Internet Business Share Discussion Threads

[kenatbabken] 23/12/2007 16:53

May I offer complements of the season to all IBG holders past and present, And
wish everyone a prosperous New Year in all their investing wherever that may be.

Ken

[nghomi] 23/12/2007 12:11

"We've been trading 15 years now, we've had a very good reputation and been profitable every year and I deeply regret this happening, particularly at Christmas time and also for our own staff.


hirschnathan,

I am happy for you that you are doing very well. I do not know if we would have a recession or not. Your comment on online sale could be right too.

However, the problem with the smaller companies is that their performnace is very fragile in a downtrun scenario. IBG would be a lot more immune part of a larger company. Having said that even £40m is not enough to go through a storm imo. It is amazing that Travelscope has had £80m revenue and profitable over 15 years and it is now into adminisatration. imo small cap companies will have a very rough time ahead. So perhaps Maz has been cautious and he is protecting his investment by being part of a bigger company.

[hirschnathan] 23/12/2007 11:38

nghomi

I dont think online sales will suffer from the recession, since the growth of the internet s still in 'early' stage, even if there is a recession more people will be online looking for bargains. I for one can say this year xmas has been my record, not as much I was hoping for, but 35% higher than last year

[nghomi] 22/12/2007 20:23

Perhaps Maz knows that industry is bound to see a downtrun in the next 12 months. Profit forecast means nothing if we see the first recession in 16 years.

[muffinhead] 21/12/2007 21:50

'cause its worth peanuts to normal people who can't understand city jargon like ebitda and have real balance sheets...bear market reality.

[68steve] 21/12/2007 19:41

So why has MAZ sold for peanuts!!!!!!!!

[baheid101] 21/12/2007 15:16

Just had another look at the full year results. There is NOTHING wrong with the underlying financial performance of the businesses in IBG

Affiliate Future EBITDA up 35%, margin i.e. the average override actually up 1%
International - USA AF sales up 102% despite the 10% odd negative dollar movement, so around 120% at constant currency
Media - sales up 62%, EBITDA up 236%, margin up a whopping 21% to 77% demonstrating the positive economics of collecting the whole slice (network and affiliate commission) of the commission pie

[sseajack] 21/12/2007 09:36

tmn director warren taylor bought 48,509 shares on the 19th.

[baheid101] 21/12/2007 09:30

I wish money did talk here Coffeelito! IBG is a cash rich, profitable, growing company and that hasn't changed. The underlying business has been managed perfectely well

[niggle] 20/12/2007 18:49

Its called sticking to what you are good at!

[coffeelito] 20/12/2007 16:20

LOL!! (through the tears!!)

[liarspoker] 20/12/2007 16:18

I wonder if Maz will leave his annual X-mas message on this thread this year ?

[coffeelito] 20/12/2007 16:09

Yup, we sure as hell were backing the wrong horse!! AW just got on with things and abided by the eternal truth that money talks while bullsh*t walks. We at IBG are taking a very, very long walk into g0d knows where while AW are moving into the warm embrace of the money men in the City.

It hurts. It really hurts!

[niggle] 20/12/2007 16:02

Affiliate Window Move Office

We are delighted to announce that after 3 years in quaint historic Greenwich, we are moving to much larger premises in the City of London.

The company has changed considerably over the years and we would like to take this opportunity to thank all our affiliates and merchants for helping us achieve so much.

Those who have visited us recently will know that with over 65 staff, we can no longer squeeze into the three floors we currently occupy. The new office allows us all to be on one floor and provides us with the freedom to expand.

From Monday 24th December our new address and phone number will be:

3rd Floor

100 Leman Street

London

E1 8EU



Tel: [phone]

Fax: [phone]

[the analyst] 20/12/2007 12:07

Yup, no problem if anyone wants the broker reports

[e-mail]

Baheid, could you email me the one that mentions the trading in November please? - it's the only one I haven't got.

Cheers

[the analyst] 20/12/2007 12:06

Totally agree with that - for me this deal is excellent news.

