Toluna Share Discussion Threads

[janeann] 28/12/2006 09:13

think you may be right diogenes....quite a jump this am on no volume at all.

[diogenesj] 27/12/2006 22:27

Looks as though it could be the start of a new leg up.

[janeann] 27/12/2006 17:22

interesting small jump in the share proce today. no apparrent reason that i am aware of though!

d

[junior21] 14/12/2006 19:25

Kenmitch,

Thanks for your reply. Have read your post 131, it is very imformative.

Not a big investor but am looking for somewhere to put my SOLA profits. YOU and RNOW having being going up and feel it is only a matter of time when this starts moving again. Will probably dip my toe in next week.

Cheers
J21

[kenmitch] 11/12/2006 16:28

Director buying and acquisition news seems to have got the YOU share price moving again - with some who post here posting on that one, and RNOW too, and wisely investing in them too.

Whilst very pleased with the perforance of my TOL holding, there's no doubt that it was a mistake not buying YOU and RNOW too.

Have bought a few TMN just in case they prove the next one to soar. Nor sure about the quality of their earnings but can't see too much downside barring bad news.

Of course TOL too can come out with more good news anytime, and so help continue the pattern of dull phases (like now) followed by good spikes. Guess we might have to wait next year for the next spike?

Could one or two of the new year tipsters take a shine to them?

[kenmitch] 08/12/2006 13:42

Cr4zyness.

Likewise. This is a very good bb - I don't bother posting on any that aren't. A key point to make reading a bb worthwhile is if contrasting opinions etc. are debated in a constructive way. Once the idiots arrive I leave them to it, but they tend only to spoil bbs on shares that are very popular. Most of them have (fortunately) probably not even heard of the likes of TOL.

I'm sorry if I brushed off your opinion. But somewhere here I've posted a fairly robust defence of the TOL share price/PE ratio. As I say time will tell.

There's no doubt that you've called it better than me so far. I was crazy not to buy shares in both YOU and RNOW as well while they were still cheap.

Interesting acquisition from YOU today.

[cr4zyness] 08/12/2006 07:07

Kenmitch,

Thankyou for your civil post even though we disagree at this present time, I will however be keeping a close eye on this one and as I am a holder of both YOU & RNOW, keep a watchful eye on the competition.

Good luck may be back soon. ;)

[junior21] 06/12/2006 18:41

Kenmitch, have you any idea where I can find broker forecasts etc?
Would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[kenmitch] 05/12/2006 09:38

Just a bit of nothing while nothing happens. The shares are following the usual pattern. A longish spell of nothing happening followed by a good rise. Have a look at the chart. We're in another nothing happening phase - as long as past patterns repeat as they probably will - ahead of then next good rise.

Even if the share price sticks around current levels for the rest of the year it has been a great performer, with the promise of more of the same to come.

Congratulations to anyone else who bought, and bigger congratulations to any who had the wisdom to buy RNOW and YOU as well.

[myoldmate] 17/11/2006 19:56

'scuse my ignorance but I was looking at the list of major shareholders and was puzzled by the fact that when you add up all the %age of holdings it amounts to just over a 111%, how can that be? or am I missing something blatantly obvious ( as usual ).

[kenmitch] 16/11/2006 14:32

Interesting posts on the YOU bb too.

The latest, suggesting that YOU could be the next Google or ebay might be stretching it a bit, but see his point. The same applies to ToLuna.

[kenmitch] 14/11/2006 17:02

So am I! Made an exception with TOL for all the reasons given in posts on this bb.

So often with highly rated shares so much can go wrong. Of course it could this time, but the evidence is already there for all to see that growth in this sector is explosive, and as long as that continues those profits targets should be reached - or beaten.

Better still I see the sector as relatively recession proof too. If anything the need for cost cutting would increase the demand for on-line research.

[diogenesj] 14/11/2006 16:04

Many thanks, Kenmitch. I'm usually nervous holding anything as highly rated as this, but that is fairly dramatic growth and we'll have to hope they make it.

[kenmitch] 14/11/2006 13:40

Thanks. Good to see a bit more interest in TOL and the sector.

Pleased too to see at least one person found the shares before the price soared. egoi got his forecast of £2 this year spot on, so anyone buying after reading that post owes him a drink!

Sorry I missed out the ptp and eps forecasts. As stated in the post, all 3 companies seem to be outperforming even ambitious forecasts, and my guess is the same will apply with these latest ones too.

Anyone ploughing through the posts on this bb will see that so far TOL has more than fulfilled expectations.

ptp 2006. £2.1 million. 2007. £3.8 million. 2008. £5.4 million - that's around 17 times forecast 2008 earnings.

eps. 2006. 4.5p. 2007. 7.5p. 2008. 10.6p.

