Based on this information, I would I would imply that SSIT owns 5-10% of ICEYE. Hope that helps.

Couerdelion, Just looking at one of your earlier posts and your reference to my £3m EBIT figure. Mea culpa. Don't know why, but I'd got it into my head that the consenus FY25 adjusted EBIT read as £2.6m (not £2.3m) which, when taken with the adjusted loss of £0.4m in H1, would have given an H2 adjusted profit of £3m. So, my H2 adjusted profit should have read £2.7m which, with estimated H2 net interest of £0.7m, would have been expected to generated £3.4m of cash before debtor, creditor, inventory and capital movements of c£1.7m (not £2m), resulting in your net cash generation figure in H2 of c£1.7m.

I take your point about dividends falling as OMG buys back shares (but would like to think that they can continue to ramp up the annual dividend by 0.25p each year) but carve out dividends, buy backs and further acquisitions I still think that it's not as sustainable as you'd like to think without a further recovery in Vicon.

Indeed, if H2 had looked like a repeat of H1, I would have half expected OMG to stop the dividend altogether. When the "proverbial" hits the fan and you're haemorrhaging operating profits and cash you cut all unnecessary expenditure until the problem is fixed. Net interest income can't be relied upon to cover the shortfall because if you continue to pay dividends out of surplus cash, rather than operating cash, your investment income will inevitably fall and so it goes.

Having looked at the figures again tonight, it's quite clear that H2 FY24 and H1 FY25 were complete disasters, relative to prior years. H2 FY25 does, based on the information in the recent trading update, look a lot better but as I said, I don't trust Imogen to tell us all the facts straight (she's used smoke and mirrors to try and cover up the problems too often for my liking) and I'm going to wait and see what the preliminary results say before drawing any firm conclusions. If the H2 results do indeed hold up, then OMG needs to be able to not only rinse and repeat in H1 FY26 but make even further progress in rebuilding Vicon's revenues and profits, so the forward looking statements will be equally important. We ought to have a couple of FY26 months trading under our belts by the time the prelims are released and have some better information on order intake etc.

If I recollect correctly, last year's H1 performance was already looking weak, with the forward order book well below corresponding periods for prior years, by the time the prelims were released and the H1 performance didn't improve from thereon in. So let's see where we are at in early December.

No, I won't be averaging down until Imogen can actually prove that she's got what it takes to turn this business around (I still think the business is sound and can be turned around even if it means the CEO has to go before that can happen).

I may well lose out financially but I've been here before with CEOs who talk the talk but are unable to walk the walk (and had my fingers badly burnt).

The H1 FY25 trading update on 25-Apr-25 was IMHO a badly worded fabrication, whether or not intentional, and should never have happened if the CEO had actually paid more attention to the information being disclosured e.g. giving us the cash balance at the date of the announcement rather than the period end 25 days earlier gave the false impression that the business, profitability-wise, had performed much better than it actually did. That was IMHO an inexcusable mistake. It's easy to blame the reader for misreading the announcement (on a re-read the cash balance could have been read either way) but that then opens the question as to why the CEO thought that providing the cash balance on 25-Apr-25 would assist investors to assess the peroformance to 31-Mar-25?!

So, although the H2 update issued earlier this week does look a lot more kosher, I'm still inclined to wait and see the actual results before drawing my final conclusions about FY25 e.g. I still suspect that despite the CEO having talked up the performance of the smart manufacturing business the improvements will not not have materially have added to what was originally purchased (which is actually all that really counts at the end of the day) and still wait to see whether there are any unexpected nasties not included in adjusted EBIT.

Based on the revenues and EBIT/PBT disclosed at the dates of acquisition and allowing for (say) 10% annual revenue growth, I'd estimate that the combined IVS/Sempre businesses might have been expected to deliver c10m of sales and adjusted EBIT of c1.5m for FY25. However, based on H1 performance, I'd now be looking for revenues of c£11-£12m and adjusted EBIT of c£1.6-1.8m. If those figures are indeed near the mark then that wouldn't actually be a bad smart manufacturing result albeit that the adjusted EBIT would be c£0.2-£0.4m less than I might have expected based on the acquisition figures (OMG have added management overheads with a view to growing the business and I'd allow that it might take more than 12 months to start recouping those additional costs).

Running the rule over the H1 results again, if we assume that PLC unallocated costs are c£3.5m (FY24 costs were £3.7m but H1 costs were £0.2m less than the correpsonding period in FY24), the smart manufacturing business's adjusted EBIT is c£1.6-1.8m and OMG's adjusted EBIT is c£2.3m (in accordance with the market consensus) then that would imply that Vicon's adjusted EBIT is c£4.0-£4.2m, which would be a marked improvement on the £0.6m achieved in H1. I certainly hope this is the case.

Chelsea, If my crystal ball had told me that Imogen was going to be such a poor CEO aforetime, then yes, I'd have sold whne the share price was c120-130p and bided my time.

