Fonix Mobile Share Discussion Threads

[mammyoko] 31/5/2022 21:51

ATH in bear market would be impressive

[brucie5] 31/5/2022 16:52

6 month high.

[rivaldo] 30/5/2022 09:16

News - FNX are providing mobile donations for the Prince's Trust for the first time:



"May 26
Fonix to power mobile donations for The Prince’s Trust Awards on ITV

We’re proud to announce that we’ll be providing the text donation mechanic for The Prince’s Trust Awards. SMS will feature on the awards for the first time in its history. Hosted by Ant & Dec, The Prince’s Trust Awards will air today on ITV.

The Awards recognise young people who have succeeded against all the odds, improved their chances in life and had a positive impact on their local community.

Fonix will be working with The Prince’s Trust and ITV to provide a text-to-donate platform, enabling donors to send a text message to donate either £10, £20, £30 or £40, all charged to their mobile phone bills.

The Prince’s Trust helps young people from disadvantaged communities to get their lives back on track by giving them the confidence and skills to live, learn and earn. Founded by HRH The Prince of Wales in 1976, the charity supports 11 to 30-year-olds across the UK who are unemployed, those struggling at school or at risk of exclusion. Since its inception The Trust has supported more than one million young people in the UK.

At Fonix, we have seen the huge impact of text donations across televised campaigns and are delighted that this will feature on The Prince’s Trust Awards show. We’re looking forward to seeing the results and the difference it makes to help support young people."

[rivaldo] 24/5/2022 10:56

SCSW updated on FNX in last month's issue FYI - since the new issue is now out it's probably OK to paste here:



"Fonix
152.5p Epic code: FNX

(Sharewatch) Fonix’s H1 results were as good as could be expected with record levels of business in November and December. As I said last month the most important metric is gross profit which was +20% to £7m, driven by +18% from its core mobile payments business and +43% from mobile messaging. Firm management of its cost base has enabled its gross profit growth to translate to EBITDA growth of 20% to £5.2m/eps of 4.4p so against the FY22 forecasts of £9.6m/7.6p, the company looks well set for a “beat.” Keep on buy list."

[rivaldo] 18/5/2022 13:40

Nice bounce - but at 140p it's still only on a current year P/E of 15.9. And less if you strip out the cash pile.

[rivaldo] 12/5/2022 07:29

Pleasing to see the options issued today to the CFO and other employees have a 143p exercise price. None of this nil cost rubbish often used by other companies.

Hopefully the timing of thie issue also reflects FNX's belief that this is as good (i.e low) a strike price as the eligible employees will get.

[lammylover] 10/5/2022 09:12

Thanks Rivaldo - I've added more this morning at £1.37 on the market makers quick tree shake. Bargain!

[rivaldo] 10/5/2022 08:44

Mark Watson-Mitchell updated on FNX on Master Investor on Friday night as follows. The share price has inevitably slipped a little in the current markets, so looks even better value imho.

MWM has now increased his target price to 180p - plenty of room for him to increase again towards Finncap's 230p target!

"Fonix Mobile (LON:FNX) – I set a new Target Price

Simon Beresford, Director of Fundraising and Marketing of the Disasters Emergency Committee, stated that:

“We’re thankful to Fonix for enabling mobile donations so quickly and to the generous UK public whose donations will go on to make such a difference. As humanitarian needs continue to grow, the money raised will help to provide vital support to families caught up in this devastating conflict.”

Fonix has been the mobile donation partner for the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal.

Over £6.8m has been made in mobile donations since the beginning of March.

This is a wonderful example of how Fonix can work. It provides mobile payments and messaging services for clients across media, telecoms, entertainment, enterprise and commerce.

When donors or consumers make payments, they are charged to their mobile phone bill. This service is primarily used for ticketing, digital services, memberships and also for charity and other donations.

Over the last few years this £150m capitalised group has been gradually building up its revenues and its profitability.

From £31.1m revenue in 2019, £40.1m in 2020, last year to end June it saw £47.7m total.

Its adjusted pre-tax profits, in the same time period, have grown from £5.2m, to £7.3m then £8.3m last year.

Analysts Michael Hill and Andrew Darley at brokers finnCap are estimatin, g that this year, to the end of next month, the group will report £53m revenues and £9.6m profits, earnings of 7.9p (6.9p), covering a 6.0p per share dividend (5.2p).

The analysts suggest that the group’s shares have a lot further to climb. They see current year figures of £58.4m sales, £10.6m profits, 8.8p earnings and 6.6p dividend per share. Their price objective is 230p.

Last night the group’s shares, which last May peaked at 179.95p and fell to a Ukraine conflict low of 118p, were looking much stronger at 15op.

I now set a new Target Price of 180p."

