Frontier Smart Technolog... Share Discussion Threads

[monty panesar] 29/3/2017 10:14

Simply put but any revenues from now on will make a profit rather than cover the corporate overhead...including fat cat salaries.

That is my reason for optimism...ever incremental increase should go to us

[impvesta] 29/3/2017 09:51

We are Toumaz but with our name changed to Frontier Smart Technologies Group! I don't think Toumaz ever reported a profit, so most likely never reported a positive EBITDA either.

[nod] 29/3/2017 09:31

What do they mean by this?"EBITDAFor the first time in its history the Group is able to report a positive EBITDA of GBP0.7 million compared to a loss in 2015 on a like for like basis of GBP0.8 million."Which history are they referring to? As far as I can see, we are Frontier Silicon and are we are nothing related to Toumaz.If so, did FS never in its history report a positive EBITDA ?

[adventurous] 29/3/2017 07:42

birk - you sound like an embittered ex-employee ;-) and one who doesn't understand the risks of business!!

[birkenhead] 29/3/2017 00:16

‘venty (adventurous), your 2 cheap pops at Sir HY & mistakenly blaming Prof. T for AS frittering away £55m are not supported by the facts & you’re (Note: not your!) deludedly talking out of your botty:

‘Forget old values and how much cash was burnt, as that was really down to Chris and probably to some extent HY’ and ‘failure of Chris Toumaz and his gang including HY from IMG to get Sensium off the ground’

“Toumaz announces the appointment of Anthony Sethill as Chief Executive Officer. Chris Toumazou will become Executive Chairman. “ (4 May 2012)

Anyway, you are missing the point - as I said, Sensium is gone. Shareholders have suffered the share price decimation from 320p (10.25p) to 90p (2.25p), so it is only fair that the directors are paid in line with their abject performance to show that 'we're all in this together!'

FST should not be run like JustGiving - a charity for AS & JA with them (& a few other lucky FST employees) automatically taking 6% of OUR company with no justification whatsoever.

Shareholders deserve a full and proper explanation for how 55 million was blown and why there was no contingency plan to mothball Sensium until we can generate profits to fund it to commercialisation or at least sell it for fair value.

With our broker’s optimistic share price target of a measly 114p, it is no surprise that Mr. Market was not impressed by the AS “Teach-in̶1; (…WTF? Whatever happened to just delivering products on time, selling them, announcing signed contracts with volume & revenue projections, and MAKING PROFITS?), and there is clearly no revenue coming in from our Amazon & Apple ‘partners̵7; this year!

AS has already taught us everything we could ever want to know about his management style & philosophies:

‘Greed is Good… for Anthony & Johnny’,
‘How Not to Manage a Company’,
‘2012-2016: The Filthy Lucre Failure Years - How I Blew £55m, Gave Away Sensium and Pocketed £1.5m’
‘Looking After No.1’,
‘My Lifeboat Strategy: CEO & CFO First, Shareholders Be Damned & Go Down With The Ship’

We must belatedly slash the directors’ salaries and only increase them gradually and in line with the profits and share price rises they are making for us shareholders.

[adventurous] 28/3/2017 23:22

birkenhead - your obviously out of date with salaries commanded these days!!

I see you still haven't got over the loss of Sensium, I guess you would have preferred to have subscribed for more shares in what would have been an even larger dilution to raise £8m-£16m to cover Sensium for another 18/24 mths with the associated further dilution and another year or two of negative EBITA with no guarantee that the NHS or anyone else was prepared to run with it ;-)

[birkenhead] 28/3/2017 17:18

“FST is an investment, I do not expect to see silly prices.” (‘venty)

So we should protect and maximise the shareholder returns from our investment. FST is not a benevolent money tree for AS & JA to shake down. 90p is a ‘silly’ price that would never have happened if AS & JA hadn’t failed to deliver anything after siphoning off over £500,000 for each of the last 4 years.

The fish rots from the CEO’s greedy head and even a stopped clock delivers more than AS & JA. Look again at how the directors’ remuneration jumped with the Sensium fund raising in 2012-13.

