Member Info for W13Ken

Fingers crossed kat, I'm still massively down. Incidentally, it's annoying that you can't edit typos but if I make them in subject names I report my own post (as being an illiterate idiot) and they normally take down the original in a few minutes.

We know John Lewis has gone but what will be new apart from Sainsbury's?

My guess is we'll hear more about the new partnership with Freemans (30 million unique visitors visit the brand’s direct to consumer website annually). Freemans scrapped their catalogue of 118 years and went all digital last month, they have launched a new "Made You look" TV campaign and there are a growing list of Sosandar items on their website.

If we hear more about the international rollout then a likely candidate could be Freemans owner, Otto GmbH. They are a German mail order company and one of the world's biggest e-commerce companies.

Half Year Trading Update on Wed 18th October.

The SOS shareprice has been massively negatively affected since the release of BOO's interim results on 3rd Oct. BOO's LFL revenue was down 17% and EBITDA was down 12%.

This has led to a shareprice drop since then of 4% for BOO (you could argue it was mostly priced in after an extended fall) but 17.4% for SOS! Now, I can't claim to be impartial here but that does seem to be a huge overreaction, given the different markets that the companies target and their customers' relative spending power.

I expect there to be a good bounceback on decent results (July's FY presentation said there had been a strong start to the financial year), hence I topped up earlier this week. The board have cleverly built a strong brand without throwing caution to the wind and that should continue. Unlike some other AIM companies they didn't duck out of 20 minutes of questions in their last investor presentation.

Full Year presentation video:

hTTps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xruP3r1t3M

No probs Gettingthere. The summary and Insights letter was pretty good, which is encouraging as I feel comms have not been a strength of MV in the past.

Investor presentations have also lacked energy and a compelling message so this Friday's Investor Meet call will be a chance to see if this has been addressed. Joining Martin Davis are Edel Coen, Principal, and portfolio companies CausaLens, ICEYE, and Gardin. This sounds like a necessary shake-up after a grim period for GROW shares.

IQGeo Group win an €8.6m (£7.4m) network mgmt contract with a Tier1 national utility and broadband operator in Southern Europe. The acquisition of Comsof last year has really helped open up the EMEA market for new business.

#1 in my portfolio and a conviction hold for me.

https://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/news/1028160/iqgeo-wins-competitive-tender-with-major-european-broadband-operator-1028160.html

I suspect this is Telecom Italia in partnership with Open Fiber.

https://telecoms.com/515552/tim-and-open-fiber-pick-up-e3-4-billion-in-broadband-funding/#:~:text=Italian%20telcos%20TIM%20and%20Open,uneconomic%20areas%20of%20the%20country.

"Open Fiber says its grey area rollouts will encompass around 3.3 million households across the nine regions."

Italy, Open Fiber, Fixed Broadband

https://www.commsupdate.com/articles/2022/09/30/open-fiber-begins-grey-area-fibre-rollouts/

Nice post Sang.

Hopefully you can see the second Insights newsletter here:

https://mailchi.mp/molten.vc/insights-september2023

The TU will cover H1 to the end of September and with their clothes only in-store from 24th Sept it will be a little early to report on trading but they can confirm if the everything is in place.

There should definitely still be a TU in Oct

Reassuring update I'm happy to say. A few grabbed facts:

* 450+ Telecom & Utility customers

* 100k+ Global users

* Only company offering software that covers the Plan, Build & Operate phases

* 52 staff in Sales & Marketing, 32 of which are in North America. In EMEA we also have sales partners that let us connect with customers in different languages.

* New/expansion customers include NEC, telecomegypt, Manitoba Hydro, US Navy & telenet

* Lots on Network Manager editions and how it opens up possibilities to recruit companies of all sizes

* Question asked about how do IQGeo recruit Tier 1 companies: Not easy to convert them over but a key point is getting pilot launches. Once a pilot is established then there's a confidence that it will be a success and business will follow

* I asked about whether they now felt they had the right team in place given heavy recruitment and they mentioned the new CTO and confidence in the Mgmt team. Additional recruitment would be for support staff if needed

I've averaged down with a decent buy at 58p today. Still some way to go to breakeven though so hope the news stays positive.

I'm a long-term GROW holder but thankfully have resisted buying on the way down until now. I've just bought a fair chunk at 227p and 229p this morning and even though my ISA average is still above 400p I feel we're not far off a low, discount to NAV is appealing and more positive noises on IPOs have started. Having said that, IPOs that have not gone well have been a stick to beat GROW with so private off-market sales would be welcomed.

A huge portfolio has been accumulated but we need to offload some successful acquisitions to show that winners are being found and the model is working.

The AGM was by the book and it was stated that no questions on future outlook could be answered. There were no questions. Last year they arranged a trading update in October so that might happen.

It should be tomorrow (Tuesday).

Should be an interesting update and this looks to be an exciting period for growth.