[rivaldo] 05/5/2022 08:12

Finncap note today that FNX have foregone any transactions fee for Ukraine, whilst their platform costs are covered, which is fair enough.

They reiterate their 230p target price, and note:

"Foregoing any transactions fee, Fonix merely covers platform costs, with no difference to financial performance – but the professional reputation of the platform as being the best available, with the capacity to cope with such volumes of donations in a restricted time window, highlights the quality of the tech, and the feel-good factor of techfor-good in an increasingly ESG focused environment. Target 230p reiterated."

[rivaldo] 05/5/2022 07:36

News - FNX were the carrier for mobile donations to the Ukraine appeal, with over £6.8m raised so far. Not only a terrific cause, but presumably a nice little earner for FNX too, as well as being a rather prestigious win:

[rivaldo] 28/4/2022 14:02

Cheers. A good pitch - learned a couple of things myself. FNX were well received by all the fund managers, and it was enough to get the guy from Stellar Asset Management to put a call in to FNX to find out more.

[tomps2] 28/4/2022 10:14

FNX pitched in the latest episode of Sell It To The City

Simon Cooper pitches Fonix Mobile (FNX) to leading fund managers, Andy Brough, Judith MacKenzie and Stephen English at 46m50s in the latest PIWORLD Sell It To The city.

Watch the video here: www.piworld.co.uk/education-videos/sell-it-to-the-city-april-2022/

Or listen to the podcast here: piworld.podbean.com/e/sell-it-to-the-city-april-2022/

[rivaldo] 26/4/2022 14:06

FNX were tipped as a Buy in Momentum Investor as follows in their April issue - since the new issue is now out it should be OK to copy this:

"Fonix, the UK provider of mobile payments and messaging services, announced strong first half results. Total payments volumes (TPV) grew 12% to £138m with record levels of business in November and December. Gross profit as a percentage of TPV increased from 4.7% to 5.1% as it moved away from relatively low margin TPV from voice services. Gross profit increased 20% to £7m driven by 18% growth from mobile payments and 43% growth from mobile messaging. Good cost control meant EBITDA increasing 20% to £5.5m.

Fonix has continued investing in its platform to expand internationally including better functionality for multi-currency reporting and automatic direct-to-consumer refunds, which can fuel expansion into transport and ticketing.

FinnCap forecasts EPS of 7.9p this year ending June and 8.8p in FY'23, dropping the prospective P/E to 19.7 and 17.7. Its price target is 230p, implying 20x FY'23 EV/EBITDA. I am a buyer."

[rivaldo] 13/4/2022 15:40

I came across Paul Scott's (of Stockopedia) review of FNX's recent interims. I very often disagree with him, which is fine, but on this occasion can wholly concur with his verdict that FNX looks great!



Extracts:

"Fonix Mobile (LON:FNX) – excellent interim results, with simple, clean numbers, that I can’t find any fault in. This looks a decent GARP share, so gets a thumbs up from me. Cash generative, paying decent divis, and growing nicely, with a solid outlook. Also has very sticky, repeating business from established clients. There’s lots to like here, as a long-term hold."

"My opinion – what a smashing set of numbers, I’ve enjoyed reviewing this, so thank you to the readers who gave me a prompt to look at it.

I’d classify this as a GARP share (growth at reasonable price).

The talk about international growth is encouraging too, giving much larger total addressable market size.

Overall, Fonix gets a thumbs up from me, delivering decent interims, with a solid outlook, and at a price that I think can be justified."

[rivaldo] 10/4/2022 18:57

The new issue of SCSW is now out. In last month's issue FNX was a new main tip, so it should now be OK to copy some interesting parts of their (very long) coverage (not including the parts where they simply explain what FNX does etc):



"Only 35 employees

This year the business is set to report a £9.1m pretax profit on sales of £51.4m - despite only having a headcount of 35. Astonishing. Chief executive Rob Weisz says it is all about leveraging a proprietary cloud based platform - as I describe below, most customers set up their campaigns and do most of the things themselves with little intervention from Fonix."

"Never lost a client

Apart from its low headcount, what also makes this a strong business is that Fonix has never lost a customer - so each new win tends to become a permanent addition to revenues. There are presently 120 clients, up from 99 a year ago across a range of sectors including media, charity, gaming, telecoms and dating and includes Bauer Media, the BBC, BT and ITV.

When it floated in October 2020, the company certainly had no reason for new money as all its growth had been organically funded; instead, the main reason was for the improved creditworthiness in the eyes of customers - by then it was handling £150m-£200m a year cash and needed to provide comfort to the likes of the BBC that it wouldn’t disappear into a puff of smoke. The second reason was that it provided a partial exit (£45m) on behalf of selling shareholders. Even now, the tidal wave of cashflow leaves net cash of £5m and there is plenty of largesse for shareholders as Weisz has a target 75% payout ratio of earnings and is on track for increasing the dividend from 5.2p to 6p for this year."

