Fd Technologies Public Share Discussion Threads

[moorsie2] 21/11/2017 08:39

I fully expect this to be at an all time high of around 40 by year end - due another step up very soon

[algo1] 14/11/2017 09:06

Bit of old news from earlier in the month but some further industry recognition.I like the bit about "outstanding long term growth potential"..."Kx is pleased to announce that its parent company, First Derivatives plc (FD), won the top UK Tech Company award at the UK Tech Awards 2017 gala on 2 November 2017.The annual UK tech awards "celebrate success, reward achievement and raise the profile of the UK tech community. Companies which are eligible for the awards include not only publicly quoted technology companies on the London Stock Exchange's Main Market, but also AIM tech companies and fast growing and innovative private tech companies," according to the awards group.FD was recognized as being "a fully accountable, well managed business that has already gained recognition from analysts and investors, but will also have outstanding long-term growth potential, with a sound strategy in place to ensure successful delivery of its commercial advantages and build shareholder value," the awards group said. FD was also a runner up in the Tech Growth Business of the Year category.The primary sponsor of the UK Tech Awards is PwC in association with Silicon Valley Bank. The awards are also supported by the London Stock Exchange."

[algo1] 10/11/2017 15:35

Nice piece in IC this week - I'll bet they attended the analyst meeting on results day?First Derivatives (FDP) achieved significant sales growth in the first half, buoyed by a 32 per cent uplift in software revenue to £52.2m with recurring revenue up 44 per cent. Net debt also fell substantially to £13.1m, from £16.3m a year earlier. With a good pipeline in place for the second half, the full-year performance is now expected to "be slightly ahead" of bosses' expectations.Management perceives a serious market opportunity for its software business, which is known as 'Kx'. Industry experts value the addressable market at more than $60bn (£51.8bn) per year. FinTech software revenue rose by 31 per cent to £31.2m. Meanwhile, MarTech's recurring revenue was up a whopping 72 per cent to £6.9m, helped by a new predictive data analytics platform. First Derivatives is working to expand Kx's applications across multiple industries, with progress already made in sensor analytics, the commercial space market, telecoms and healthcare. And in September, a "major investment" in machine learning was announced for Kx – providing access to new markets.Greater demand for software implementations meant data scientists were redeployed away from the group's consulting business. Sales growth there was thus weaker than previous years, although still a decent 8 per cent.Analysts at broker N+1 Singer forecast adjusted pre-tax profit of £23.5m and EPS of 67.6p for the year to February 2018, up from £20.8m and 61.3p in FY2017

[moorsie2] 09/11/2017 08:47

They can easily recruit 500 graduates a year from Irish universities. Also there is acquisition opportunities to scale up.

There is a window of opportunity here over the next three years to get scale and capitalize on new market opportunities. Very exciting

[algo1] 09/11/2017 08:32

The analyst meeting in London earlier this week must have been interesting.. I see a number of upgrades have since been published, clustering around the low £40's. Expectations about year end results and future growth must have been reset.Moorsie - £100ps in 3 years? How do you come to that number? I appreciate a 3x has happened in the past, but it seems to me FD's growth is being impacted by a lack of people.. When KX hits mainstream, growth will rapidly accelerate. They would have to increase recruitment by, say, 5x to account for leakage and new staff. 2000 people a year? Can they do that in this environment while maintaining quality? I hope they are able to hold on to the experienced staff to keep the thing glued together.

[whalehq] 08/11/2017 08:49

Thanks for the reply Moorsie. I'll slot this on my watch-list, it's a local company to me so I probably should have had a better eye on it however I previously dismissed it due to a prejudge against consulting businesses.

[moorsie2] 07/11/2017 17:37

There are three elements to the high pe

1. Continual growth company of circa 20% per year while still growing profits despite the heavy investment for growth
2. Tech sector stock in the hottest area of tech around big data and machine learning
3. The scope of use and uniqueness of Kx

Definitely not a share for faint hearted investors as the pe is high at this point. But a share price that will continue to grow with each year of growth of the company

[whalehq] 07/11/2017 17:15

Having had a scan of the interims and N1 singers report I’m intrigued however I’m struggling with the valuation from both a FWD PE and PEG perspective. I’ll need to have a better look at KX software but surely it would need to be revolutionary to sustain the current share price?

