claude reins
01 May 2018
Re: The Beaufort Saga Last comment very poetic Charlie. Did you make it up yourself? If so, you are wasted on investments!
charlie51
30 Apr 2018
Re: The Beaufort Saga That is Lord John Lee - a very astute investor. The upside compensation of 17000 clients at £50k a go is some £850M. I cannot see this sum being paid, but whatever figure the FSCS has to pay out it will be a real whack to the taxpayer. Lunacy prevails at the FCA - the taxpayer funded hovel of financial improvidence.
claude reins
30 Apr 2018
Re: The Beaufort Saga Heard about this at a meeting on Friday at Mello. I agree with you that it is outrageous that this sort of thing can go throuhg on the nod so to speak. At the meeting I attended there was a member of the House of Lords and he was putting down an urgent motion in the House to discuss just this. The Commons should be equally incensed if not more so, and the Treasury should be playing an active role, since the FCA seemingly are not.
charlie51
29 Apr 2018
The Beaufort Saga Not sure if many are aware of the ongoing saga on the administration of Beaufort, but if not then this may be of more than passing interest. For the avoidance of doubt I have no holdings with Beaufort. I believe what is going on affects just anyone who holds stocks in nominee accounts and the implications for the outcome of this could be profound. Never did I believe that ring-fenced share and cash accounts were not secure. My enquiries of professionals in the City show that most of them were unaware that the loopholes now being exploited by PWC existed.The tone of the letters from PWC are dictatorial and very much as if the power of the administrator is absolute. There is not a hint of contrition nor question as to their perceived right to take cash and shares that never belonged to the two Beaufort companies they are winding up.Surely, the FCA or the administrators should have immediately appointed another broker to take over the client accounts? They admit these are more or less complete and untouched. A number of companies expressed interest in doing just this. Quite why client portfolios are not in the care of another broker is unfathomable - other than it is clear that PWC, with the seeming complicity of the FCA, had decided on where they intended to get their staggering fees (upto £100M is mooted by them) from: the supposedly segregated client accounts.PWC have stated that anyone with a holding of more than £150,000 in cash and shares will probably have some of their assets (upto 40%) taken to pay for administrators fees and other costs. This would not be the case if the administrators were dealing with nearly all other kinds of companies. They would not be able to unilaterally raid the segregated assets of the innocent.Not only will Beaufort clients suffer - so too will the taxpayer. The FSCS will pay up to £50,000 to compensate or partially compensate most clients. There are some 17,000 of them. This is a huge, unnecessary bill for the taxpayer to pick up and is the result of ineptitude by the FCA from the outset. It represents staggering waste.The administrators propose appointing a committee of clients and have called a meeting to discuss this and other matters on May 10th. It should be an interesting session. Creditors and clients at the meeting may well reject the administrators’ proposals to take money and shares from clients’ accounts. Then PWC will have to go to court. This would delay proceedings further. Innocent clients will then have to wait even longer than the given date of September as the earliest month when they might be able to have what is rightfully theirs back under their control.The administrators must not be allowed to have their way. Segregation of assets is fundamental to the security, wellbeing and working of the private investor community and ultimately a significant part of the City and economy. To not respect it in the full and absolute raises issues with very wide and negative ramifications. Clients unwittingly placed faith in Beaufort and if this raid of value takes place then all trust from the private investor community in the sanctity of holding their investments in nominee accounts will be trashed - as possibly will be some of the utility of CREST. If the administrators get their way then for security reasons investors would be better off demanding paper certificates and holding these themselves – as a number already are.The reputation of the FCA is deservedly low. To have a body of such ineptitude playing a key role in an economy so dependent on the financial sector is a travesty. Should you feel strongly on this I urge you to write to your MP and please disseminate the issue wider.
charlie51
22 Apr 2018
Re: Dividend Yup - paid in as promised. Good to see. Here's to a healthy push up in the coming weeks. I would buy more at this level, but am overweight in this already.
aliwalsw11
20 Apr 2018
Re: Dividend Mine is showing in my Hargreaves Lansdown a/c
charlie51
20 Apr 2018
Dividend Anyone seen the dividend yet? Last time round was a real fiasco - and no matter the reason or fault does not reflect well on governance at XLM. Hopefully, no repeat this time round, but today is 20 April, the declared pay date, and nothing seen by me yet. And this hardly ranks as a complex issue.
