Member Info for TheTrotsky

Muggins, The RNS does say in the opening paragraph "DeepVerge plc (AIM: DVRG) subsidiary Modern Water, announces new orders worth £2.1 million using All Membrane Brine Concentration (AMBC) technology ...". so I don't think that there can be any doubt that the £2.1m is DVRG's share of the revenues.

That said, I wholly agree with you about GB on Twitter. He can't release price sensitive information without first releasing an RNS; so, instead, he speculates and generalises and people start reading hsi Twitter feed as gospel - it's not! Instead, it's the musings of a CEO who's time would be far better spent working with his CFO to sort out his company's lacklustre financial reporting ;-)

Hi Smeeno,

The £6.5m is orders (of which I believe only £4.4m equate to H1) from China, Middle East and North Africa. I'm afraid that H1 orders are highly unlikely to equate to H1 sales (there's always an inevitable time lag between the receipt of an order and equipment being despatched and installed).

As regards STC, I think you are getting ahead of yourself. Firstly, there were only 1,500 members when the 82% uptake rate was quoted in the RNS on 21 February (as far as I'm aware there has been no subsequent updates; I suspect that the uptake is still high but a continuing 82% uptake rate is not guaranteed). Secondly, if we do assume that 82% of the 27,000 members at the end of June, i.e. c22,000 members, had purchased on the website that would equate to an average spend of £45 each. On a gross sales basis, that does not sound wholly unreasonable but on a commission basis that sounds excessive; if we are receiving (say) 10% commission that would equate to an average spend of £450 (that's a lot of moolah to initially pay before you are certain of the results). If we are receiving (say) 25% commission that would equate to an average spend of £180; not impossible but a very steep commission rate. I appreciate that a lot of these products are expensive and my figures ignore potential repeat orders but until we have clearer guidance from DVRG I don't think it's safe to assume that the £1m quoted is necessarily our income (unless we are retailing and fulfilling orders from stocks that we hold). As I say, I think STC has great potential but we need to be cautious about its actual revenues to date until DVRG releases its financials.

Where do you get £6.5m from? They haven't announced their H1 (or Q2) results yet. If it's £6.5m, as you suggest, then I think we are going to struggle to hit our £24m target sales for the current financial year. I think we really need to be closer to £8m.

By my reckoning, Modern Water announced £8m of equipment orders in H1 and these orders ought to be delivered by year end (albeit that income arising from leasing orders will be spread over the 5-year lease term), and have since announced an additional £3.5m of orders in July/August but it becomes increasingly less likely that these orders will be delivered by year end the later in H2 the orders arise (we might be able to meet some of the orders out of equipment stock but I suspect that new production facility is not yet ahead of the curve).

Personally, I think that people have misinterpreted the £1m STC market place sales figure. Look at the number of customers and do the maths; I don't think that £1m was our share of the income (I think it's gross sales not our commission). I'd gladly be wrong but until we see the H1 financials we'll be none the wiser (and even then we probably won't be any wiser because we probably won't have the detail to know how much income STC is actually generating). STC has great growth potential but I'm currently doubtful that it will have a material impact on our target income for the current year (£1m of net income would be good). As I say, I'd be glad to be proven wrong.

Mike, It will be all or nothing. The consolidation will require the issue of new shares; you can't have a mix of new and old shares in issue.

Was there any explanation given for the fall in the consenus forecast?

I had to renew my daughter's car insurance a month or so ago and the best deal I could find for her was with Churchill (DLG). AV was significantly more expensive. At first sight this may appear a bad omen but when you consider the problems DLG now finds itself in, it does perhaps suggest that AV has not been chasing business at any price and has been applying better pricing discipline in the face of rising costs. Unusually, both Admiral and Hastings were also a fair bit more expensive than DLG, which might suggest that DLG's problems are perhaps worse than some of its major competitors.

H1 results should be interesting. I'm not sure that AV's insurance-related problems are going to be as bad as DLG's. Just my hunch.

