Member Info for TheTrotsky

Well, if you actually tried to be polite, perhaps people might not be snarky!

Somebody referenced discussions on ADVFN and you shot them down in flames. ADVFN is actually a good alternative source of information and it's free. Obviously you have to take what's said with a pinch of salt (that's just as true here on LSE as it is on ADVFN). Even where a PI has done a lot of legwork investigating a given company and wants to share their views you have to recognise that they have a vested interest, one way or the other. At the end of the day OXB is not your conventional everyday company (many people got on the bandwagon during COVID when the share price soared because of the contract work OXB undertook for AstraZeneca only for the share price came back down to earth with a bump when reality kicked back in) and some of us have been here for a decade or more waiting for OXB to finally realise its potential.

Personally I should have sold when the share price peaked at c£15 during COVID. I knew that the share price wasn't sustainable but greed took over and I stupidly thought that there might still be some punters out there willing to push the share price north of £20 in their misplaced enthusiasm. You live and learn ;-)

She was promoted from within and, if my memory serves me correctly, she was previously a well respected engineer within the company who was attributed by Nick Bolton, at the time of his handover, with having made a major contribution to the company's previous successes.

Her technical capabilities aren't, IMHO, in question but a good engineer doesn't a good CEO necessarily make. It needs a different skill set. My first impression was that she was quite gruff and not necessarily a good people person (not a prerequisite for a good engineer).

It's okay if you don't suffer fools lightly but, as a CEO, you really don't want to convey that, either through speech or mannerisms, to either the staff you have to work with or the customers you need to deal with.

Just my personal observation; I could be very wide of the mark. For all I know, she might be all sweetness and light off camera but on camera she doesn't strike me as the sort of person you'd ever want to contradict, which isn't exactly condusive to team working.

Our friend Bond is clearly not an acolyte of Dale Carnegie ;-)

I'm surprised he even bothered to pose his question given his willingness to shoot down anybody who even tried to answer him!

For the record, there are lots of listed, loss-making, biotech companies around the world that are valued at a lot more than OXB. I would suggest that Bond research the biotech sector as a whole to understand why this should be the case and, in so doing, he'll find the answer to his question.

Forest, No dividend is ever guaranteed but the main difference between ordinary and special dividends is that the latter tends to be more ex-gratia; a one-off unlikely to be repeated/maintained.

BME has made a habit of paying a special dividend, in addition to its ordinary dividend, in recent years because it's cash generation has exceeded management's normal expectations. However, the gravy train seems to have hit the buffers this year and BME took the unusual step of actually reducing its interim ordinary dividend with a view to resetting it's annual ordinary dividend at a lower level. This, of itself, does not totally preclude the payment of an additional end of year special dividend but it does make it extremely unlikely. The fact is the business is struggling to maintain both it's profitability and cash generation at prior year levels and, even if there has been an improvement in H2 sales relative to the prior year, it's likely to have been at the expense of profit and cash generation.

Bottom line, I wouldn't hold my breath that there will be a special dividend this year (or next). Management need to focus more on paying down debt and turning around the faltering trading operation. BME is not at death's door but if management aren't able to rectify recent trading trends it could start to spiral downwards.

I said it's not a "result". The CAT hasn't announced their conclusion yet unless you know otherwise

It's not a "result"

Top selling lines won't always be profitable and, indeed, sometimes they'll be loss leaders e.g. Lidl won't have made a made any profit on the veg they were selling at 10p in the run up to Xmas (they just wanted to get people in store to have the opportunity to tempt them to buy other, profitable, items) but I have no doubt that veg would have been one of their top sellers never the less.

I agree with Muzmanoz that the results are unlikely to show signs of a £s turnaround; there's always a lag between discounting and the volume growth you need to offset the discounts. Also, retailers always tend to try and and avoid discounting in the run up to Xmas (other than a few targeted promotions to try and increase footfall) because it's the one of the few periods of the year that retailers can make the profits they need to sustain them for the rest of the year. Discounting into Xmas will have an inevitable impact on the finacial performance. So you may need to look under the hood, beyond the financials, and try to determine whether the new model will deliver longer term e.g. increased customer numbers (even if the average basket value has fallen). Getting customers back through the doors is the only way that BME is really going to turnaround its business (assuming existing customers can't afford to spend more then you are looking at new customers to bolster sales).

Totally agree that selling off tinsel at 10p after Xmas isn't, of itself, a foreboding of bad results. It's the industry norm to de-stock excess Xmas goods to free up warehousing etc.

For somebody you say you've filtered, you seem to be very well appraised of what I'm posting.

Can't resist the stupid digs as usual. Total waste of space.