Finally thanks jakleeds for the steer on TMN. I did hold their shares for a while, and bought just before Investors Chronicle tipped them, but then decided that the quality of their earnings was way inferior to TOL. Maybe I should check out if that is still the case.

[jakleeds] 13/11/2006 21:58

Yes, thanks, Kenmitch. I just wanted to mention that there is another company involved in online market research - TMN. Their interims, due on 7th December, will be extremely good.

From their recent trading statement:
".....specialists in online market research, with 250,000 panel
members in the UK and over 4 million members across 41 territories, managed
via a network of local partnerships, allowing targeted domestic and
international research. Clients include numerous MR Agencies, producing
work for Microsoft, Lloyds TSB, NSPCC, Persil, Carlsberg and PC World."

[egoi] 13/11/2006 20:57

Kenmitch fantastic post, says it all; very happy with my investment in Toluna (thanks to you over a year ago I first came across the company - where's your local, owe you one!!).

[kenmitch] 13/11/2006 19:32

Apologies straight away. I can't post a link to the Cenkos brokers note, and the following is just a copy and paste of my post about it last week on Mike Walters bulletin board.

But some here might find bits of this interesting/useful. Ignore the bits that really only apply to those who subscribe to Mike's site. I - and a few others - have posted regularly over there on EVT and more recently TOL.

The following (after a waffly introduction mostly already known to anyone regularly reading/contributing to this bb) is mainly about the latest Cenkos broker buy note for Toluna, issued last week....



"My posts concentrate on ToLuna because that is the company I know the most about. The sector as a whole is making progress at a fantastic rate, and although the share prices already reflect some of that, there should be far more to come as the on-line research sector covers only 5% of the market here compared with 32% in the United States. That gives some indication of the potential for huge further growth.

The advantages of on-line research compared with the old methods - telephone polls, interviews etc are obvious. Reliability, speed, and especially time and cost efficiencies.

e.g ToLuna are expanding very fast - not just here and Europe, but also into the US, Asia, Australia and probably in time, beyond. The costs of so doing thanks to the wonders of the computer age are very low. Offices are set up with very few staff needed so the costs of this massive expansion are small. Yet the rewards in increased revenues and profits are enormous.

Already TOL have gone from a single office in Paris when they floated, to offices in London and New York, and established a strong presence in Germany. TOL has been an excepional performer, comfortably exceeding what seemed ambitious growth targets when they floated.

Until very recently few had discovered this sector - and maybe only two or three others on this bb despite endless posts singing its praises. That has changed in the last week or so with 3 buys tips in National newspapers for TOL and then coinciding with those a hugely positive pre close update from Research Now which saw their share price rise around 50% in a couple of days.

Anyway a few details,and explanations from the Cenkos buy note issued earlier this week. Anything in brackets is/are my additional explanations.

1. ToLuna now has over 1.1 million participants across Europe. It also licenses its own proprietory data collection technology - the other two do not - so this is a distinguishing feature, with higher margin opportunities. Indeed YOU is actually a customer of TOL.

2. Cenkos mention the high level of repeat business - reflecting satisfied customers.

(Some time ago I mentioned that TOL had 100% repeat business from their technology offering, and that still applies.i.e they have not lost a single customer).

3. In addition to the strong organic growth potential Cenkos expect TOL to make selective earnings enhancing acquistions.They have already done this once with the purchase of Speedfacts in Germany and this acquisition has already been successfully integrated. Cenkos reckon there could be opportunities for further product innovations, particularly emanating from the fact that the company has developed on line communities for consumer opinions, initially in France - where they are based - and subsequently across Europe. Cenkos reckon that if TOL continues to perform as forecast then they could easily appear on the radar of large consumer information groups and private equity.

(i.e the low capital intensity of this business as explained above could be a key attraction).

4. Valuation.

Cenkos concede that the short term valuation is steep - but justifiably so.

(This is what has put off so many on this bb from investing in TOL following a "wow just look at the PE" post from Nil Desperandum. Many of us have a lot of respect for Nil D.but he didn't like what he saw when he had a quick look at the company, when the shares were around 140p compared with £2 now. Sadly the sceptics did not accept the arguments put forward here to explain that this was perhaps a fairly rare example of a short term high PE being fully justified by the huge and rapid expansion prospects, with the resultant huge increases in turnover and profits as well. They made the same mistake earlier with EVT as well, which they argued - and their case on the surface looked equally convincing - was overvalued when the EVT share price was 3p!! Now it is 18p - and all but £12 million of the EVT market cap is the value of their stake in Toluna. i.e it would be hard to argue that the EVT share price was overvlaued now).

