Gatekeeper Share Discussion Threads

[amla] 31/1/2008 20:31

VERY INTERESTING...andbrea
This is something completely different from trolley control.
Can't understand the share buybacks.I go with scburbs that the co is very undervalued.
I bought my shares years ago through a broker.No big deal.Is it difficult to buy these online?
Somethings brewing,no doubt about it.After years of holding GKR I sense that something is not normal here.This is despite the market crash and dramatic sell off of GKR after a little profit warning.We have action....at last.This takes the cake for the most boring share I have ever held.Even the recent dramatic falls failed to stir me.
It's supermarket trolleys,after all.Every day trillions of people push trolleys around supermarkets.Gatekeeper wants to be the king of this kingdom.I hope they make it.
Without efficient controls and customer friendly trolleys the supermarkets don't stand a chance.
A company like Gatekeeper can save retailers millions of pounds.
Beats me why this share never took off.
lol

[andrbea] 31/1/2008 17:44

re. gkr's stake in US firm, its website:

[amla] 30/1/2008 20:06

So little interest in this company.
The share buybacks seem a little random...not buying back the same quantity each time to give us some idea of where we can expect to be a few months down the line.Is this because the shares are so tightly held?
The website gives no indication of the collapse of the share price in recent months.As far as the company is concerned everything is ok!!!!Just that profits won't be as good as they had expected.Profits,nonetheless.Unless they are lying.
SP is too low.HELP.....

[scburbs] 22/1/2008 13:00

Masurenguy,

It depends upon whether you think the company is intrinsically under or overvalued. If it is undervalued it is a good idea, if it is overvalued a bad idea. I think it is undervalued hence a very good idea as it increases the value of all the remaining shares.

I would certainly rather they buy their own shares rather than make additional acquisitions until they can demonstrate they the acquisitions they have made are sensible, particularly RTP Controls.

After all when it listed it raised £7.3m which is way above the current market cap. Given their track record a share buyback or a capital return is the safest use of the cash as the cash underpins the valuation.

[masurenguy] 22/1/2008 12:15

Never liked share buybacks - foolish move if you ask me !

[scburbs] 22/1/2008 08:55

Looks like a sensible use of their cash pile whilst shares are available at this price.

"Gatekeeper Systems, Inc. announces that on 21 January 2008 the Company made on market purchases of 750,000 ordinary shares of USD 0.001 each ("Ordinary Shares") at a price of 10 pence per Ordinary Share. These Ordinary Shares have been purchased for cancellation."

[masurenguy] 18/1/2008 11:55

Biggest loser in the market this morning - down a massive 67.6% !

[scburbs] 18/1/2008 11:27

Being punished for their lack of explanation.

Whilst the fall to 15p was perhaps fair, 9p is a bit silly, valuing the company at $8m (£4m). I am in for some, albeit they are risky!

Net assets are $20m or $13m excluding goodwill/intangibles. Cash was $5.9m (£3m) at interim stage (although $2.5m now spent on RTP Controls).

[8trader] 18/1/2008 11:09

Simon/mct

Look at Uvel though, i mentioned Gkr before because they were in a
similar sector, Uvel announced 700k H1 profits and the price has halved
recently despite another large contract, at least they posted reasons
for shortfalls in cash etc, Gke has said nothing so they will get hammered
and also you have to fill in forms to buy the stock with selftrade so
the online penny trade traders who buy the biggest faller every day for
a bounce wont be able to touch it either.

[simonparker5] 18/1/2008 11:04

mctmct I agree. Looking at the interims the company is worth on the balance sheet £7.5m, market cap now £3.8m. They havn't said they are to make a loss but will make a profit although smaller than they were forcasting a couple of weeks ago.

[mctmct] 18/1/2008 11:01

I'd guess they took their eye off the ball whilst buying a stake in RTP.

Any idea what their 30% of RTP controls is worth?

Anyway, £14m of t/0 and 0.5m profit must be worth something to someone.

[8trader] 18/1/2008 10:41

Getting slaughtered now...9.25p to buy and dropping.

Good stocks get hammered in this market so this is getting
the real treatment when they offer no reasons for the shortfalls.

[tippingpoint] 18/1/2008 09:09

spot on M, this is remarkably poor management of news flow and seems to indicate a complete lack of awareness of what was happening in their business last year imho

[masurenguy] 18/1/2008 08:44

"Masurenguy - 14 Jan'08 - 15:18 - 449 of 454: Back on my Watchlist for 2008. Originally bought GKR at circa 35p two years ago and subsequently sold out at 51.5p last January. It looks like their 2007 performance will produce a very marginal increase in sales and income over the prior year. Current year PER will therefore be circa 9.5/10.0.........Still potential growth here but would like to see some turn in the share price before jumping back in here again."

Whoa.........net income will be down from $2.4 tp $1.0m !!!!
Only two months ago they put out a trading statement stating that Net Income would be in the range of $2.2m - $2.5m. How can it suddenly be almost 60% lower just 9 weeks later ? Furthermore just a bland statement is released out of the blue without any attempt to provide any explanation !

Management credibility now becomes a significant issue for me !

[wiganer] 18/1/2008 08:27

Aye, the massive disparity between the figures in the November update and today's make this a bargepole job I reckon.

[8trader] 18/1/2008 08:17

hmmm that is bad scburbs, cant buy it anyway unless i fill in some
US tax law form, think i'll pass :-))

[scburbs] 18/1/2008 08:14

Unfortunately I think the markdown is fair given the level of incompetence shown. Profit has more than halved compared to an update given on 8 November after 10 months of the year. GKR don't seem to feel it necessary to bother to explain why they were so far out. Very poor investor relations.