Couerdelion, I've posted reasoned analsyes of the figures over the last two years and have called for Imogen to either up her game or be gone (especially after the recent round of grotesque LTIP awards).

Chelsea, on the other hand, doesn't like any criticism of Imogen, resorts to stupid name calling (because he doesn't actually like to dicsuss facts) and pooh poohs anybody who doesn't agree with him that "averaging down" is the way to go (why should I invest yet more money in a company who's recovery still remains uncertain in the short-term). When I suggest that it's more important to look at the overall return on your money and investing new money where you can get the best overall result, he ignores my response and accuses me of not answering his question(s).

I believe, and I think you'd concur, that FY26 is going to be critical but, unlike you, I'm not going to second guess the FY26 results because, in my experience, Imogen has an inate ability to repeatedly disappoint. Over the last few years, OMG has issued several RNS with misleading information e.g. trading updates with net cash figures at the date of the update rather than the end of the period covered by the trading update (which have lead to misunderstandings about the trading performance, certainly on my part, during the period in question and erroneous assumptions being made; this is important if you are looking to get ahead of the herd and spot potential upturns/downturns). I've given up on Imogen actually telling us anything straight. Even in the last FY25 results she couldn't resist over egging the KPIs in the smart manufacturing business. There were undoubtedly some positives, I can't deny that, but the headline were, IMHO, deliberately misleading (little, or no, attempt was made to caveat the KPI figures as they should have been).

What a pity and there was me thinking that you'd be riding off into the sunset to spend all your gains but I guess you need to hang around to start actually earning some gain on your newly invested money, not just parring off the losses on your original investment. Can't have it both ways.

Don't know much about FE myself.

From what I read/understood before its demise it mainly catered to high end customers from small stores within the M25 (it was very much about personal, one-to-one service; a "store for snobs" in layman's terms who wouldn't be seen dead with the "common riff-raff"). I'm not sure how well its top end tile range will translate into future online sales and/or store sales within the Topps group. I don't see FE's typical customers now coming to Topps; I think they'll instead seek out alternate, boutique retailers who specialise in personal, one-to-one service.

However, we've paid £3m for £2.5m of stock plus the brand, IP and website. Even if we end up having to knock out the stock at cost, the downside is minimal. On the flipside, we've denied another competitor the opportunity to muscle in and can leverage our existing warehousing and distribution chain to sell into a potentially niche but profitable market. All in all, I think it could be a nice little earner that might, over time, easily add £5m-£10m to our annual sales without necessitating any major additional operating or investment costs.

PS. Not sure that your CTD expectations are quite correct. CTD had a trading loss of £1.7m in FY25, so getting to breakeven (they actually expect CTD to move into profit in FY26) won't necessarily, of itself, generate an additional £5m of cashflow (profit does not necessarily equate to cash). That said, albeit that there might be some additional one-off costs that fall into FY26 (acquisitions are rarely clean cut), they did incur c£5m of non-recurring costs on the CTD acquistion in FY25 that wouldn't be expected to recur in FY26 and subsequent years.

Change of currency took effect this morning and as a result the shares have ceased to be quoted in GB pence and are now being quoted in US dollars, thus explaining the massive share price drop i.e. the share price has gone from c10,318.50p (or £103.185) to c$141.60. The prevailing exchange rate is currently c$1.34 to the £1. So, the shares have, in fact, appreciated in value by c2.4% thus far today.

Given the positive FY26 results, increased dividend and initial share price improvement towards 50p it was a bit of a surprise to see the share price dropping back towards 40p.

As you say, I'm not expecting fireworks but I am expecting to continue see some steady LfL revenue improvement.

However, I wouldn't be totally surprised if EBIT disappoints because the prospect of increased seasonal costs, NIC and NMW (we already know that increases in NIC and NMW are in the offing from the previous year) are likely to negatively impact the comparatives and would require more than low single digit increases in revenue and/or gross profit margin to offset. That said, I still think that any decline in Q1 EBIT would still remain recoverable later in the year unless the economy dives.

Maybe if they announced they were looking to start smart manufacturing in space :-)

Not sure the recent price improvement is the start of a sustained upwards trend but I do believe that FY26 is going to be pivotal. Either we start to see improvement in motion capture and clear evidence of sustainable LfL 10%+ growth (large, new orders will be key) or Imogen should be out.

I also wouldn't completely write-off the prospect of Vicon being put on the chopping block (the prospect of a new plan has made me wary). If Imogen begins to think that she can't turnaround the demise at Vicon that she's overseen, selling off the unit to someone who can might be her next best option. I'm not advocating a sale but a sale would be preferable to death by a thousand cuts.