Realist, Blanc is not responsible for what happened in the past, only for what happens in the future. She can't just click her fingers and magic up a 400%+ increase in market value! Also, have you actually paused to consider that some of the "fault" here lies with world stock markets rather than the sector (AV is not the only insurer that has seen a significant fall in its share price). Income shares have generally fallen out of favour in preference for growth shares. I don't have any figures but I doubt that AV and its ilk would have been trading on 7%+ yields 17 years ago. Blanc has successfully cleared the decks and we should now at least give her the opportunity to show whether she can now grow the remaining businesses.

The share price has been clobbered a bit of late because AV has chosen not to issue any trading statement (unlike LGEN) in advance of its H1 results. Personally, I'm going to wait and see what the results hold. I may be wrong but I don't think Blanc is the type to be panicked into playing to the gallery and releasing trading statements just because the market is in a panic.

The AV and NWG consolidations are like chalk and cheese.

The AV consolidation didn't necessarily have any benefits for UK shareholders (unless they held their shareholdings outside ISAs/SIPPs in which case capital gains tax treatment might have been more beneficial than income tax treatment) but was definitely beneficial for overseas shareholders (particularly US shareholders). AV has a duty to all its shareholders, not just its UK shareholders who still choose to ignore AV's business rationale and continue to whinge, to try and help minimise the tax impact for ALL its shareholders (particularly when it's distributing c25% of its market value pre-distribution).

The NWG special dividend is significantly smaller than the AV distribution (at c7% of its pre-announcement share price) and the consolidation appears to be purely cosmetic. Like AV, NWG seems to be proposing to maintain its future dividend pot (at c40% of attributable distributable profits) which should mean that following consolidation the dividends per share should be increased pro-rata e.g. if NWG was forecast to pay (say) £1 per old share and there is now (say) a 4:5 consolidation (4 new shares for every 5 old shares) then we should expect NWG to be forecast to pay £1.20 per new share after consolidation; so the consolidation does not appear to be aimed at reducing its future dividend payments. The consolidation therefore seems to be purely aimed at trying to keep NWG's share price at, or around, the same level pre and post special dividend; I'm not sure what economic/business benefit is derived from this and it seems to be fairly cosmetic IMHO.

Bristolcupid, Thanks for pointing out that 29 August is a Bank Holiday. It makes sense now.

The ex-dividend date for the special dividend doesn't make sense. The RNS says that "... the special dividend is expected to be paid on 16 September 2022 to shareholders on the register on 26 August 2022. The ex-entitlement date for the special dividend will be 30 August 2022". The record date (26 August) would normally be expected to follow the ex-dividend date (30 August), not precede it. In principle you could sell the share on 29 August cum-dividend and still receive the dividend!

Tinker, Are you sure that the share price was 289.7p on 21 July last year? I bought AV at 347p in February last year and I don't recollect that holding ever being in the red. Yahoo appears to indicate that the closing pirce on 21 July last year was 387.70p per old share (equivalent to 510.13p per new share before adjusting for the special dividend) which sounds about right to me.

AllAtSea, I'm afaid that your figures are also "all at sea". All of the comparative new share prices ignore the return of capital (so you're not comparing apples with apples).

For example, Yahoo quotes the effective closing price per new share on 13 May 2022 as 537.11p whereas the actual closing price per old share was 408.20p; Yahoo has recalculated the closing price per new share by dividing the actual closing price per old share by 76%. However, this overlooks the act that a special dividend (the return of capital) of 101.69p per old share was paid on 16 May 2022 (equivalent to 133.80p per new share).

Yahoo does quote an adjusted share price of 435.42p per new share (537.11p - 101.69p) on 13 May 2022 but I believe this is actually a complete misnomer. I believe the correct adjusted price should be 403.31p per new share (537.11p - 133.80p). As proof, assume that you held 1,000 shares at the close on 13 May 2022. The actual share price was 408.20p per old share, so your 1,000 shares would have been worth £4,082. Deduct the £1,016.90 special dividend payable on 16 May 2022 and your old shares would then have been worth £3,065.10. Divide this by 760 new shares and you arrive at an adjusted share price of 403.30 per new share.