We know from the Trading update that these are great results and we've got the following positives:

* The launch of staged and scalable versions of the Network manager software (Insight, Professional, Enterprise)

* A new SaaS-savvy CTO

* Major client AT&T speaking at an upcoming IQGeo conference in Denver

* Brightspeed saying that “Without the IQGeo software, Brightspeed would have needed to deploy over 30 separate tools and functions to share important network data across all our teams.”

My average price is 136p and it's approx 25% of my portfolio now but will hold as long as possible. Wouldn't want a takeover for under £500m market cap.

"IQGeo is pleased to announce that that it will publish its interim results for the six months ended 30 June 2023 on 25 September 2023.

Richard Petti and Haywood Chapman will also provide a live presentation relating to the interim results via Investor Meet Company ("IMC") on 27 September 2022 at 1:00pm BST.

The presentation is open to all existing and potential shareholders. Questions can be submitted pre-event via your IMC dashboard up until 9am the day before the meeting or at any time during the live presentation.

Investors can sign up to Investor Meet Company for free and add to meet IQGeo via:

https://www.investormeetcompany.com/iqgeo-group-plc/register-investor

A mention for Sosandar in this Sainsbury's fashion hub article today. Also in the Times and Retail Week. It will be interesting to see Sosandar's in-store marketing as their CEO's advertising and marketing background is a strength.

Sainsbury’s launches third-party ‘fashion hubs’

https://www.drapersonline.com/insight/analysis/sainsburys-launches-third-party-fashion-hubs

Sosandar items available:

Sainsbury's: 143

Next: 2854! Wow, that's jumped up

M&S: 529

John Lewis: 355

JD Williams: 171

Very: 84

Re negative comments on the M&S site, I had a look and, of those items that have reviews, just over 8 pages of just over 10 have ratings of approx 4 stars or above and typically the lower ratings are from just 1 customer. I see that as pretty positive.

Sosandar have a wide range of clothes so not all of them are going to be hits. It's clear the SOS CEOs review data very closely. Badly selling or poorly reviewed items will disappear and best sellers will be prioritised.

I work in the City of London so it was about time that I'd start taking a closer look at City Pub Group's 16 London pubs. It's a tough job...

First off I peeked in at Daly's Wine Bar on the Strand. It was on the quiet side but most customers were eating. This was at about 2pm on a Thursday so I'll revisit after work on another occasion.

Next was The Nell Gwynne, a tiny characterful pub dating back hundreds of years that serves a number of real ales. It's just around the corner from The Adelphi Theatre on the Strand and although it was pretty busy with tourists, it doesn't take many to fill it.

Finally for today I stopped for a drink in the Bow Street Tavern opposite the main entrance of the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. This was my favourite place and there was a good mix of people eating and drinking. There are are 3 floors upstairs but going was temporarily discouraged due to a private function and renovation work on the first floor. I had a chat with Charlotte, who was running the pub and she kindly let me take a quick look upstairs after I mentioned I was a CPC shareholder. There are loads of nooks and crannies to explore on the other floors and a couple of nicely decorated function rooms (one of which was occupied) and a small roof terrace.

It's a really appealing popular place with good beer and it gets the Opera crowd in the evenings too. I asked whether Clive Watson ever visits and was told that he does and it's a good morale boost for the team.

There are a couple of other pubs that I'll visit in the coming weeks but good first impressions today. London was buzzing today so I'm optimistic for the half year results near 21st September and expect the shareprice to be nearer 100p than 85p after them.

Note also that a more active bb is available on A-d-v-f-n

Welcome Qd22. I put together a Twitter thread with a few points of interest on IQGeo a couple of months back that has some links worth following.

https://twitter.com/W13Ken/status/1664672861762486275?t=JjwS9VZ9asm7iuOHbyyRsQ&s=19

Another positive change since then is a relaunch of their key Network Manager tool in 3 editions, which means that smaller companies can buy into IQGeo tech at an earlier stage and upscale with their growth.

https://blog.iqgeo.com/why-one-size-doesnt-fit-all-when-it-comes-to-fiber-network-management?utm_campaign=Network_Manager_Telecom_editions_launch_Aug23&utm_content=260437873&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&hss_channel=tw-1068104573989109761

IQG is comfortably my #1 portfolio holding but I plan to hold them for the long term as I think the management is ambitious but well-run and their software is really challenging more established operators. More contracts should be coming soon to improve the Price to Sales ratio and breakeven is already on the cards.

Steph, I say this with the best intentions: I do worry a bit on your behalf that you may not be thinking rationally on GROW. I believe that you have 100% of your portfolio in GROW already and to actually remortgage seems a step too far.

I have a serious amount invested here and hope that we turn a corner soon but, given how they have performed for 2 years (78% down since Sept 2021) I have let it drop to 6th in my portfolio. I have personally experienced stocks suddenly find a serious accounting error and crash badly so I would worry about putting everything in here, no matter how undervalued they might appear to be. I hope you're right about GROW but I wouldn't put my house on it.

I missed this question but minusbat has answered just as I would have done. It's also heavily implied by Steve Brown in this short interview at about 50 seconds in.

https://youtu.be/fOMaY8ecxvw

This is a good one to tuck away for a few years...