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FCIF Funding Circle Sme Income Fund Limited

82.70
0.00 (0.00%)
28 Mar 2024 - Closed
Delayed by 15 minutes
Share Name Share Symbol Market Type Share ISIN Share Description
Funding Circle Sme Income Fund Limited LSE:FCIF London Ordinary Share GG00BYYJCZ96 ORD NPV
  Price Change % Change Share Price Bid Price Offer Price High Price Low Price Open Price Shares Traded Last Trade
  0.00 0.00% 82.70 82.40 83.00 - 0.00 00:00:00
Industry Sector Turnover Profit EPS - Basic PE Ratio Market Cap
0 0 N/A 0

Funding Circle Sme Income Share Discussion Threads

Chat Pages: 1
DateSubjectAuthorDiscuss
26/4/2019
22:01
I haven't an FT account, but thanks again for your advice.
I'll sit it out for this divi and see what happens over the next month.
Totally agree wrt the bad smell. I think the only real winners are the FC board, which is a shame because if they hadn't gotten so greedy it might have been a great British success story.

mxds
24/4/2019
20:00
Hi MXDS,



seems the trade was to buy FCIF and short funding circle. Unfortunately I'm here to say that while I still believe you'll be fine in FCIF in terms of not losing money overall - i'm getting out for roughly flat and use the money elsewhere. Sorry to hear you're stuck in FC property loans. P2P smells and my gut is saying go back to home infrastructure and REIT turf.

pyufak
24/4/2019
07:16
Thanks for your research - I appreciate the effort and sharing your findings.
I took the plunge yesterday, so will sit back and observe.
I am an FC lender, but scaled back considerably a year ago - their foray into properties has been a complete disaster and borderline scandal - to encourage investors they pitched the majority of them as lowest risk (A+), from observation half took FC for a ride.
As a consequence I have loans that FC claim are kosher but that can't be sold.
Holding FCIF looks to be a better bet

mxds
16/4/2019
10:11
well someone big doesn't agree with me - continues to cross 400k shares a day in the FCIF purchases and looks to be one of the big sellers (Invesco my best guess) selling - slight worry
pyufak
12/4/2019
20:18
So here is my best shot at a deep dive into this one.

My conclusions are twofold.

1. FCIF has limited downside from here unless the UK economy really craters, I bought FCIF as I think it's good risk reward from here given we have a Brexit delay. It's purely a play that the fund wind up will be >86.6p.

2. Stay away from P2P lending - I believe their implied default rates are far far too low and their incentive structure is wrong --> i think this is the reason the institutional investors want this fund unwound - they want out of this sector and I wholeheartedly agree.

So using recent fact sheets and last year's annual report I get the below

Net assets 315
Cash 22.05 (7% of the fund is in cash from end Feb)
Loans 292.95
Income 28.41615 (9.7% avg int rate 2016+; matches '18 fin statement)
Costs 4.743 (from '18 fin statement, excludes FX charge and NPLs)
I-C 23.67315 (Income - costs = NPL capacity)

Below is the capacity for non-performing loan write downs for respective recovery rates just using the income generated by the loan interest less costs. Googling recovery rates I have found figures between 30-40% for Italian banks. However to be conservative I used the 10 & 20% recovery rates for my investment decision.

NPL implied @ 0% R 8.08%
NPL implied @ 10% R 8.89%
NPL implied @ 20% R 9.70%
NPL implied @ 30% R 10.51%
NPL implied @ 40% R 11.31%

To me, these default rates look quite realistic for UK SME lending. If anyone can find a good data series on this I would be interested. All I found was a European report - UK SME default rate in 2015 at ~11%, add in the 30% recovery rate commonly cited and this fund is returning negligible NAV gain. This view is corroborated by FC's own statistics: hxxps://www.fundingcircle.com/uk/statistics/ where '16 & '17 NPLs are developing on significantly steeper gradients. To be fair to FC this assumes zero recovery. Could I see 16, 17 and 18 defaults going 10%+ on a zero recovery? - it seems unlikely unless we get a very significant economic deterioration. Yet, nor is this fund going to organically gain significant NAV value in my opinion - which would also explain the wind down.