Anyway back to Cenkos on the TOL valuation. They claim that the strong growth prospects put TOL on a very low PEG ratio of just 0.1 for 2006, and 0.4 for 2007 and 2008. They forecast pre tax profits rising to £2.1 million this year, £3.8 million next year, and £5.4 million in 2008.

They also forecast a progressive dividend policy as TOL is so strongly cash generative. The maiden dividend was 0.2p and they forecast a final dividend of 0.6p with the scope for dividends to rise after that.

(fwiw - the pattern so far, with YOU and RNOW as well as TOL has been to under promise and over deliver. If that continues then even these forecasts could be beaten. e.g TOL, YOU and now RNOW have all come out with "results likely to be much better than anticipated" pre close trading statements. TOL have also outperformed forecasts in earlier buy notes. e.g not so long ago Cenkos had a target price for TOL of just £1.20. How fast things have moved since then, and my hope/expectation is that there are more of these surprises on the upside to come).

5. On strategy, Cenkos point out that while there remain major opportunities for growth in Europe, the company recognises the benefits of a global offering and is considering further expansion into Asia in 2007. And in the US their presence there will allow them to conduct business globally. TOL, they say, will contiue to try and lead the way with innovative products like their unique proprietory technology.

(My own - possibly inappropriate! - comparison is that it's a bit like the rapid expansion of Tesco worldwide, but without the big set up costs and NONE of the nasty side effects. Today Europe, tomorrow the World).

(This is not a share for the get rich quick brigade. My guess is that the shares will continue to perform as they have since floating - with spells of sseveral weeks with few trades and hardly any change in the price, followed by sharp spikes up. We've just had the latest spike up of around 30p or so. Whether that is the end of this spike for a month or two, or whether the current spike has a bit further to go is guesswork). I'm very happy with a share that performs like that).

If there isn't enough here to tempt anyone else into buying Toluna then have a look at RNOW and YOU. Until the rise this week RNOW was significantly cheaper than TOL and YOU. YOU shares have rocketed more than TOL partly helped by the fact that they are better known in this Country than TOL.

Alternatively, as explained before if not sure about TOL then a compromise is to buy Eurovestech shares instead, as EVT still owns 50% of TOL. EVT have just taken a profit of £4.5 million on the sale of 6.8% of their then 57% stake in TOL. Their buying price btw was about 9p so the latest sale at 185p was at a big big profit. They paid £2 million for their TOL stake and have already taken out £7.4 million and still own 50%!! It was sensible to top slice as like us they don't want too unbalanced a portfolio - and as explained earlier that stake has been sold to top Fund Manager Neil Woodford. He would expect upside from his purchase.i.e that should answer any query as to why sell now if there is further upside. They sold another stake earlier at £1.30.

In theory a rising TOL share price should feed through and give a rising EVT share price too. So far that has not happened. Which means that EVT shares look cheap at 18p. Take out the value of their stake in TOL and around £8 million in cash on their balance sheet, and that leaves the rest of EVT, the brilliant KSS purchase included valued at just £12 million.

Apart from one offs KSS was profitable this year and last, and is forecast (from memory) to make profits of around £2 million in 2007. So have a good look at Eurovestech too, especially so if you like the sound of the on-line research sector but can't make up your mind which one to buy. At least by buying into EVT you have some exposure to the sector and all the other goodies in the EVT basket. That includes a warchest of £8 million or so- and the recent purchase of a stake in Pixology at what looks to be a bargain basesment price. Loads more on EVT on this bb.

A bit of a marathon effort. Hope it is of some use to somebody. I realise TOL and EVT are not the sort of shares that the majority here go for. otoh - they have a high chance of being very profitable INVESTMENTS on a one to three year view, with a good chance of a bid for TOL at some stage. i.e the sort of investment that can help you survive and enjoy this investment game.

Good luck.

[andrbea] 10/11/2006 13:24

us too now, as are 'YOU'

[andrbea] 09/11/2006 14:37

RNow up 8.8%

[andrbea] 09/11/2006 08:52

we know:

"As an online operator, Toluna finds itself in the fastest growing part of the market research sector. It runs a panel of 1.1 million consumers across 16 European countries. This is the key to the value behind the group."

... so TOL is targeting Europe, like RNOW does,

so any momentum surge IMO in the share price of RDNOW (putting on another 5% today) could pull TOL up with it (European research sector)

[egoi] 08/11/2006 16:00

Three newspaper tips, sharp rise today, heavy volumes yesterday; this rise looks more than 'on the back of RNOW'; far be from me (well maybe not that far lol!) to suggest it adds up to someone hearing whispers somewhere..........