So, if you want to compare today's share price with the share price 12 months ago you'd need to deduct 133.80p from the comparative share price 12 months ago. For example, Yahoo tells me that the equivalent closing price on 22 July 2021 was 509.61p per new share which equates to 375.81p (509.61p - 133.80p). AV is currently trading at 393.90p per new share. So, by arithmetic, AV is actually up c4.8% year on year, not down 22.73%. The figures quoted by Halifax are garbage (it's a sad case of garbage in garbage out I'm afraid). That said, the share price growth is still disappointing all things considered.

PS. Where do you get revenues of £248m from? AV made a profit on £2bn last financial year!

Only a fool would accept £20m. DVRG are not a forced seller. They are capacity constrained. It would be better to dial back the rate of expansion than to sell Labskin on the cheap. A JV or, perhaps, a strategic investement, either in DVRG or, maybe, a Labskin subsidiary might be on the cards, but no more.

The Daily Mail recommendation appears to be an article from 8 July, so I don't think that's been the source of today's rise. There does appear to have been a Tower Mount Amplifiers Market Report (2020) added to a repository in the last 24 hours which identifies FTC as one of the key players in the rapidly growing market but I'm not sure that's the source of today's rise either (it's behind a heftily priced paywall). There has also been a Base Station Antenna Market Insights 2022 report released in the last 24 hours which again identifies Filtronic as key player in the rapidly growing market but again I'm not sure that's the source of today's rise either (it's also behind a heftily priced paywall).

I haven't been able to find any other news released on the web in the last 24 hours that would have caused today's rise.

Interesting times.

If you combined DLG and AV, they'd control over 20% of the UK car insurance market and are both amongst the top five house insurers. They'd never get clearance even if their was a commercial rationale.

There appears to be a large seller that is currently depressing the share price. The results were excellent and, despite the current global economic headwinds, I think that SOS should meet, if not exceed, current year market expectations by just increasing its available ranges with John Lewis, Next, M&S and Very but then I think it starts to get tougher. There's only so much additional growth that can be achieved by adding to their existing ranges with their third party customers. The Times summed it up nicely last week; SOS is the best women's brand nobody has ever heard of (women either love SOS or simply haven't heard of them yet). There is still significant scope for SOS to increase their UK customer base and increase sales on their own website but increasing their ranges with third party partners can be a two-edged sword (customers won't need to go to SOS's own website if the full range is available elesewhere). They seem to have developed an effective, relatively low cost marketing approach but the flipside is that it isn't delivering thousands of new customers every week; it's a slow burn. I'm not saying that they should change their current approach (it's financially savvy) but it does mean that SOS may not be able to ratchet up the new customers it will need to maintain existing sales growth and offset the likely reduction in average spend as the current inflationary pressures begin to bite.

It would be interesting to know who the other potential UK third party partner might be. In response to a question raised in their market presentation they said that there was one more potential UK third party partner they might consider. ASOS? Given ASOS's existing online presence in EMEA and USA, ASOS might prove to be a good partner with whom to launch their initial overseas expansion down the road (none of SOS's current partners have the same worldwide coverage).

It hardly benefits us (long suffering) shareholders for DeepVerge to offload Labskin just when it's starting to realise its long term potential. Also, becoming a simple adjunct of Unilever would be counter productive; just testing and selling Unilever products would significantly reduce the market opportunity. A sale would not be anybody's best interests. A joint venture would however be worth considering if Labskin could maintain its independence

A total market over reaction which is par for the course. Trading and IPO income is down but fixed income is set to recover (there is an inevitable time lag between cash coming off old deposit rate deals and being put onto new, higher desposit rate deals). The end of the world isn't yet nigh ;-)

If only first quarter revenues had come in at £104m, we'd all be in clover ;-)

Unfortunately this contract solves nothing. Tekmar is still running out of cash and without a buyer, a fresh injection of capital and/or additional loan financing it will not be able fulfill any of its new contracts.

Frasers paid 2pps on 29 June