Avanti Communications Share Discussion Threads

[tsmith2] 14/3/2011 14:27

anyone managed to speak to the company?

[restassured] 14/3/2011 14:18

"Following completion of certain confidential pre-service commercial missions ,"

[restassured] 14/3/2011 14:16

14/2/11
"The satellite has now substantially completed its testing and is in excellent condition. The satellite reached geostationary orbit very efficiently and as a result HYLAS 1 is expected to achieve longer useful life than planned. Following completion of certain confidential pre-service commercial missions, Avanti expects to declare In Orbit Acceptance and begin regular commercial operations in March, at this point Avanti will advise the market on the amount of life extension"

[volvo] 14/3/2011 14:11

No one answered my simple question, does the satelite work?

What I mean, is it going to be to the same parameters as they anticipated.

Reason for posting this, is there is rarely so much selling without someone knowing something.

[restassured] 14/3/2011 14:11

???

What was the first pr disaster?

The only thing that has happened is a broker note with a 488p price target.


We are trading nearly 20% below that.


The bear raiders chose a day after a tragic natural disaster to make profits.It just shows the characters of those individuals.

[gorvachof] 14/3/2011 13:54

I find it remarkable that the CEO would stick out a dinner invite to someone who has gone public with a negative view on his company, while leaving his own shareholders to sweat with what is going on.

[first choice] 14/3/2011 13:28

Is this company making any money ?

[rwilliams57] 14/3/2011 13:13

a few things

1 The share was tipped, and tipped again and again on T1Ps website run by Tom Winnfreth. When T1PS tipped the share and continued to do so (it was recommended at least 14 times in 2011 alone), the share increased in value. The increase in price was also the result of positive newsflow from the company (e.g. Contract wins, director buys). I would expect a further update to cover the results announced today.

2 The company is not yet profitable so any price you care to put on the share is speculative as is the DCF numbers T1Ps have come up with (e.g. £35/share).

4 Investec in early Feb. disagreed with these numbers and issued a sell recommendation. On the same day Evil Knieval aka Simon Cawkwell went short on the stock with a post on this board outlining the reasons why.

EK writes for the T1PS and posted his short position on 24th Feb on that website. He is still short.

It all hinges around the Avanti business model and the misconceptions of the Hylas 1 and 2 capacity.

People who really do not know what they are talking about i.e. financial tipsters (analysts?) are writing nerdish comment coming from 2 different viewpoints relating to the capacity (bandwidth) of the satellites and the competitive position of AVN with respect to Eutelsat and indeed the overall broadband satellite delivery marketplace.

The best piece I have read about this is quoted below. The author claims to work in the satellite industry. It claims that the Investec and EK position is wrong in as much as they claim that the Eutelsat has 23x the HYLAS1 + 2 capacity whereas the truth is 2.5 times. That is the nub of the argument. If you believe the former, Avantis business model is unsustainable since it costs give or take a similar amount to design and launch a satellite, Eutelsat will price avanti out of the marketplace or avanti will make no profit.

When you think about this for more than 30 seconds, Avanti's pricing model must make sense to them since they have several contracts already.

I think that 2 factors are at work

1 the inflated share price given the frenzied tipping of sites like T1PS

2 An "analyst" seizing on some half truths, and giving the bears an opportunity to short.

It's a bit like the dot com bubble. All tech. companies were grossly overvalued, and some never produced anything but an idea, whereas others were sound businesses but the share price was out of kilter with the current value of the business. I suspect AVN is in the latter category. I don't know how to value AVN, but Investec's position is wrong, given that they have made a fundamental miscalculation.

Lastly
I cannot see why Avanti refuse to issue a clear statement about their business model/capacity of the satellites. This would clear up the whole issue, and clear out the short sellers. I did hear that Avanti have some issue with Investec, and refused to meet them, but that seems too crassly stupid to be anything but gossip

One thing which concerns me is that T1PS recommended the share so strongly which clearly helped the share price. Then EK on the same website announced that he was shorting it. I probably should say no more, except that Winnfrith wrote a long article justifying his position (not removing EK from his website).

