Member Info for tomglan

That is for you to decide.

donotpanic, are you not concerned that management are talking about typos in their most recent reports concerning $100ms? Not trying to put you off but want to understand your mindset.

hxxps://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/business/plus500-may-have-misled-shareholders-over-losses-n8cmxsrqw

Skeletor another Times article for you, they seem to be copying what I'm posting on here (but a few days late). Be very careful here, I don't think this management is worthy of trust.

Good luck Tom. Personally I think the FCA need to look into why the $103m market loss has only just been reported for 2017 and not sooner? A lot of founders shares were sold last year at around the £15-16 mark and management must have known but kept it quiet. I've looked and looked but can find no mention in the 2017 accounts or prospectus. I thought the whole idea was that these documents give a true representation of the company?!

hxxps://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/pressure-on-plus500-spreads-to-market-listing-prospectus-hqs89c59r?shareToken=c4fa26d267f568854acf5e3c9096a62e

Skeletor there is news buddy, check the times article on PLUS. They have mislead investors about the true nature of their revenues. They neglected to include mention a $103m P&L loss in 2017 until now. They could have used the prospectus or 2017 accounts to make investors aware of this but were too busy offloading the founders shares. Good luck.

Hi Nickel, I'm talking about P&L gains/losses which is basically from PLUS being the other side of unhedged successful/unsuccessful trades and therefore making a non-recurring gain or loss. My issue is that I've only just found out this was -$103m for 2017 and I couldn't find it disclosed in the prospectus or 2017 report.

Posted this in a few places and am yet to receive a satisfactory answer. Going to post it here in case it helps someone or someone can explain it for me. So in the 2017 annual report the company stated "In 2017, as in 2016 and 2015, the Company did not generate net revenues or losses from market P&L" but then reported in 2018 "Total P&L gain in 2018 of $172 million (FY 2017: loss of $103 million);". Liberum also stated that the $103m loss was mentioned in the prospectus but I couldn't find it anywhere. There looks like a mismatch of figures here, from what I can tell the loss for 2017 hadn't been reported until now, although I may be wrong. I don't know how to value a company if I can't be sure what revenues/losses are one-off due to market losses/gains. It also makes me doubt management if they can't be trusted to report the figures transparently. Happy for another poster to tear this apart though.

Don't forget Patisserie Valerie which had its accounts with a net cash position of £30m signed off by Grant Thornton LLP last year. In actuality they had a net debt of £10m due to hidden overdrafts which they likely used to fund the puny dividend. Irrespective of the fraud investors were still willing to pay 22 times earnings for a tea and cake shop during a high street slow down. Let's hope PLUS with its efficient marketing engine and 100% payout ratio can command a 10 PE multiple soon, eh? Fingers crossed for results tomorrow. ATB

I stopped trusting the Ferrexpo management in 2015 when $174m of shareholders money was 'lost' when Bank F&C went insolvent. This bank was controlled by Ferrexpo’s largest shareholder Kostyantin Zhevago. Now today I'm reading these 'unexplained discrepancies' when I came across an interesting titbit "Last August, Ferrexpo informed the market that a $16.3m payment to Blooming Land from a subsidiary of tire company Rosava Group was repaid using funds subsequently received from the miner, and should have been disclosed as a related party transaction. Rosava is controlled by chief executive Kostyantin Zhevago." (source; investors chroneicle). It looks to me like the oligarch CEO, Kostyantin Zhevago, is taking you shareholders for fools and milking the company for his own benefit. Any others have thoughts on this? Personally I was happy to get out at break even but I must admit I left some money on the table with this company. ATB

Why? Tobacco out of favour, menthol ban spooked investors, high debt due to Reynolds acquisition, slightly stronger pound, rising interests rates makes bond proxy stocks (i.e. tobacco) less appealing... there's loads of reasons. Having said that this could be the buy of the decade if things turn out OK for tobacco going forward.

Volcano you should have received that amount back with the last dividend ;-)

I didn't think much of the new CEO on the call, she'd been there 3 months but it felt like 3 minutes by the way she was talking about the business. However she showed the shorters who's boss by buying £100k worth for a quick 10% discount and now the price is back above the level prior to the update. CEO 1 - Shorters Nil

I thought at the time those swooping in to buy shares at 50p were a bit silly - sorta like giving a mugger your phone when he only asked for your wallet. In a just world the directors would be held accountable for this. Maybe Mr Johnson was too busy making political donations towards Brexit to do his job properly? I suppose most of the investors were institutional holders i.e. pensions of ordinary people so this loss will be absorbed into slightly lower fund returns. However as an individual investor this makes me even more wary of companies with 'too good to be true' numbers, apart from that this was pretty much impossible to second-guess. Unless those that allowed this to happen are punished something like this will happen again. Guaranteed.

I’m with iWeb (part of Halifax group) and they convert from USD into GBP inside my stocks & shares ISA. Takes them a couple of days after the payment date for it to be sorted out usually.

Could you please explain how the certificate process works in a bit more detail? Currently I receive 75% of the dividend inside my ISA account with my broker. I then reclaim 10% via ESOP due to the double tax treaty the UK has with Israel. These funds get wired to my bank account which is unfortunately outside of the ISA tax wrapper. I assume the remaining 15% is lost. Thanks

VIX spiking up to 20 during a day of big market moves. BATS down 10%+, AMD, TSLA and most of the US market taking a dump too. We also have Brexit rumbling on and Trump tweeting like it's going out of fashion. All this volatility is very good for Plus - as per extract from Q3 report "Since the end of the quarter Plus500 has seen the return of higher volatility across asset classes, and consequently stronger trading." If VIX stays elevated for the remaining months of this quarter we could see bumper revenue as we now have 38%+ of EEA revenues not impacted by ESMA (Q3 report) combined with the 30% rest of world which was never affected. Maybe this volatility has convinced a few more eligible customer to jump through the requisite hoops too... who knows. Anyway, looking forward to a chunky dividend ($1.3786) paid next week and hoping for a strong finish to the year come Feb. ATB

Looks like $10m set aside for buyback has a trigger price of sub £13. This seems to have put a floor under the share price for the time being. These are my calculations for leftover cash for the FY: cash from H1 ($261m profit - $157m div = $104m leftover) and assuming the $10m buyback is spent and $40m net profit for Q4 (believe Q3 was somewhere around $35m based on EBITDA margin). This should result in approx. $170m of cash eligible for payout at end of year. Assuming a 100% payout of the excess as dividend then this works out at just under £1 per share (including the DWT reclaim) or about 7.7% of the current share price. I'd guess Q4 will be better than Q3 due to the higher number of EPC clients and the recent volatility we have been experiencing. The saxo numbers (CFD competitor to Plus) also look encouraging for October. ATB

Valuation reduced? Surely it’s completely univestable if you can’t trust the numbers, auditors, management or directors? It is for me anyway.

Just suggested to IR that they restart the buyback program. There was almost $200m cash leftover on the balance sheet in H1 after subtracting both declared dividends being paid. That cash would go a long way in hoovering up some of these shares that people are now willing to sell for £12 each (as opposed to £20 a few months ago). These figures obviously ignore the cash generation since the H1 results were reported, most of which is generated outside of the reach of the new ESMA regulations. Obviously the worse-than-expected results from IG and CMC has negatively impacted the sector. The overall market has been weak as of late as well. I think both these factors explain the large drop and neither have convinced me to dispose of my holding. We will see on Oct 23rd whether Plus has effectively dealt with the regulations or if they are struggling too. ATB