"High element of repeat income

The great thing is that the business now has a high element of repeat and recurring income. Instead of selling on an upfront licence basis, pricing is “pay-as-you-go” based on transactions."

"Scaleable platform

From the early days the system has also operated through Amazon Web Services (AWS) and its elastic Cloud. This enables Fonix to auto-scale (automatically request additional servers) to meet required computing power times. These days the system can process 2,000 payment transactions per second allowing it to support traffic spikes and situational peaks. This core capability of Fonix’s platform has differentiated Fonix from competitors’ systems with less capable technology, and enabled Fonix to win new clients. In order to ensure Fonix can continue to process transactions for its clients in close to all scenarios, Fonix’s platform works to reduce all single points of failure, multi-site deployments, and multiple divergent routes to all telecom carriers where available. Given the highly sensitive nature of the data and payments that Fonix is processing, Fonix also conducts its own security testing on top of thorough testing of its network by clients, and it operates with 24/7 monitoring and bespoke safety measures."

"Overseas expansion

But in the short run, the big fish to fry is expansion into Europe; Austria, which is one third of the size of the UK market, will soon go live and act as a bridgehead into Germany and Weisz has three or four other countries in his sights. As he says, expansion is being carried out in a low risk way by targeting countries where existing customers already operate or where there is a well developed phonepaid framework. Instead of setting up direct tier one connectivity, he is also partnering with wholesale aggregators, which will make it quicker to enter the market.

Brokers are yet to factor into forecasts the expansion into new verticals and geographies but even despite that, the business is trading strongly. Last month, Finncap upgraded forecasts to £9.6m pretax profit / 7.9p eps for the year to end June lifting to £10.6m/8.8p next year. I am a buyer."

[rivaldo] 30/3/2022 14:14

FNX presented last week alongside BT, EE, FirstGroup etc at a Transport and Parking "charge to bill" event - some useful insights here:

[rivaldo] 17/3/2022 13:35

News from FNX - they will be running this year's Stand Up To Cancer campaign, and they're introducing £40 donations for the first time:



"Mar 16
·Fonix: The cherry on top for Bake Off"

"SMS donations will be at the forefront of this year’s Stand Up To Cancer campaign. Donors will be able to send a text message to donate either £10, £20, £30 and they will also be running £40 for the very first time. The donation will be charged to their mobile phone bills.

Fonix has identified the trend for higher donation price points leading to a larger volume, and subsequent larger value, of Gift Aid declarations. Since the hugely successful introduction by Fonix of the £20 price point in 2016, the £30 price point in 2018 and more recently the £40 price point the extra 25% makes a big difference. By calling out to £40 donors that their Gift Aid declaration can add £10 to their donation at no extra cost to them, Fonix has seen upwards of 70% of £40 donations covered by a Gift Aid declaration."

[tole] 16/3/2022 18:22

https://masterinvestor.co.uk/equities/taking-a-small-cap-look-at-hsp-rcn-epwn-and-fnx/Fonix Mobile (LON:FNX) – further advance expected after strong interims and a cracking 99% ARROn Tuesday morning this group, which provides mobile payments and messaging services for clients across media, telecoms, entertainment, enterprise and commerce, issued its interim results for the six months to end December 2021.They showed a 16.2% increase in revenues to £28.6m, a 20.3% advance in adjusted pre-tax profits at £5.2m, helping to push up its half-time earnings by 21.4% to 4.4p per share.All sections of the group's business saw increases in the six months.Its clients list includes blue-chips, such as BT, Comic Relief, ITV, Global Media, Children in Need and Bauer Media amongst hundreds of others.When consumers make payments, they are charged to their mobile phone bill. This service can be used for ticketing, content, cash deposits and donations.It also offers messaging solutions, in fact, last November and December saw record levels of business, with some 84m SMS messages being processed in a single month.The group's broker, finnCap, considers this business to be highly scalable and is expecting a good second half to round off the year to end June.Analysts Andrew Darley and Michael Hill estimate £53m (£47.7m) revenues, profits of £9.6m (£8.3m), earnings of 7.9p (6.9p) and a dividend of 6.0p (5.2p) per share.For the coming year they foresee £58.4m sales, £10.6m profits, 8.8p earnings and a 6.6p dividend per share.I really like the generation of this group and consider that its shares, now at 153.5p, have great upside potential.They peaked last year at 190p and could easily be up there again soon.