Quoted article follows



"I have some experience working for satellite/aerospace companies and while I don't have all the information from what I understand the sell advice is based on misunderstanding of the technical details of the data through put the satellites can provide. The numbers I use have just been pulled off web sites and are just indicative.


Ka-Sat

The frequency bandwidth (GHz) is a side issue the through put of the satellite is the commercially important part. Eutelsat has stated that it has a total capacity of 70Gb/s. Ka Sat has 82 beams at 475 Mb/s per spot each spot beam has 237MHz of frequency band width [1]. Thus I would conclude the modems efficiency is around 2 b/s per Hz and the down link through put is around 39 Gb/s. It appears though Eutelsat is quoting 70Gb/s as total up plus down link.

Hylas -1

Hylas has 8 forward transponders (1 per beam) at 250 Mhz per beam if Hylas's is as efficient at transmitting information as Ka-Sat then this would imply a down link through put of 8*500Mb/s 4Gb/s. (Halys's uplink is actually 2x more efficient but I would think the down link is the critical path and I don't have any info so I will assume it is the same as Ka-Sat)

Hylas -2

24 Beams * 230Mhz assuming efficiencies above we have 11 Gb/s

Thus Ka-Sat has about 2.6x more bandwidth compared to Hylas 1+2 not 23x which I believe an analyst calculated.
Avanti appears to have a technology advantage up link modems are twice as efficient as Eutelsat's and has variable beam bandwidth has proven to be very important in the US market.

Providing service via 2 satellites rather than one has a number of advantages however until Hylas-2 is in space and working there is is still an element of risk.

However the market is under supplied and with little price completion my view would be that Avanti expectations are realistic. I'm holding and if I discover more positive info regards the Hughes modems and their abilities to handle rain fade... vs the Ka-Sat system I will be buying."

[horneblower] 14/3/2011 13:12

The directors are not in a position to buy shares currently and they should not have bought shares earlier imo. They are, and were, in a close period due to the (presumably) imminent statement regarding the instigation of commercial operations for Hylas1. Surely this statement will contain market sensitive information.

What they should do, and should have done earlier, is release an official statement clearing up the specific points made by the shorters regarding the operational capacity of their satellite.

They may be expert scientists but they are naive city operators. I think they have either refused to get advice or they been very badly advised.

[yorgi] 14/3/2011 13:05

As I say Chrissey along the lines of the state of Hylas1 and more detail of contracts won how they will affect the bottom line and perhaps expectation of more contracts expected in the near future. Clearly they could do more than they are.

[geheimnis2] 14/3/2011 12:54

chrissey

i am sure that directors do not have bottomless pockets to buy more and more shares

[yorgi] 14/3/2011 12:53

I think they should say more than "no reason" Tommy.

[tsmith2] 14/3/2011 12:50

I agree, not a fan of companies issuing no reason for the drop per se, but the fall here has been a result of deliberately misleading whispers etc

[yorgi] 14/3/2011 12:44

In line with comments by some others I strongly believe the company should release an RNS. Buying after the big drop to around 500p was good yes but they should release an RNS to assure the market that all is well and Hylas1 and that entering service had either happened or was imminent.

[yorgi] 14/3/2011 12:31

Looks like we need it at the moment Chrissey :-)

[adyfc] 14/3/2011 12:13

Looks like evil was right, a few people owe him an apology.

[chrissey] 14/3/2011 12:10

a few more directors buys would have looked more convincing, if they were previously buyers at 500p+, they should be even more so at this level.

I said the chart looked pretty bad some time back and for those whose glass is always half full, you just need to turn it upside down and have a look, people seem to assimilate the upsides much better, even if at their peril.

an 'in service' announcement will be great but if it puts 100p back onto the price, we will have done well, may see more depending on how significant the short term short positions are, I'm not yet convinced but we will see.

good luck all holders

[geheimnis2] 14/3/2011 11:53

leluot

surprised you havent been shaken out of these?

[leluot2] 14/3/2011 11:33

I remain amazed that the company has not been required to comment on all these falls in the share price - or that the company would not feel the need to.

Surely if all is well it would help to put out an up to date statement which included reference to the likely start of the commercial services.