[moorsie2] 07/11/2017 13:49

yes good volumes yesterday and today is consolidating the price around 35.

Could see some weakness in the coming days and weeks but I would not expect it to last long as 32-35 is an attractive entry point for new holders.

My new target here is 100 per share by Oct 2020

[windsor430] 07/11/2017 12:51

Good to see some decent buys on the back of +ve half year. Recurring software £rev's up 44% is excellent, with diversified & growth £rev streams with Kx really looking interesting too.

[moorsie2] 07/11/2017 07:59

386 graduates recruited is the stand out for me and the fact that consulting was held back a little due to the deployment of people to Kx developments! So this recruitment is needed to drive significant new further growth. Also the largest ever contract in the group was signed in H1 and will deliver significant revenue in H2 - all in the detail of the report

Very happy to hold here - onwards and upwards

[algo1] 07/11/2017 07:15

Solid set of results.Bit of a hit from adverse FX movements and deferred payments, both hopefully one-offs. Debt being payed down, div up.I see the board have raised their FY18 expectations.Steady as she goes.

[moorsie2] 06/11/2017 07:55

Great new news. This is building a considerable head of steam..

[algo1] 06/11/2017 07:26

Kx selected by Red Bull Racing for Sensor Analytics6 Nov 2017 | Analytics, Kx Technology, Real-time, Red BullShare on: FD (AIM:FDP.L, ESM:FDP.I) announces that it has been selected by Red Bull Racing as a team supplier for the use of its Kx technology to analyse sensor data from its Formula 1 vehicles. Initially, Kx will be deployed for the analysis of wind tunnel data, a critical element in the development of faster, more competitive F1 cars.It is intended that Red Bull Racing will use Kx for a range of purposes including wind tunnel experiments and the analysis of in-race data to enable real-time decisions during Grand Prix races. With over 100 sensors on a typical F1 car, Kx technology is able to capture, integrate and analyse vast quantities of data to provide real-time actionable insights. These insights and subsequent team and driver action have the potential to make the difference to race results and safety, on cars travelling at up to 300 kilometres per hour.Kx's compact footprint and powerful analytics, which make it ideal for the challenging requirements of F1 cars, provides the potential to open additional markets where real-time analysis of large volumes of sensor data is a critical requirement. This includes the growing vehicle analytics market, where Gartner predicts that by 2020 there will be 250 million connected vehicles on the road, as well as extending to industries such as discrete manufacturing, logistics and utilities, an opportunity BGC estimates to be valued at $80bn per annum by 2020.Brian Conlon, Chief Executive Officer of Kx, commented: "We at Kx are delighted to work with Red Bull Racing. Both companies are associated with power, speed, precision engineering and innovation. Over the years F1 has proven itself as an ideal testing ground for disruptive technologies and we look forward to bringing the power of Kx to bear in high-value complementary markets." Enquiries

[moorsie2] 03/11/2017 13:57

It would be a perfect acquisition for IBM - database and consulting SaaS revenues.....

[johnroger] 03/11/2017 13:10

Kx website demonstrates potential opportunities

"NASA Frontier Development Lab and Observational Astronomy

The technological advancements that have made new astrophysical research projects like the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) in northern Chile and the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) in South Africa possible are causing a paradigm shift due to the scale of data they are able to collect. Scientists are concerned about their ability to make sense of this newly available data, purely due to its sheer size.

In June Kx joined with Lockheed Martin, IBM and other technology leaders to support space research at the NASA Frontier Development Lab. This year the lab’s teams tackled planetary defense, space resources and space weather. Kx supported the Solar Team, which explored whether machine learning and sophisticated data processing with kdb+ could be useful in predicting and defending our planet from asteroids and solar weather. A Kx data scientist working at the lab was able to load and analyze an extremely large dataset from the USGS Geomagnetism Program and run an analysis in nanoseconds to start getting real insights into the trends and patterns behind solar storms.

