Ncipher Share Discussion Threads

[jonnyno1] 14/11/2007 13:28

some more decent business today, i wonder if its directors buying? should find out shortly.

[warala] 13/11/2007 21:35

Come on NCH lets get moving.

[philo124] 13/11/2007 17:25

Good spot Riv, quite a chunk of money in view of what's going on elsewhere.
Philo

[rivaldo] 13/11/2007 14:54

A 213k buy at 258p...

[rivaldo] 07/11/2007 19:27

Lots of PR in the papers about the impending IPO of Sophos, a fellow British security company, including the article below.

Interesting to compare the two:

Sophos - £400m m/cap, £83m sales, loss-making (per other articles)
nCipher - £43m m/cap, £25m or so sales, £11m cash, £4.5m PBT (say) this year

Purely on a simple comparison basis NCH should therefore be valued at three times the current share price.

Comments from more tech-minded posters than me appreciated!

At the least the IPO might focus a bit of attention on NCH and its sector:



"Computer & Internet Security News07 November 2007

Sophos to go for brave IPO
By John E. Dunn, Techworld

Despite instability in global markets, UK security vendor Sophos is to press ahead with plans to float itself on the London Stock Exchange.

A timescale, price and prospectus have yet to be made public, but the company [PDF] has boasted of its track record as one of the most prominent security software outfits, with reported billings for 2006-2007 of $167 million. The intention to float has been one of the industry's worst-kept secrets in recent months, with speculation putting the value of the company at around £400 million ($800 million).

The rationale is simple, even if the timing is brave.

"Increasingly open corporate networks, device proliferation, and an always-on threat environment mean that security focus has shifted from protecting the network perimeter to protecting the endpoint. Complex individual product strategies are being replaced by simple and coherent suites of products," an official release stated.

This is another way of saying that security is still a boom market, and protection of the troublesome endpoint – the PC for the most part – is still to the fore, just as it always has been since the beginning of software security.

More importantly, the big spenders on security are in the US, and an IPO raises a company's profile on that market. Earlier this year, recently-appointed CFO Paul Smolinski was quoted as saying to a third party that the company's attempts to break into the lucrative US market were hampered by its lack of profile there. "They already have 100 security companies and many of them are already listed," he said wistfully.

Public offerings of UK security companies are few and far between, perhaps the last major one being nCipher, engineered by its high-profile CEO, Alex van Someren, in 2000."

[jonnyno1] 02/11/2007 09:47

hi jeff you can take your email down now,i'll send it this morning. no problem.

[jeff c] 01/11/2007 12:30

edit: Nice one Jonny. Many thanks.

[rivaldo] 01/11/2007 11:44

Now received...thx again.

[jonnyno1] 01/11/2007 11:09

you can take it off now.

[jonnyno1] 01/11/2007 10:32

no problem.

[philo124] 01/11/2007 10:20

And Good News Here Too Riv!!
Philo

[rivaldo] 01/11/2007 10:15

Jonnyno1, if I left my e-mail up for a while would you be able to e-mail it to me?

[jonnyno1] 31/10/2007 09:45

finally got my hands on the charles stanley update, although a very conservative approach the note is very bullish. i like this stock even more than i did.

[rivaldo] 30/10/2007 14:21

Ta for that shauney2. Here's what he says - I think 295p is too low a target, and I know that NT sticks with stocks where he believes the upside is good, so hopefully he'll do that here:

"I've added what I think is quite an interesting new one to my portfolio and that's NCipher (NCH) where on Friday I bought 2,500 shares on Friday afternoon at 255p. Target 295p stop 215p. An interesting medium-term recovery play for me and a stock that appears to be turning around. It's recently moved back into profit and chairman Robert Jeens last month lifted his stake in the company. Its markets appear to be recovering and there looks to be good upside for me and limited downside."

[shauney2] 30/10/2007 10:18

The naked trader has had a dabble.

[rivaldo] 30/10/2007 09:45

Hope you did buy back in!

Looking like a convincing rebound now. Per the chart, if the price gets to 270p then another run to 290p looks in order. Though why I'm talking this charty/smarty gibberish I don't know.

[blowitall] 29/10/2007 16:53

Thanks everyone. You are reassuring me that it s about time to buy back in.
Cheers

[rivaldo] 29/10/2007 14:46

Ta WJ, good to see you here. Cisco is just one example - imo HP or any of a number of gorillas wouldn't object to paying £66m or so (i.e 400p) for NCH given the cash pile, the high profitability and the blue chip client list. If NCH can demonstrate that Abridean is behind it or being successfully integrated, along with continued strong trading in the core business, it wouldn't surprise me if NCH came up for offer again.

Good to see the price advancing again anyway. I agree with you that there's an undervaluation here waiting to be corrected one way or another.

[wjccghcc] 28/10/2007 13:42

riv, I don't think Cisco make HSMs (they do Firewall Service Modules but can't find many references to HSMs). Agreed they could buy NCH as a good entry into the market but the short-term economic benefits would be a lot less than for Safenet - hence not sure a price of £4 would be likely.

I do hold however, since I think the company is undervalued on a 2 year view anyway.

[rivaldo] 28/10/2007 09:28

WJ, I remember when the Safenet bid fell through there was speculation that NCH would be of interest to the likes of Cisco and Hewlett Packard who would want to increase their share of the hardware security market.

With hardware security becoming ever more influential I wouldn't have thought that interest would have diminished.

Agreed about Abridean, though there's interesting recent news from their web site - particularly the BlackBerry hosting solution below from August 8th. With Abridean now having been written off, hopefully it might start to pay off soon with not too much financial support:


Intro:
"USA.NET deploys abrideanProvisor to manage thousands of Hosted BlackBerry users

Abridean's partnership with RIM gives service provider the provisioning edge

HALIFAX, NS – August 8, 2007 - CNW - Abridean Inc. (www.abridean.com), leaders in the development of hosted application and provisioning solutions, announced today that top-rated USA.NET®, The Global eMessaging Service Provider® has deployed abridean's Provisor for BlackBerry® Enterprise Server solution to manage thousands of USA.NET Hosted BlackBerry users."

"Jan 17 2007

ASPnews has again named Abridean to their Top 25 Enablers list. These are the 25 companies that, in the view of ASPnews, are the most influential software or infrastructure providers for the ASP, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Web Services, Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), and Utility Computing industries. For inclusion, companies must meet the following criteria:

Have a substantial and active customer base of providers
Be active in their support and promotion of network-based applications and services
Invest in innovation in the online delivery of software-based services
Be recognized as a leader by others within the industry"

[wjccghcc] 27/10/2007 19:16

Although the question is who would buy them? There were large economies of scale in the HSM business for Safenet but there won't be much overlap with another buyer so it's all about price and their future view of the market. I doubt much value will be assigned to the other parts of the business (including Abridean).

[rivaldo] 27/10/2007 13:19

From the Times this morning:



"Tiddler to watch

"Unloved and undervalued," was the verdict of Ian Mitchell, of Charles Stanley, on nCipher, the internet security firm, up 15½p at 252p. He increased his price target to 345p and said that the stock was on a lowly forward p/e of 14 times because of the historic poor performance of Abridean, its American acquisition."

Philjeans, I certainly agree that NCH could be taken out for a lot more than the current share price - given NCH's improved trading since the 300p Safenet offer I can see 400p at minimum.

[philjeans] 26/10/2007 15:03

A 345p target price is fine, based on earmings potential; £5 minimum though for Google or Microsoft to take it out.