With £55m & Sensium gone, it is criminally insane to continue 'doing a Leeds' and letting the parasitic directors rob us shareholders of our profits and share price gains:

The remuneration of the Directors for 2015 in £’000 (2014-2011 in £’000)

2015 (2014 13 12 11)

A Sethill 302 (258 320 140 -) = £1.02m. £140,000 in 2012 was for 5 months
J Apps 246 (242 240 28 -) CFO = £756,000. £28,000 in 2012 was for less than 2 months
M Knight 37 (30 32 – 10)
C Batterham 30 (30 30 13 -)
P Stephansen – (- - 84 77) CFO - Yes, CFO should be paid £77,000 NOT £246,000!

Remuneration Committee
1. Membership
1.1. The committee shall comprise at least three members, all of whom shall be independent Non-Executive Directors.

Remuneration Committee
Chairman: Dr Martin Knight
Members: Mr Chris Batterham

How exactly are the above two turkeys 'independent'? What,if anything, do they do for shareholders? Why are they paid £30,000 instead of £10,000?

[the drewster] 28/3/2017 15:32

Twitter feed states 50M DABs now in use.

And we're the major player.

All sounds great, until you work out how much that has meant for us shareholders.

[taffy100] 28/3/2017 11:02

Google Home: AI speaker launched in the UK

[nod] 25/3/2017 10:52

While I was updating my Profile on ADVFN just now, I noticed my most popular post (thumbs up) was this one about Warren Buffett's Moat Test.
I wondered how FST measures up today and whether The Sage would inc=vest in FST.

Nod
20 Oct '15 - 21:19 - 2935 of 3880
A sustainable business should pass the 'Moat Test' as coined by Warren Buffett.
"The Economic Moat is the competitive advantage that one company has over other companies in the same industry. The wider the moat, the larger and more sustainable the competitive advantage. By having a well-known brand name, pricing power and a large portion of market demand, a company with a wide moat possesses characteristics that act as barriers against other companies wanting to enter into the industry."

Frontier Silicon doesn't pass the moat test because it doesn't have a well-known brand. FS sells to OEMs and the OEMs develop the brand names. The FS business model is like that of IMG where it relies on technology advantage which can be lost when a well-known big player targets your market (your castle) or a key customer is lost impacting income.

Partnering with a few leading brands can be a fragile existence. e.g. Wolfson-Apple, IMG-Apple.

Connected Audio looks like a huge market but it is still in its infancy. Whether FS can build a wide unassailable moat in connected audio remains to be seen. I have some doubts there.

What makes Sensium Healthcare look a highly attractive sustainable business is that it will make most money from consumables - the Gillette razor blade business that many companies strive for. The profit from the consumables goes into maintaining a technology advantage and quality products.

Graphic Controls and Vermed seem to have a hybrid model where they develop their own brands and also allow others to sell GC products under their own brands, healthcare companies like Honeywell are one of the many customers listed. GC ships its consumables to 60,000 customers globally and has developed a sustainable business and perhaps many Economic Moats around its products by reinvesting profits from consumables into product enhancements.

Where could Sensium Healthcare be in five years? Shipping thousands of consumables around the globe. Today we are shareholders in this vision, will we be shareholders in 12 months?
I hope so.

[nod] 25/3/2017 10:36

Peel Hunt does tend to mark on the high side when it is also nomad and broker. But, I give a thumbs up for the Peel Hunt forecast.

[rob_evans] 25/3/2017 09:41

Peel Hunt Raises Frontier Smart Technologies Group Ltd (FST) Price Target to GBX 114 -

[sweenoid] 24/3/2017 11:34

lol
no wonder your handle says what it does ;-)

under playing it is uner stating it pal.
S

[chillpill] 24/3/2017 10:19

I'm feeling good here. I think they are under playing things after previous disappointments.

[chillpill] 24/3/2017 10:18

...and sales only get booked when completed...a 3/4 month product cycle.

