Andrada Mining Share Discussion Threads

[innovation99] 03/6/2004 22:30

Craver,

Cardpoint looks the City darling and I congradulate them on their cavilar approach in buying their way to pole position in the ATM market. However, I must say the price they paid for those remote ATM's seems very steep.

Poor old Moneybox (ATM) build up a steady portfolio of European cash machines and the city turns a blind eye.

I guess it will all come out in the wash when year-end accounts of the two companies are on display.

Both are growth companies but I hold ATM based on their sound financial controls, and I guess the proof of the pudding will be in the companies year end accounts

[carver66] 03/6/2004 13:40

As a Cardpoint shareholder (CASH) thought i would come and check out the competition - i guess the market likes our most recent deal more than yours - whats happening?

[sweenoid] 03/6/2004 08:26

agreed
likely to markedly increase revenues in Germany

hopefully will attract some investment interest
cheers
Dave

[nilip] 03/6/2004 07:26

===================
EXCELLENT NEWS !!!
===================

Moneybox PLC
03 June 2004



London, 3rd June 2004

Moneybox secures contract with Deutsche Bahn for installation of ATMs

Moneybox, the cash machine and payment services business, today announces that
it has signed a contract to provide cash machine services to DB Station &
Service AG, a subsidiary company of Deutsche Bahn AG. The contract enables
Moneybox to install cash machines at German train stations.

Deutsche Bahn operates in excess of 5,400 stations with approximately 2,400
reception halls in Germany. All the major stations offer a variety of
restaurant and retail facilities to both the local commuter and visitors. Over
4,100 million visits are made to German train stations every year.

The first Moneybox cash machines are now live at Deutsche Bahn locations.
Moneybox has been given the approval to co-ordinate the installation of cash
machines at sites already identified as having a strong requirement for an ATM.

Moneybox currently has an estate of around 250 machines in Germany. Other major
Moneybox contracts in Germany include the motorway service station operator,
Tank und Rast, the petrol retailer, Total and a variety of retail groups.

Paul Stanley, Moneybox Chief Executive, said:

'This contract represents a major step forward for our operations in Germany.
It is significant not only in terms of revenue but also in terms of the
increase to the size of the Moneybox estate.'

'We firmly believe that Germany presents us with a major business opportunity,
and we are delighted to be working with Deutsche Bahn. Our experience from
other markets has demonstrated that the installation of ATM machines at train
station locations is an important step in building a profitable business.'

- Ends -

[mangal] 25/5/2004 16:33

Citywire's comments on the HBOS deal and how it affects Moneybox:

"The deal between Cardpoint and HBOS could be just the start of a raft of consolidation in the nascent sector and Moneybox has the cash at its disposal to be a player. Cash machine use is expected to continue growing in the UK and Moneybox also has operations in Holland and Germany where the markets are much less developed than the UK.

Moneybox is backed by top investors but so far they must be disappointed with its performance. It is likely to be a longer term proposition as it builds a more significant presence in the market. For the time being Cardpoint has taken the limelight but Moneybox's day may yet come."

[divina] 19/5/2004 10:16

HALIFAX is selling a quarter of its cash machines to an outside operator that charges up to £1.75 for each withdrawal.

Details of the move were revealed yesterday as it emerged that one in three machines now imposes a fee on customers for taking out their own money.

That figure is expected to soar and furious consumer groups last night accused banks and finance companies of 'introducing charges by stealth'.

At present, some 17,000 machines across the country impose a fee, compared to just 2,946 three years ago.

Customers will spend £ 54m to use such machines this year. The current rate is between £1.25 and £1.75 a time - but there are plans to increase it towards £5. At least one automated teller machine in London already charges that amount.

Abbey National has already sold machines at more than 200 locations including supermarkets, motorway service stations and shopping malls.

A quarter of them have been taken over by Moneybox, an independent company which charges a £1.50 'convenience fee'. Hundreds of machines run by Alliance & Leicester also impose a fee, usually £1.25.

Now the Halifax Bank of Scotland group is to sell 816 of its ATMs for £45m to Lancashire-based Cardpoint, which boasts of collecting £5m a month in fees.

In a presentation to the City, the company has a stated aim to increase its charges. Halifax will not only collect a windfall* from the sale, it will also benefit by saving the cost of running the ATMs.

Eddie Weatherill, from the consumer group the Independent Banking Advisory Service, said last night: 'This is about making more profits for the banks through introducing charges by stealth.

'All the major banks have been announcing record profits in recent times, yet they are constantly looking at ways to cut costs and squeeze customers.

'Halifax is clearly making a mint out of dismantling its network of free-access machines. This policy is about picking the pockets of customers.'

