Cyanconnode Share Discussion Threads

[realist1950] 29/5/2018 22:34

PULL YOUR HEAD OUT OF YOUR BACKSIDE AND SMELL THE COFFEE INSTEAD.






tonyj
Posts: 2,105
Observation
Opinion: No Opinion
Price: 10.50
RE;DIRECTORS' REMUNERATIONSun 19:05Well this has been a hard uphill battle. Directors' costs are perhaps too high for the current returns. It is not necessarily their fault but never the less facts are facts. In this case lack of facts. The AGM is coming up and perhaps it should be put that the BOD's salaries are halved until £1 is reached. A reversal of the bonus system. They are as intent on the success of the company as we are and would likely concede to the request..

[realist1950] 29/5/2018 22:21

Financial Highlights
• Revenue of £1.17m (2016: £1.82m) with the decrease directly as a result of the delay in deployment of a large customer contract noti ed to the Company just before the period end
• Operating loss of £11.15m (2016: £7.94m)

[realist1950] 29/5/2018 22:15

...."while £87,500 related to additional time worked during 2013-2014, over and above the hours paid out under his service and consultancy contracts."

[realist1950] 29/5/2018 22:12

Quite extraordinary:

"Of the £140,000 bonus paid to John Cronin in 2017, £70,000 related to bonus for the second half of 2016. The bonus element of John Cronin’s remuneration package reduced to £20k for the second half of 2017 (annual equivalent £40,000). His total remuneration package reduced from £375,000 to £340,000 during 2017."

"Note 1 – John Cronin: £407,500 of the £495,000 fees paid to John Cronin during 2017 related to services provided during 2017, while £87,500 related to additional time worked during 2013-2014, over and above the hours paid out under his service and consultancy contracts. Success criteria based on securing customer contracts and equity funding were agreed by the Remuneration Committee at that time. These criteria were met during 2015 and £100,000 relating to the additional fees earned was paid out during 2015. Mr Cronin chose not to receive the remaining £87,500 of these additional fees in 2015, however it was agreed that these would be paid during 2017."

"Of the £495,000 fees paid to John Cronin during 2017, £251,934 was paid in shares and £243,066 was paid in cash."

[realist1950] 29/5/2018 21:45

J*sus wept.

I've just taken a quick look.

[realist1950] 29/5/2018 20:48

That's his prerogative, davep4.

I have not yet looked at the Annual Report and in particular the renumeration section for 2017, but I will....perhaps this evening or tomorrow.

[davep4] 29/5/2018 18:57

2,464 posts mostly relating to Cyan, you must have an obsession with this company Iwax13!

[lwaxf13] 28/5/2018 10:32

£500K for what?!! Seriously. How the firk this is justified beats me. This lot would give the Carillion board a run for their money. So many public companies are run as gravy trains by people in way over their heads.

[inthetin] 28/5/2018 09:45

The full Annual Report, including Directors' Remuneration Report:-

hxxp://cyanconnode.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/CyanConnode-Holdings-Annual-Report-2017_web.pdf

And, if £500K etc isn't enough:-

'Executive directors are entitled to accept appointments outside the Company providing that the Chairman’s permission is sought.'

[lwaxf13] 27/5/2018 19:38

And that fella over on the other board thinks the directors will concede to a pay cut and bonus reversal. Why would the world leading team volunteer to trouser less cash? I am surprised the options have not been reduced yet. Here is how big they think at cyan - for years they set themselves low bar options that should have been easily hit. They missed, repeatedly. What to do? Adjust the options lower for the team to make it easier. IMO if we had had a tier 1 team they would have upwards of a target price of £10 ( old money 5p ) on this. Our team had options of around 0.4p and other pathetic values.

[lwaxf13] 27/5/2018 14:04

If the remuneration reported over on the other board is true it confirms for me anyway my suspicions that this is a lifestyle gravy train. Would anyone here hire these guys if you wanted top drawer people? One of them clearly isn't paid enough as he had trouble catching a train years ago to a dog and pony show. Let's hope he is not sent to any critical business meetings.

[lwaxf13] 25/5/2018 20:00

Paying attention sir :-)

5+ years and how many millions for this shower to continue their run of failure? They should have been handed P45s years ago.

[sabre6] 25/5/2018 18:48

Iwax
I know how much you love this share so this is my take on it.This time next year we will be cash generative and at or possibly above break even.
Following on about six months we will be in profit opening the way for a sale.
Now pay attention to the above.
Regards

[lwaxf13] 23/5/2018 17:05

If they continue to perform in their unique world leading way then 0p is inevitable. IMO. the hundreds of thousands invested by the smart cookies will not look too smart then. In fact it does not look too smart now given this share only goes one direction.