We have a new, experienced management team and the cross selling opportunities are huge imo.

Maz can concentrate on both AF and the media division which he has told us he has invested a lot of time and money on over the past year. My only hope is that Maz stays with the company and is happy to be managed rather than to manage.

Hopefully, his intention is not to sell up and start on the 'big project' he was talking about at large year's AGM - a big plan that he later denied at the investors meeting and again when he posted here.

[baheid101] 20/12/2007 10:24

Hi everyone

The TMN-IBG combination of two companies that had seen their share prices fall hugely despite solid operational and financial delivery into a much stronger business with a broader suite of products and clients is a good result in my opinion. The shares were on broadly similar P/E ratings and the growth rates of the combined group should clearly accelerate as a combined entity due to the clear synergies that result.

If anybody wants some unconnected research by Cannacord on TMN group and their reaction to the transaction please email The Analyst and he can forward it on to you or he can give you my email address and I will forward it to you. Unfortunately TMN and the brokers won't be fleshing out new forecasts and the full investment case until February when the transaction will likely complete, but in the meantime I am sure IBG holders would like to understand a bit more about who IBG are combining with before deciding what to do with their holdings

I understand everyone's frustration about what has gone on - I have had a lot of my family's savings tied up in this company for over 3 years and have felt the pain like every one else - however I feel that the IBG-TMN combination with TMN management in charge is massively more attractive than IBG as a standalone business.

[kenatbabken] 20/12/2007 08:51

OBR

My initial reaction was to look at blocking the deal,However what value would
be put on IBG after this takeover was blocked and who would then run the company as Maz is highly unlikely to want to carry on under pressure from
shareholders.

The ideal situation would be a White Knight to offer shareholders a variation
on the current deal ie buyout management or Cash offer.Got to say that the
timing of this deal just before Christmas was designed to scupper other
options.

If people want an explanation perhaps they should email Maz.Whether he would
answer or give a truthfull reply I don,t know.I,m not going to ask him because
of the disdain in which I now hold him.He may be reading these posts but is
unlikely to explain on here

Ken

[omlaysause] 20/12/2007 08:17

If Maz is suffering from stress or whatever he should have simply stepped down not give the company away.
I agree with OBR that we should try and get some answers from both IBG and TMN if possible and although I only own a little under 0.5% if OBR, Ken, SteMis, Coffelito and few others who have been around from the start got together, I'm sure we'd be close to 10% if not more.

[valustar1] 20/12/2007 08:00

Perhaps what we should do is sit down with TMN and understand properly what the prospects for them are. We are all now basically tied into them like it or not.

Not sure whether they can speak to us at present with the takeover going through?

Any thoughts

[niggle] 20/12/2007 05:29

coffeelito- it was worth those levels on trading and forward forecasts, it was not a charade. The proposition that MAZ is ill in some way would explain a lot, maybe its stress related. Eitherway the current situation is unfathomable.

[coffeelito] 20/12/2007 03:03

Maz had told too many people too many times that he wanted IBG to be bought out for that strategy to suddenly evaporate. He had always assumed he would get a nice big fat price at a nice big fat premium to the prevailing share price When this didn't happen, IBG suddenly looked like the emperor's new clothes - naked, a charade! The question is how did the share price get to 30-plus on what was apparently a badly distorted market? And how did it stay at those levels for so long before crashing spectacularly back down into the gutter??

[aleman] 20/12/2007 02:49

I said after the AGM a boardroom split might explain things. (I always suspected conflicting views over the etail sites which did not seem to fit in with the rest.) It still might explain what is going on. I don't think Maz would write off 2/3rds of the value his holding and give up control unless things had gone badly wrong, by which I mean not just slower trading. It might explain why he felt compelled to post here to rectify a few incorrectly held viewpoints when RNSs might not have given him the flexibility to do so (given they would need the approval of a split board?). It is a funny thing that everyone pulls in the same direction when the company is short of cash and needs to fight to survive. I have seen elsewhere that directors can fall out over what to do with cash when it arrives. Everyone has different needs and timescales that can undermine working relationships.