The global market for Earth observation data and value-added services is expected to grow to $43 billion in the next ten years according to Northern Sky Research. The need for innovative ways to capture, analyze, store and disseminate data as a meaningful information source will rapidly increase.

In the field of astronomy, Kx believes that due to the amount of data collected for astronomical research, including observational astronomy data, across the entire electromagnetic spectrum, coupled with other forms of data, there is a compelling need for Kx technology because of its time series nature, and its powerful real-time and historical based analytics."

[moorsie2] 03/11/2017 10:48

Kx has been very niche in Fin Services and therefore is not well known. Moreover there are few if any successful examples of it outside this key area of expertise... upto now..

This is the key valuation issue here - new markets are being identified and secured and as the case studies are shared then this becomes a more talked about product and as such company.

My analysis is as thus

- Kx was a brilliant product in a small private company without the ability to market and capitalise on the product due to lack of people and resource

- FDP eventually buy after many years of trying and due to the global presence they already had started to open up Kx to its full capabilities

- First significant wins in new markets and applications (the point we are at now as of 1st Nov 2017)

- Very successful applications cause a great demand on the product and great publicity for the product. Driving up revenues, profits and valuations

- Company approached and taken over by major global player in "Big Data" space



Just my opinion and as usual do your own research - but this glidepath is very possible and would see a valuation as a many multiple of today's value...

[craffert] 03/11/2017 09:59

Database Co. Mkt Cap

Oracle $210bn
MS (SQL Server) $648bn
IBM DB2 $142bn
SAP Sybase €121bn

All the above were built for old world computing environments like overnight batch processing, not real time, internet era speed of querying/analytics and real time decisions.

Value of Kx?

[moorsie2] 02/11/2017 15:41

This looks like a classic MM play to shake out weak holders and for them to get their hands on some stock before moving the price on by another 10% in the near short term - possibly after results.

Would not be surprised to see it drift down to 3350-3400 by Monday afternoon before starting to move up again by close of Monday and then move on significantly to high 30s on results day

[moorsie2] 02/11/2017 15:03

Sitting primed now for the trading results on Tuesday.

The comments around Kx and market opportunities and successes thus will be the key watch out

[moorsie2] 30/10/2017 16:41

finished at highest price today and 1p spread. looks like this has more to run this week with unfilled orders still outstanding

[mach100] 30/10/2017 15:57

I love the penny spread!

2017-10-30 15:53:35 3,620.00 21 Buy 3,619.00 3,620.00
2017-10-30 15:52:16 3,619.00 52 Sell 3,619.00 3,620.00
2017-10-30 15:51:38 3,620.00 80 Buy 3,619.00 3,620.00

Very rare for FDP.
Step back! There is gonna be fireworks I tell ya.

[moorsie2] 30/10/2017 14:39

looks like it could finish today over 37

80k shares traded with two hours of the market still to go versus an average of 15k per day

[mach100] 30/10/2017 12:30

Over £36 pounds now and still time for a good run up to results which I think are next week. No reason why we can't hit £38 at this rate by results day.

[algo1] 30/10/2017 11:47

MoorsieBit of bump today, probably some institutional buying. Nice piece in the FTfm this morning on the rise of AI in asset management. Didn't mention kx by name but clear to me that it ticks all the boxes. No doubt next-gen capital market analytics moving in Kdb's direction. I'm expecting a firm pipe and confident outlook for interims - perhaps tempered by limitations in human capital availability. Wonder if FD will go shopping for Kx skills - limited choice but Aquaq seems to the one that would bring a bit of muscle and scale, not to mention restoring a quasi market monopoly on services.I came across FD professionally just after they floated and attended public events where Arthur W / Simon G etc spoke at. It remains a mystery to this day for me as to how Kx wasn't hoovered up by an IBM or Oracle a while back - perhaps the Kx shareholders just didn't like them?Anyway - FD stands to benefit and things will come good in time.