[cancun tango] 23/5/2018 12:45

Realist

You're spot on regarding the delayed contract. Inventories at year end up £800k yoy. Which, I imagine, is what they produced but didn't get paid for. Value of the delayed sale would depend on what price the stock is booked at.

[emptyend] 23/5/2018 12:16

I agree the point about further funding being needed - but I think it is a mistake to assume it would have to come from shareholders.

[realist1950] 23/5/2018 09:55

It is, imo, misguided, to blame the poor 2017 revenues exclusively on the so called 'delayed' contract.

The revenues are in fact perfectly in line with CYAN's past historic performance, ie poor. Poor year in, year out.

So nothing has changed.

Perhaps by highlighting a delayed contract, it brings the illusion of 'progress' along with the effect of shifting or deflecting the focus of blame for yet another financially bad year.

And now you have a new contract.

And you're told payments to come this year.

I am of the mind that I'd rather 'watch the birdie'. That is, watch for the 'delayed' contracts before I focus on the new. There is form here for announcing contracts only for them not to materialise and in the meantime, new opportunities flagged.

If you remove the excuses or reasoning, the fact remains that CYAN have sold little, banked little....all of which is in line with previous years.

The new broker note, which has just landed on my desk, seems more sober and cautious.

The need for more working capital to actually execute/deliver orders is not what you want to see. And there is now plenty of warning of the highly speculative nature of the business, at this stage.

I do not view cyan as 'early stage'.

I have followed it for over a decade and have seen it flux and reinvent itself.

It has, on several occasions, been on the brink of apparent breakthrough, only for nothing to arrive and for the company to instead bend to the demands and bureaucracy of the emerging markets it targets. Trial after trial. Trial after trial. Smoke and mirrors.

Sensible investors, who make money, would probably look at this and wait for the situation to become derisked and buy at a higher price.

You have pretty much been told further funding will be required so I can not think why one would want to throw money in at this point.

As ever, these are just my views / opinions and ADYOR etc.

[smithless] 23/5/2018 09:45

A staggering £57m of cash has been thrown into this business over the years to generate £1.17m of revenue - unbelievable. I would say Ken was better at running a business than John, but he wasn't. Same sort of promises year after year.

[mtw] 22/5/2018 21:11

There is a good reason a competitor hasn't done a buy out... even at this MktCap it is not seen as good value.

[lwaxf13] 22/5/2018 17:06

They over rate their own abilities IMO and threw money into this believing they had what it takes to deliver. Time has proven that the smart cookies at Cyan called it very wrong. The scary bit is they are on the inside and know how bad things really are but they threw money at this. There is no way to sugar coat this. It has been a f££ing disaster. World leading?!! Please ...

[emptyend] 22/5/2018 15:22

Not quite. I've gone into this with my eyes open. I've got a lot of time for some (not necessarily all....) of the directors who I know have forgotten more about tech than I will ever learn. And I know they don't throw their own money about. Now some will say that they have been well-paid.....and that is broadly right..... but they have no need to turn around and reinvest it at the rate of £60-100k pa, as some have done.Of course they might prove to be wrong. And they might fail to spot some threats etc. But I think they have a decent shot at growing the business and making their money back (some of which went in at triple my own average).We'll see.

[owenski] 22/5/2018 13:34

".....well in essence you are just dressing-up the share price fall"

I think emptybellend is dressing up the business case.

[realist1950] 22/5/2018 13:21

The Bull:-

I agree. 5p - 7p will be the next trading range.

The question I have is, will CYAN fall to that level before or after the next fundraising.

The results and accompanying statement are riddled with so many issues (existing and further potential issues) it's really very hard to know where to start.

CYAN hasn't been a sound investment for years and years and years.

And I personally do not think anything has changed.

Clearly the cost base, although reduced, is still high. Clearly further funding will be required. Clearly there remains uncertainty over revenue flows. Clearly there remains uncertainty over project roll-outs - and not just for cyan. Clearly there remains uncertainty over industry standards and what the overall direction of travel will be (technologically) across multiple territories / markets. I could go on.

In the face of the above, why anyone would bother bottom fishing this one is beyond me.

Pretty much everyone, in the history of CYAN being a listed company, are down on their investment.

Let someone else fund it and buy the risk imo.

Sit back.

Watch.

Remove yourself from that risk................and buy a few years down the line - de-risked......and that's IF they make it.

All imo. ADYOR.