Come on Imogen. No more hyperbole and messing around with KPIs to try and hide faltering performance. Let's actually see some action, positive momentum and real proof of concept for once!

Personally can't wait for 57p to see you disappear off into the sunset. I'll even congratulate you. Anything to see the back of someone who can't even understand basic maths and refuses to accept that others see things differently to him (rightly or wrongly). We own this company and that does not mean that we have to meekly accept the drivel this management team have fed us the last two years. You say nobody likes to lose money but then defend to the hilt the management team that got us into this mess. You are totally deluded. TTTFN. See you at 57p at some point in the future, maybe.

Chelsea, When are you actually going to learn to read rather than simply calling people by childish names?! I've actually answered your question repeatedly but you seem incapable of grasping the essential, but very simple, difference between money already invested (sunk cost) and new investment. It's actually possible to have different investment criteria for the two. For the former I'm trying to recoup all or part of my losses whilst for the latter I'm trying to assess where I can get the best overall return. The timeframe for the former may be many years (I'm a patient investor, but that doesn't mean that I have to accept inept management and hope for the best) whereas the timeframe for the latter may only take a matter of weeks, months or a few years.

Now, if you think that the OMG share price is going to double over the next 12 months pray tell. Personally, I'll be glad to see the back of you when the share price eventually reaches 57p when you'll serenely sale off into that blissful sunset convincing yourself (and nobody else who can actually do the maths) that you've "recouped your original investment", whilst all the time ignoring the simple fact that you've made "llareggub" on your new investment for however long it's been invested in OMG! Meanwhile, I'll have recouped part of my original investment whilst, hopefully, earning a better return on my new investment money elsewhere.

I've mentioned a few shares recently (FTC, ONWD, PEB, SSIT) not by way of recommendation but simply because I thought there might be a couple of grown up investors on this bb who might like to check them out and make up their own minds as to whether they might be worthy of consideration for investment. Nothing more. Nothing less. Personally, I've been invested in both FTC and PEB for 5+ years (as I say, I can be a patient investor) and my original reasons for investing were quite different from most current new investors reasons. I'm not currently invested in either ONWD or SSIT but they interest me, as they might anybody else who has an interest in long-term investing. By all means pooh-pooh them if you wish; normal financial metrics might not support their current share prices but newer/younger investors tend to be more driven by asperation rather than finanical metrics these days and sometimes no good comes from trying to swim against the current. Having said that, I fully accept that the wheel may turn; that's investing for you.

One final point. Rightly or wrongly the space sector appears to be a very "hot sector" at the moment (the potential SpaceX IPO is only fuelling the buzz) and I don't believe it does any harm, whilst we await OMG's hopeful share price recovery in due course, to draw other investors attention to a couple shares (FTC and SSIT) that are currently riding that "wave" if they'd be interested. Caveat emptor etc.

Chelsea, Imogen is not the company; please try to learn to distinguish. I appreciate that you are Imogen's number one cheerleader (you get out your pom-poms at every opportunity) but the financial results under her tenure over the last two years have been nothing short of disasterous. Yet you still see fit to try and defend her at every possible turn? That's "twisted"! To add insult to injury the Board has seen fit to give her, and her sidekick, a load of new LTIPs with NO performance-related targets; it's a farce! We own this company and this Board needs to be held accountable for their actions, or their lack of them.

I've seen absolutely nothing over the last two years to warrant me risking investing even more money in OMG; I'm simply trying to recoup as much of my original investment as I can. As I've said repeatedly, averaging down does not recoup the money I've lost on my original investment. Why is that so hard for you to understand?

On balance, I currently think I can better returns on any new money invested elsewhere. I'd accept that if I'd invested on 13 October when the share price hit 38.5p then the return, on my new investment, to the end of the year wouldn't be looking too shabby but any new money invested wouldn't have changed the return on my old investment one iota and on 13 October I was more afraid that the share price might still have even further to fall!

I'm "bad mouthing" Imogen because she fully deserves it. Grow up!

As regards the company's future prospects, I'm yet to be convinced that it'll be anything other more than a small player in the smart manufacturing sector (it's dwarfed by the likes of Siemens and Honeywell) and it remains to be seen whether they can grow SM revenues and adjusted EBIT at a faster rate than they've been losing them at Vicon over the last two years (they may have replaced the lost revenues at Vicon by acquistion but that has come at a cash cost). Last year's SM results were interesting but it was difficult to discern the wood for the trees (the quoted KPI percentages were, for the most part, meaningless because we didn't have full year comparatives for Sempre).