[monty panesar] 24/3/2017 10:06

They said in the statement first revenues were delayed until December...

[nod] 24/3/2017 09:51

I'm disappointed that Smart Audio revenues have declined. We've been promised a big tick up for a long time. It was over 18 months ago that Google Cast was announced and 6 months ago the Harman contract was announced. It appears the contracts were too late to impact 2016 revenues. 2 September 2016:Anthony Sethill, CEO, Frontier Silicon, said:"Just over a year ago we announced we were working with Google on its Cast technology. Google Cast promises to be a game changer for the smart audio sector and we are delighted that our first product announcement is with the world's largest speaker company, Harman. This is the first of several design wins to be announced in the coming months and an indication of the exciting potential of our high growth Smart Audio division."

[sweenoid] 24/3/2017 09:01

Looking at FST's web- site , the marketing page for Sensium is rather dynamic and attractive. Toumaz , I believe paid for all the regulatory 'issues' and various 'approovals' .
I have come to believe savvy marketing and PR are just as important as the 'science', I would not underestimate this Dutch company , it's highly unlikely they can commercialise it, but stranger things have happened ... And if they did and sold it on , the terms of the sale would greatly benefit us

Dreams are all I have with this stock
S

[monty panesar] 24/3/2017 08:16

Sweenoid. Sensium is dead. FST will never see revenues from that. Time to move on.

[monty panesar] 24/3/2017 08:00

In 2016 they made £13.7m of Gross Profit.You then take off the cash items ie. 7.4m for R&D and 7.1m for admin/fat cats and it is a loss of around 800k. R&D I think will drop by 800k or more this year so I think around 35-40% of any additional revenue will translate into profit.

[zipstuck] 24/3/2017 07:44

Encouraging if can generate cash at these levels and they say they don't need to raise more cash. Plenty to play for at this point.

[sweenoid] 24/3/2017 07:28

Repition , repetition repitition
I nearly fell back to sleep reading that, so uninspiring.
Looks like most of the costs are in $ ...:-(

Perhaps a miracle will happen at Sensium and we can be rescued ( but it needs to be soon, otherwise our escape revenue expires) , I remain totally sceptical that Chromecast is going to be the cash cow that some hope for and 'Frontier's focus will be on third party brands which aim to include these technologies in their own devices' is not inspiring - we ain't getting the big boys, by the looks of it.

This stock remains in my portfolio for one reason only, to use as a big loss :-( :-( against CGT gains elsewhere

Arrrggghhh
S

[life of crime] 20/3/2017 14:35

It is good to see some announcements on the smart audio front. The Lidl announcement may not be glamorous but they have a massive number of stores and high footfall. I can afford Waitrose but still use my local Lidl regularly for the basics (why pay £3 for blueberries at Waitrose when you can get them at Lidl for 90p!). I can testify the store is always packed and some will want the Silvercrest products.

The upcoming statement will be all about the forwarding looking picture, and the recent announcements, with the promise of more to come, bodes well. With the sale of the loss making Sensium, despite my preference for a JV, the way should be paved for profitability, with the help of a ramp up in international DAB sales as more countries opt for a digital switchover.

Enjoy the Spring Equinox and the longer days.

[the drewster] 20/3/2017 10:25

Monty P ... we'd all love a re-rating, but there are some gaps in the story AS and JA need to plausibly fill:

Revenue announced march '16 was £32.1m, this year expects 32m - the revenue split between digital and connected will be interesting.

EBITDA last year -7.8M now expected +0.8m

Cash on hand end last year £7.7M, now £3.4M (was £3.8m at half year, and should have been boosted by the £1.3M for sale of Sensium in July)... potentially H2 saw further £1.7m cashburn?

Full £5m debt facility was drawn as at end last year - has any been repaid to explain fall in cash?

What was the "reduced" R&D figure (11.3m last year), half year was 2.8 Vs 4.7

We should be out of the woods and ready to run, but there's no compelling evidence from the trading update.