Four years ago, the industry promised to drop plans to impose charges on cash machines in the wake of customer anger and a Daily Mail campaign.

'The banks gave the impression that they were the consumers' champions in ensuring the survival of free-to- use cash machines, when in reality they are actively participating in a move to charging,' Weatherill added.

Rebecca Fearnley, banking expert at the Consumers' Association's Which? magazine, said: 'We are keen to see access to the free use of cash machines remain as wide as possible.

'We are concerned that people in remote locations will find they have no choice but to pay in order to get access to their money. We are very unhappy at this trend.'

The Halifax said it 'did not know' if Cardpoint would impose fees at the ATMs it is off-loading. A spokesman said: 'We are selling some 816 cash machines which are at remote locations, mainly petrol stations. Our intention is to concentrate on our core of machines at branches.'

There is a suggestion the bank may attempt to head off a consumer backlash over charges by paying some sort of management fee to Cardpoint, at least until any potential furore is averted.

Cardpoint is the second largest independent cash machine company, behind Moneybox, and imposes fees across most of its network of around 2,000 machines. The company refused to discuss its proposals yesterday.

Concern about charges saw the banks forced to agree to put warning signs on machines imposing a fee after 1 April.

However, research published by Sainsbury's Bank yesterday shows that many machines either don't have the signs or have them in places which are difficult to see.

The Nationwide building society and the major supermarkets including Sainsbury's and Tesco have opposed charges.

Chief executive of Sainsbury's Bank, Tim Pile, said: 'We are very concerned about this development. We don't apply charges for people using our ATMs and we have no intention of introducing them.'

The idea of charging £5 to make a withdrawal may seem extortionate. However, at least one machine operated by American firm Hanco at a nightclub in Central London already charges that amount.

[liarspoker] 13/5/2004 22:18

Cardpoint, I actually think it's better to invest in your name sake.
Cardpoint has a competitive advantage over moneybox in that it seems to pick up contracts more readily.
At the moment I'm looking into ATM's in Germany, I can put up a detailed report on the contracts picked up by both companies.
Check the Cardpoint thread - probably tomorrow night or over the week-end for the results.
But remember you invest in what YOU want to invest in - DOYR!!!

[shirishg] 13/5/2004 20:55

Post removed by ADVFN

[dvda] 13/5/2004 14:50

cardpoint,

There will definitely be consolidation in the sector as there are clear economies of scale to be had. At the moment you’ve got 4 scale players with over 2k ATMs – Cardpoint, Hanco, Moneybox and TRM. There’s then a group of smaller players with < 1k ATMs, which will presumably be the ones most likely to leave the market over time – Bank Machine, Calypso, Infocash, Omnicash, Paypoint, & Travelex. Scott Tod are stuck in the middle at the moment with c. 1.5k, but presumably they will grow over time.

On the subject of outsourcing…

First off we could be talking about different things here. When I think of outsourcing of ATMs, it means that a bank still has its own ATMs, but someone else looks after the day to day operations (back office systems, cash, maintenance, etc.).

What Moneybox has done to date is not really this. As far as I am aware, the likes of Norwich & Peterborough has effectively pulled out of the ATM business on cost grounds. Rather than having no ATMs at their branches, they have got Moneybox to put their own machines in. These machines belong to Moneybox and are branded as such. Rather than being an outsource, it is a very similar relationship to that at remote sites, such as supermarkets and petrol stations e.g. Nationwide put ATMs in M&S stores, Moneybox put them in N&P branches.

Using my definition of an outsource, it's possible that a bank would choose to go with the likes of Moneybox, but I think it is unlikely for two main reasons.

Moneybox has very little experience of running high volume machines. A typical Moneybox machine might do 700 - 800 withdrawals per month totalling c. £40k, whereas a typical bank machine will do 10 times this. A very high volume bank ATM will do more still i.e. 20k+ withdrawals totalling over £1m each month.

Moneybox would be competing against big IT services companies such as NCR, IBM and Siemens. Whilst there is currently limited outsourcing in the UK (Co-Op outsource to IBM), these companies are established outsource players in the global ATM market.

[liarspoker] 12/5/2004 22:05

I'm sure mergers or acquisitions will occur at some stage - it's a bit early in the game though. ATM has to work on return, CASH has to work on it's balance sheet and the others are to small to aquire BUT the time will come when the game changes.
I've been trying ( and still am ) to find the market percentages of ATM ( not the company ) machines in Germany - does anyone have these figures? They are hard enough to track down. Wonder how long it'll be before we see expansion into the new EU countries.:-)

[shirishg] 12/5/2004 21:30

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[pietvane] 08/5/2004 18:22

Although the banks do not charge for atm withdrawals Moneybox does run some (or quite a lot) of these atm's although you would not notice it, it is branded by the banks. The banks have to pay Moneybox for every transaction. So when the customer is happy to take money out and not being charged, Moneybox gets a fee for every transaction.