[rivaldo] 16/3/2022 10:53

Here's Simon Thompson's IC tip for the record:

"Tapping into a fast-growing mobile payment play

Business is booming for a mobile payments service that enables merchants to charge customers' mobile phone bills for products or services

March 14, 2022
By Simon Thompson

Interim pre-tax profit up 20 per centto £5.5mn on 16 per cent higher revenue of £28.6mn
Record trading in November and December 2021
Early traction from partnership with Ventro
Scaling up more profitable verticals drives gross profit margin higher
12 new customers added to client base in first half

Fonix Mobile’s (FNX:154p) main business is a mobile payments service that enables merchants to charge customers' mobile phone bills for products or services. Effectively,carrier billing turns the mobile device into a cash register while offering convenience for consumers.

The latest half-year results highlight that Fonix’s payment platform is not only highly scalable (it can process up to 2,000 transactions per second), but is an important customer acquisition tool for clients. By offering an alternative payment method to consumers who may otherwise forgo purchasing, Fonix’s payment platform differentiates itself from traditional payment methods, such as credit cards or ApplePay.

For example, the group’s new partnership with Venntro, a company that operates 2,500 white labelled dating sites,has driven an eye-catching 28 per cent increase in new same-day subscribers (users that upgrade on the day they join a dating site) within the first few weeks of launching carrier billing.

The payment platform is also proving attractive to corporate clients – 12 new customers were added in the latest six-month period – seeking an alternative to traditional cash transactions which have a high cash processing cost. Moreover, by focusing on more profitable verticals such as payments for car parking, cinema tickets,pay-and-go gyms, gaming and even public transport, the group is driving its own profitability higher, too. Fonix’s gross profit increased from 4.7 to 5.1 per cent as a proportion of total transaction value (up from £123mn to £138mn), thus driving gross profit 20 per cent higher to a record £7mn.

Fonix’s payment solutions are proving popular with charities, too. For example,the group’s market-leading 'text to donate'and 'click to donate' products formed a central part of ITV’s Soccer Aid Campaign,and The Ruth Straus Foundation at last summer’s Lord’s Test match between England and India. The £10bn charity donation market is still a greenfield opportunity for Fonix, as is client-led international expansion into neighbouring western European markets. A near 100 percent customer retention rate highlights high levels of client satisfaction.

House broker FinnCap is maintaining its annual revenue and gross profit estimates of £53mn and £13mn based on 11 and 15 percent growth, respectively. On this basis,expect annual pre-tax profit of £9.6mn and earnings per share (EPS) of 7.9p to support a 15 per cent hike to 6p in the dividend per share paid from free cash flow of 7.5p ashare.

However, FinnCap views its estimates as conservative as the directors say that the underlying run-rate is robust, so much so that the second half will only be slightly weaker than the seasonally strong first half(gross profit of £7mn). An earnings beat is highly likely, while the ongoing outperformance looks set to continue into the 2022/23 financial year, a factor not embedded in a 12-month forward price/earnings (PE) ratio of 17.5.

Fonix’s 5 per cent plus free cash flow yield,4.3 per cent prospective dividend yield for the 22/23 financial year, and strong organic growth prospects, offer defensive qualities,too. This explains why the shares have edged up since my last buy call (‘Profitingfrom the mobile payment boom’, 23from the mobile payment boom’, 23 September 2021), and produced a 15 percent total return since I initiated coverage (Alpha Research: Bargain opportunity to play the mobile payments boom’,5 August 2021) during which time the FTSEAim All-Share Total Return index has shed 20 per cent of its value. I see material upside to my 190p target. Buy"

[rivaldo] 15/3/2022 14:51

Great article Martin, thanks. Good to hear they've already done a couple of successful deals in the multibillion pound transport ticketing sector.

Interesting to see confirmation that Austria is taking its time, but they've got a couple of other European deals in the pipeline.

I very much like management's attitude of underpromising and overdelivering. FNX have this in common with the other successful recent IPOs that I hold in CLX and ADF.

Here's a direct link for easier access.....

[hastings] 15/3/2022 14:14

Rather brief, but our CEO is a busy man.Hopefully of some use Https://martinflitton1.wixsite.com/privatepunter/post/fonix-sending-the-right-message-15-03-22

[hastings] 15/3/2022 09:30

All looking good, speaking with Rob Weisz later this morning, so will add my contribution!

[rivaldo] 15/3/2022 09:27

Cheers lammylover - looks like that tip has done the trick in clearing an overhang given the tick up just now.

Finncap's 230p valuation is a reasonable target and certainly reflects Simon Thompson's "material upside".

[lammylover] 14/3/2022 21:41

FNX has just been covered by Simon T in Investors Chronicle.
Rated a Buy - Simon sees material upside to his target price of 190p.
Hopefully this coverage will bring in some fresh money tomorrow...
Rich