However, I actually await the FY26 results with great interest (as I've said before). I want to see real, long-term traction and confirmation that OMG is actually starting to make a difference to the SM businesses they acquired i.e. growing revenues by more than pre-acqusition levels and delivering the economies of scale that one might expect when you start consolidating businesses in the same sector, not just cobbling together a loose assortment of SM businesses to add extra overhead and run as they were before. It's probably too much to expect all of this in FY26 but we should at least be starting to see the real direction of travel.

It also goes without saying that I expect to see significant improvement in the motion capture business. We can't have a repeat of the last two years.

That may well be (personally I'm no longer sure) but revenues have fallen from c£44m to c£32m (c24%) in the last two years! That's the cold hard fact.

FY23 was effectively Nick Bolton's last year in charge; he stepped down at the end of FY23 and Imogen took charge on 01 October 2023.

It's been downhill ever since and, personally, I think the decline at Vicon's revenues warrants a bit more explanation from Imogen than we've been getting to date. The 5-year plan was to increase sales to over £70m and Imogen has failed to do that by a wide margin and yet the Board thinks that her performance to date warrants her being given LTIPs without any performance-related targets (she's probably pleased with that). You couldn't make it up if you tried.

I'm not pessimistic about OMG per se. I think that OMG could still be a great company (again) under new leadership. I have seen nothing to date that suggests that Imogen is capable of turning this ship around but, if she does, I will be first to say so (albeit I will still question how we managed to get to this juncture in the first place).

IMHO the jury is still out on whether cobbling together a few smart manufacturing acquisitions will be a success. The standalone businesses appear to have been growing at c5-10% before they were acquired and, given the normal gestation period for new contracts to come to fruition, it's quite possible/probable that much of the groundwork required to secure the new contracts announced in March 2025 was done before we acquired IVS. More new contracts and LFL growth comfortably in excess of 10% in FY26 (as suggested by Zoe in the recent Investor Presentation) would go some way to proving the concept.

That all happened under Nick Bolton's tenure; Imogen has yet to win her spurs (and at the moment I don't think she has what it takes).

As I say, I've voted not to re-elect any of them to register my protest (I don't expect the motion to be carried) at how badly this company has been run for the last 2-3 years, in which time Imogen has ducked and weaved, preferring to hide behind fictions rather than address the real elephant in the room (Vicon).

The touting of the smart manufacturing perfomance in the last set of results was shameful and embarrassing. Yes, there was an improvement in the LfL performance of IVS because of the 3 new contracts announced in March 2025 but the rest was just smoke and mirrors.

I'm not so sure that Vicon won't be put on the chopping block (given that they are proposing a new 3-year plan even before their failed 5-year plan has even expired). Smart manufacturing (the sideshow) seems to be Imogen's main focus now and they have consistently glossed over the poor performance of Vicon (it wasn't performing well before Trump took up the presidency).

As for the LTIPs, pigs at the trough come to mind.

Chelsea, I've been looking at SSIT for at least 6 months and have owned FTC since mid-September 2020 (currently verging on a 20 bagger with more to come I believe). Any dummy can choose to stick their head in the sand but the fact is that in the last 6-12 months OMG has not looked like a better investment than either of those two shares and I haven't invested in either of them (I probably would have invested in SSIT if I wasn't primarily investing for dividend income these days).

Paying Peter to pay Paul is a stupid strategy. You could have invested in many shares offering better prospects than OMG in the last 6-12 months and used the profits on those shares to offest your original losses on OMG. You can call me whatever names you choose, but averaging down doesn't change the fact that you are still sitting on a loss on your original investment and "hiding it" doesn't change that self-evident truth.

As I've said multiple times, I decide each and every new investment on its merits alone; I don't simply average down because I've got no better strategy for trying to recoup my previous losses. OMG has looked like a bad investment for the last 6-12 months (apart from a few low points when it might have looked oversold) because this management team doesn't seem to have any strategy for turning around the, once highly profitable, motion capture business and, for the most part, has chosen to stay shtum about what ails the motion capture business whilst bragging about the performance of the recently acquired smart manufacturing businesses (most of whose "astounding" LfL results can be simply explained by the timing of the acquisitions and the onboarding of historic, repeat business with no prior year OMG comparatives).

Wouldn't be their first.

Below is a list of their subsidiaries (including their place of business and % ownership), excluding any wholly owned investment holding subsidiaries, as at 31 March 2025:

United Glass Group UK 73.8%

Integrum Care Group UK 50.0%

Creo-tech Industrial Group Canada 99.9%

Intec Business Solutions UK 100%

MQL (formerly Miriad Products) UK 49.9%

Trimite Global Coatings UK 100%