[liarspoker] 07/5/2004 23:38

No problems - sit back and have a beer!! It's Friday night after all.
Looking forward to discussing this another time, I'll hold on to my shares in the meantime. I still think they are worth buying at 130 p but lets not debate. Later.

[dvda] 07/5/2004 23:34

It's too late in the evening for me to get into this in detail, but the answer is yes and no. Some banks will have an internal unit cost that is less than the interbank fee, and some will have a cost that is higher. But that can change depending on internal accounting views/policies.

[liarspoker] 07/5/2004 23:08

I thought that a withdrawal from your own banks machine was cheaper then a withdrawal from another banks machine ( due to the interbank fee ). But the thing with ATMs is that they are everywhere you need money - not just from the counter at the bank therefore the customer is also paying for convenience not just the transaction. Isn't it great being able to take out 50 quid at the local off-license to spend on a nice bottle of Whiskey. I think ATMs will be around for a long time to come.

[dvda] 07/5/2004 22:55

DJ

I'm too young to remember it, but I think you'll find that free banking is a relatively recent thing, introduced by the then building societies to win market share from the big banks. Prior to this, the Big 4 as they were, would have charged you for basic banking services.

May some older BBers could confirm/refute this.

I agree that an ATM withdrawal is cheaper on a unit cost basis than a counter withdrawl, but that's not the point. Just because it's cheaper doesn't mean they want to give it away for free. When the banks got rid of ATM charging a few years ago two things happened. Firstly they lost a few hundred mill of revenue overnight. Secondly there was no longer any reason for customers to seek out their own banks ATMs - they could just go to whichever one was nearest.

It is this second point that has affected some banks more than others. When a customers Bank X uses the ATM of Bank Y, Bank X (the issuer)has to pay Bank Y (the acquirer) a fee. Within the UK, because the banks have different sized customer bases and differing ATM estates, some banks are net acquirers and some are net issuers.

In the case of the net issuers, not only do these guys have the cost of running their own networks, they also incur additional cost in the form of payments to their competitor banks for the use of their ATMs. The net issuers within the UK are not happy bunnies as a result and it is these banks that will instigate a change at some point.

[liarspoker] 07/5/2004 22:09

Some forecasts about Cardpoint from Shares mag:
Pre-tax profits: 2003 .05 M
2004 2.5 M
EPS 2003 .22 p
2004 6.7 p

That is some growth......even if they do fall a little short.
PE for 2004 19
2005 10

Wow!!

[diogenesj] 07/5/2004 21:59

dvda: are you forgetting that prior to the invention of ATMs, the banks had to hand the cash out over the counter, and they couldn't charge for that. The reason they installed the ATMs is that it is cheaper to use them than employ the thousands of human bank clerks that would otherwise be required.

[liarspoker] 07/5/2004 21:20

Cardpoint also moving into Germany, live machines are already there.
CASH will be dominant ATM provider - good asset base too.
Things are quite at the moment but things will pick up soon.
Once price breaks 150 hold on to your hats!!

[dvda] 07/5/2004 18:26

ChirpyChap

The total cost to the banks of running the UK ATM network is c. £700m per annum. The total revenue they make from letting us all use any ATM in the UK for free, is effectively £0 (I'm excluding credit card withdrawals where a £1.50 charge will generally still apply).

So in the 3 years since free ATM access started in 2001, the banks have incurred costs of c. £2 billion and revenues of £0. It doesn’t matter which way you look at it, a business model like this is simply not sustainable.

I’m not aware of any imminent changes to charging policies, but it is only a matter of time before something gives.

I would not be at all surprised if you heard more rumours later in the year.

[samsung66] 05/5/2004 17:12

Scott Tod 71p and climing, could also be a target for Moneybox's cash. Would nearly double there ATM's in operation.

[chirpychap] 05/5/2004 15:23

dvda

Do you know anything about future changes to the major banks charging policies on use of cash machines? I heard a rumour that a few may be about to start charging again - only a rumour!

CC

[dvda] 05/5/2004 13:04

innovation99

Does Moneybox get 26% of paid transactions, or 26% of transactions made at ATMs owned/operated by non-bank companies?

The reason I ask is because Moneybox operates quite a few 'free' machines these days. Not surprisingly these are considerably busier than charging machines and as such will drive up their overall share of transactions. The 'free' machines however may not be any more or less profitable than charging machines, so it's not a given that their higher share of transactions is a major plus point.