"Gatekeeper Systems Inc., ('Gatekeeper') announces that for the full year ended
31 December 2007, total revenue is anticipated to be at least U$28.0 million
(compared to U$29.6 million in 2006). Net income is expected to be at least
U$1.0 million (compared to $2.4 million in 2006)."



"Gatekeeper Systems Inc., ('Gatekeeper') announces that it expects total revenues for the current financial year ending 31 December 2007 to be in the range of U$31.0 to U$32.0 million (compared to U$29.6 million in 2006). Net income is expected to be in the range of U$2.2 to $2.5 million (compared to $2.4 million in 2006)."

[8trader] 18/1/2008 08:14

Profits now to be 0.5 mil against a new market cap of around 5 mil.

Given the warning it's hardly a bargain though, bottom fishers will
trade it for intraday bounce but i wont be going there.

[8trader] 18/1/2008 08:09

What a sector this has become, Uvel got hammered even when their
profit were promised H2 instead of the usual 50/50.

It's a profits warning alright but some mark down non the less.

[masurenguy] 14/1/2008 15:18

Back on my Watchlist for 2008. Originally bought GKR at circa 35p two years ago and subsequently sold out at 51.5p last January.

It looks like their 2007 performance will produce a very marginal increase in sales and income over the prior year. Current year PER will therefore be circa 9.5/10.0. Not undervalued in the current climate but probably now at the bottom of its share price range. New investment could be interesting since smart metering is a growth area and they should be able to leverage their existing retail customers.

Still potential growth here but would like to see some turn in the share price before jumping back in here again.

[scburbs] 13/1/2008 19:10

Link to website. Looks interesting as it appears that a large number of major utility companies support this initiative.



"Incentives to shed loads
Energy consumers need some incentive to respond to such a request from a Demand Response Provider (see list of Providers below). Demand Response incentives can be formal or informal. For example, the utility might create a tariff-based incentive by passing along short-term increases in the price of electricity. Or they might impose mandatory cutbacks during a heat wave for selected high-volume users, who are compensated for their participation. Other users may receive a rebate or other incentive based on firm commitments to reduce power during periods of high demand, sometimes referred to as negawatts.

Commercial and industrial power users might impose load shedding on themselves, without a request from the utility. Some businesses generate their own power and wish to stay within their energy production capacity to avoid buying power from the grid. Some utilities have commercial tariff structures that set a customer's power costs for the month based on the customer's moment of highest use, or peak demand. This encourages users to flatten their demand for energy, known as energy demand management, which sometimes requires cutting back services temporarily.

Smart metering has been implemented in some jurisdictions to provide real-time pricing for all types of users, as opposed to fixed-rate pricing throughout the demand period. In this application, users have a direct incentive to reduce their use at high-demand, high-price periods. Many users may not be able to effectively reduce their demand at various times, or the peak prices may be lower than the level required to induce a change in demand during short time periods (users have low price sensitivity, or elasticity of demand is low). Automated control systems exist, which, although effective, may be too expensive to be feasible for some applications.

Technologies for demand reduction
Technologies are available, and more are under development, to automate the process of demand response. Such technologies detect the need for load shedding, communicate the demand to participating users, automate load shedding, and verify compliance with demand-response programs. GridWise and EnergyWeb are two major federal initiatives in the United States to develop these technologies. Universities and private industry (including Invaluable Technologies Ltd.,EnerNOC, Inc.,Powerit Solutions and RTP Controls, Inc) are also doing research and development in this arena. Scalable and comprehensive software solutions for DR (such as platforms by Ziphany, LLC) enable business and industry growth."

[amla] 11/1/2008 20:04

I think this is a relatively new company and idea that they have bought into and seems cheap if GKR can get their customers to use the software.
It is VERY GREEN the idea of reducing electricity usage in supermarkets in this way.And not just supermarkets.
Re trolley control;I have always thought that Gatekeeper could use their technology in airports,train stations,ports and hospitals.Even factories.Their systems have so many applications.
Also,we had two rns's today,showing that GKR are concerned with correct information to shareholders.
As the dollar strengthens ,which it has to do to support falling sterling versus euro,I hope that more investors join us.I have lost 50% of my investment but for the first time am considering buying some more shares.
I was pleasantly surprised by today's news.

[scburbs] 11/1/2008 08:50

New acquisition. Very hard to judge with no current turnover levels. I suspect this is an expensive acquisition (relative to current results of the business) which GKR need to sell to make the acquisition make sense. Given this you would expect it to be cheap, but it doesn't appear to be. Let's hope that is because the product is really good. We will just have to wait and see on this one.

[serratia] 09/11/2007 12:06

Sales growth had been 73 and 45% for earlier years with growing income.I held for some time based on the growth story.They provide little info but I had them growing for this financial year dropping the P/E to single figures.Within an hour of the last figures I sold out luckily avoiding the big drop.They are now saying growth for the full year will be flat.I keep an eye on them and await the year end results.May buy back but I need to see reasons for the present performance and to have confidence that growth will resume before getting back in.

[scburbs] 09/11/2007 10:38

Given the first half results were poor the trading statement was reassuring confirmation that H2 will show good growth over H2 last year. However, the full year looks broadly flat at profit level.

It will be interesting to see the US/Europe sales split. My sense is that the US market is stagnant and the growth is in Europe, but that Europe is lower margin due to the costs of trying to service the whole of Europe from Paris and the need to subcontract installation of third parties (whereas the US has a large installation team).

They either need the US to go back to growth or for Europe either to grow quicker or to start to improve margins (e.g. by expanding own installation team).

At the moment it is cheap, so no reason to sell, but with profits flat is there a compelling reason to buy? I will reassess my remaining holding when the results are out.