I still think that OMG has some great tech and am not actually totally adverse to the investment in smart manufacturing (otherwise I'd have sold when they made the initial investment in IVS) BUT when they sold Yotta they did so to with the intention of focusing on growing Vicon and not being distracted by a "side project" (Yotta had great potential but needed a lot of investment and management time to achieve its potential).

When OMG bought IVS it was clear, fairly quckly, that they were buying another "side project" (the smart manufacturing needs a lot of investment to grow revenues before it can make a menaingful contribution to profits and it probably needs to be growing LFL by c50% per annum if it's going to achieve that in the next 2-3 years). My mistake when they bought IVS was twofold. First, I thought that Vicon was still the priority above all else and, second, I though that IVS might provide significant opportunities for cross-selling (or why else buy a small business that would clearly need a lot of investment and management time to reach its full potential). The acquisition of Sempre hit home to me that the BoD had allowed itself to become distracted (again) but by then the share price damage was, I thought, more or less done (I didn't envisage the share price drifting even further down from the mid-60s to the early 40s).

So, yes, I have made mistakes but that doesn't mean that I shouldn't legitimately ask what the CEO has been doing for the last 12-24 months and why she has singularly failed to address the operational decline at Vicon, in particular, when reporting to shareholders. The FY24 results were an unmitigated disaster (not to mince words) but the CEO preferred to instead emphasise how well the business had held up considering when it was clear to anyone that cared to actually look at the resukts that the operational side was imploding and earnings were only being propped up by interest income (which I discount because I'm not invested here for the investment income OMG generates but the operational profits it should be generating).

I firmly believe that OMG should have paid a special dividend when in it sold Yotta and then made the investment case to shareholders as to why it should invest in IVS/Sempre. It took them c2+ years to alight on these acquisitions and, even if Vicon's business hadn't faultered, they were earnings dilutive from day one and will continue to be so for a number of years to come, unless OMG can materially ratchet up their revenues. Personally, I don't think OMG would have been able to put together a business case to persuade shareholders that IVS/Sempre represented a good investment of their money and management's time.

The price is down but the yield is up! Stick to hunting UFOs ;-)

If you're going to make ominous claims, at least get your facts right. That's not how warrants work.

The pre-IPO warrants give the holders the right, but not the obligation, to subscribe for new shares (pay SWC, not the other way round) at a price of 2.5p per share from 25-Apr-26 for a period of two years*. If the holders fail to exercise their warrants fby 25-Apr-28 for any reason then the warrants simply lapse with no payment being made either party. The upshot of all this is that, if the holders exercise all of their warrants as expected, SWC would receive an additional c£2.4m in cash (with which to buy more BTC if it so chooses) and an additional c96m shares will be issued (which will dilute existing shareholders).

If the closing price tonight was (say) 63p and the additional c96m shares were issued before opening tomorrow morning then the opening share price at the bell would be expected to be c47.73p. Simples!

* Have to admit that I misread this myself previously. I though that they had to be exercised by 26-Apr-26 but it's probably not going to make much practical difference other than the fact the pre-IPO warrant holders would have probably been able to make a lot more money if they'd been able to exercise their warrants when the share price was nearer £6 (assuming they would have been able to sell their resultant shares without totally tanking the share price in the process).

I think their current cash balances are insufficient to warrant SOS considering paying a dividend or buying back shares at this juncture and paying dividends or buying back shares out of borrowings ought to be a complete no-no from the get-go.

A recurring net annual interest expense would suggest that SOS has little, or no, cash surplus to its normal operating requirements i.e. apart from earning interest on overnight deposits SOS doesn't have any large amounts sitting on semi-permanent, longer term, deposit.

Another 12-24 months of improving operational performance then maybe.

Also, don't forget that cash balances always tend to peak at the interim/final period ends because companies have historically made a big conserted effort to collect outstanding debts and delay paying creditors at or around these dates (even if it's only a matter of paying on the 1st of the following month rather than the last day of the previous month). It's always safer to assume that, allowing for the normal seasonal peaks and troughs and/or planned large capital outlays, the average daily cash balances are probably £1-£2m less than the amounts reported at each of the period ends.

I tried buying the iShares ETF in my (Interactive Investor) ISA this morning but it wasn't available to buy. However, the Wisdom Tree ETF was.

Sold yesterday pm. Hoping to get back in sub-745p on Monday if, as I suspect, there's the normal share price turmoil that usually follows capital reductions like this. I wouldn't be totally surprised if the share price fell below 725p early doors.

Point of note. Although the share goes ex-dividend on Monday, the record date is tomorrow close. Normally the record date follows the day after a share goes ex-dividend so, unless I'm mistaken, you won't get the special dividend if you sell tomorrow.

You would appear to be able to buy WisdomTree Physical Bitcoin (BTCW) in an ISA provided you meet all of the advanced investor requirements. One of the key points to note is that ETFs, even if held in an ISA, aren't covered by the FSCS but shares traded on the Aquis Stock Exchange, such as SWC, aren't covered by the FSCS either.

Gone ex-div this morning