gretel
20 Apr 2018
The IC say Buy today The IC have just today published their new AIM 100, the guide to the junior market. And in at no.57....[link] XLMediaIn 2017, investors began to overlook their concerns with XLMedia’s (XLM) Israeli heritage and its exposure to the loosely regulated gambling industry. Still, an enterprise value to adjusted cash profits valuation of 6.4 times looks stingy considering the group’s pace of growth. In 2018, revenues are forecast to rise 11 per cent even without accounting for the expected acquisitions in the cyber security and financial services space.Once XL emerges from its period of investment, there is great potential for profit growth to outpace that of revenue as more of its websites start to turn a profit. In 2017, only 10 per cent of the 2,300-strong portfolio was profitable. Not that the group’s current profitability is anything to complain about: operating margins in the publishing business currently stand at 80 per cent and they’re improving in the media business – where the group drives traffic to its partners’ websites – as XL increases its focus on quality customers. Buy."
freedom-thirty5
18 Apr 2018
Re: Stockopedia view Profit & Loss account I assume.
frusset
18 Apr 2018
Re: Stockopedia view What's a "balance sheet P&L account"? (Stockopedia's term)
freedom-thirty5
18 Apr 2018
Re: RNS: Director Share Purchase Hopefully. £50,000 is a lot of money to anyone, and unless something's wrong (for which there's no evidence or suggestion), the shares are very good value.
gretel
18 Apr 2018
Re: RNS: Director Share Purchase Great to see Ory buy another £50,000 of shares at 155p. Hopefully this is the upward turning point for the share price.
freedom-thirty5
18 Apr 2018
RNS: Director Share Purchase on 17 April 2018, Ory Weihs, Chief Executive Officer, purchased a total of 32,258 Ordinary Shares at a price of 155.0 pence per share. Following this purchase, Mr Weihs now has a total beneficial interest in 4,215,187 Ordinary Shares, representing 1.91% of the current issued share capital of the Company.[link]
IOMINVESTCOM
16 Apr 2018
Stockopedia view XLMedia (LON:XLM)Share price: 154.5p (-2%)No. of shares: 220 millionMarket cap: £340 millionAcquisition of leading UK Bingo comparison siteA reader in the comments has already done a bit of digging into this, and found the published 2016 accounts for Whichbingo Limited, owner of whichbingo.co.uk.Background: XL Media is the Israeli "performance marketing" group which we have occasionally covered in this report. Using its own content management system, it manages a wide range of websites and funnels its readers to gambling and credit card companies, sharing in the revenue they go on to generate for XLM's marketing clients.Today's announcement says that XL Media has bought the whichbingo.co.uk website. We can make a distinction between buying the website and buying the company. XL Media has not said that it bought the company.For what it's worth, the company reported £1.47 million in its balance sheet P&L account for 2016, up from £0.87 million the previous year. We don't have 2017 accounts and we don't have an income statement. Thanks to bestace for figuring this out.Whatever the merits of the deal, it's almost certainly going to be a very small piece in the puzzle given the £340 million market cap attached to XLM.As has been pointed out in the comments, today's deal was announced via RNS Reach. For anyone unfamiliar with this, RNS Reach announcements are "non-regulatory", which for our purposes means approximately the same thing as immaterial. It's for voluntary announcements by companies:RNS Reach is a high-profile investor communication service aimed at assisting listed and unlisted companies to distribute non-regulatory news releases such as marketing messages, corporate and product information into the public domain.So in summary - the strategic rationale for buying "whichbingo" is clear enough, but the deal is probably not material in relation to XLM as a whole.XL Media - ReviewLast September, I said that XLM was probably a fine opportunity, with the shares priced a tad below 140p.Since then, they flew up to 220p before returning to their current level.Operating income announced last month was up by 33%, and the Board printed an optimistic outlook, guiding for "the continued execution of our strategy".I expect that the share price will be supported soon, if it heads much deeper into value territory:5ad49c2fc3416XLM_20180416.PNGNervous investors such as myself will stay on the sidelines, due to caution around the type of stock this is (a gambling/online AIM stock based outside of Europe), though I also note the presence of high-quality institutions on the shareholder register. But still, given the type of stock that it is, the valuation multiples could struggle until it is bought out by or merges with a more familiar name, or lists on a more trusting stock exchange (unlikely, given that UK institutions have bought into it).It's uncomfortable when you see a successful growth stock trading at a nice valuation, but it just doesn't fit into your risk profile. I'm know I'm probably missing out. That's how I feel about XLM.[link]
IOMINVESTCOM
13 Apr 2018
Re: Onwards & downwards Still in that downtrend now currently down 30% from it's highs.Suprised with all the positives news the price still drifts lower, although the underlying signals supportive the share price is now under 200 ema.Might we see a re-test of the 1.50 level.atb