So why did I buy? I have updated the implied recovery rates above to account for the market cap of the fund as opposed to NAV. Using 86.6p / (9.1%).

Discount to NAV @ 9.1% = cash 28.66

NPL implied @ 0% 17.86%
NPL implied @ 10% 19.65%
NPL implied @ 20% 21.44%
NPL implied @ 30% 23.22%
NPL implied @ 40% 25.01%

Now we're getting into territory where I like the risk reward. Lending Club (US P2P lender to households and businesses NPLs in '08 was 15%). I find it difficult to see FCIFs default rate getting towards these figures. My base is defaults of ~10%, 20% recovery rate and so no organic growth but should over time realise the 9.1% discount.

Lastly, FCIF have stepped up their buybacks of their own shares since March. In Feb they bought 2.137m shares resulting in a 0.06% addition to NAV however after the fund wind up was announced they stepped this programme up and have bought 7.825m (+0.22% NAV) shares in March and in April are on course to buy 8.8m (+0.25% NAV). This appears to be the main way they can create NAV growth if the share price remains at such a discount - they will have significant incoming cash monthly from loan rolls offs to continue this. I do also take this as an indication of the boards outlook - the statement highlights they will use cash balances to correct material deviations of the share price from NAV which implies the default rate is not running away higher in my view.

The risks:

1. it's a 10% trade with potential for ~5% further upside if things go better than planned but over what time period? Rolling off the loan book we'd be talking years and that isn't a great return over that period. This is why I have personally done this trade on margin rather than pure cash investment. Margin also allows me to play for a much greater return on equity and given I think the downside is limited I am comfortable with this in my wider portfolio.

2. Hidden aspects as mentioned above we just can't see. High unwind fees (even though fees should start coming down as they use less banking facilities etc).

Thoughts welcome

pyufak
08/4/2019
05:41
Agree with all that, thanks @Pyufak. Also not a holder, but am watching..
spectoacc
07/4/2019
19:49
very true SpectoAcc, not factored in wind up costs. Guessing they would be less than new issue but still not insignificant. Setting up the fund was 2p in the 100 as it opened with a NAV of 98; so, finger in the air, shall we call it a penny for fees etc?

The non-performing loans out of the woodwork definitely a concern. I am sure co-incidence but don't like how impairments have matched performance almost exactly YTD and I don't see the year end heightened impairments mentioned in the Jan report in the performance table nor previous year's reports - (tbf I am eyeballing the table). Lastly in the UK data has been poor last week and 2nd post on my favourite blog is pointing to 'heightened alert' for the UK economy - hxxp://moneymovesmarkets.com/.

Think I may have talked myself out of a trade here and will watch this one from the sidelines. For choice, I think 86p you're probs going to make something but the market isn't short on assets with yield the moment.

pyufak
07/4/2019
18:30
Also @Pyufak - what are the costs of winding it up? Are there any - ahem - "non-performing" loans due to come out of the woodwork?
spectoacc
07/4/2019
18:16
I guess the nub is - how quick can they wind down the fund and get the money back to investors. On this I have little experience so would appreciate any feedback from others who have seen this happen

average life of a loan is 30 months - that's a long time waiting for your 10% cap gain, albeit supposedly getting the 7.5% dividend yield. I expect institutional investors will want them to move much swifter than this so would expect them to be selling off certainly the performing loans over coming months... perhaps refinancing with incoming money to the FC platform? Just me thinking aloud here. Thanks

pyufak
07/4/2019
18:12
Surprised no one checking in on this post the news Friday. I see some value in the fund from this point despite the deteriorating outlook for UK SME credit and would be interested in others opinion.

95.3p NAV

86p share price so a 9.75% discount to NAV. In addition for the Feb end of month the company holds 7% in cash. In effect, we're factoring in a 17% default rate with 0% recovery (unlikely) or a higher default rate of above 20% if we assume a low recovery rate of 0.2 on NPLs; if it's a higher recovery rate we're talking about default rates I would be very surprised if realised outside of a hard Brexit - I don't want this to turn into a Brexit debate.

Lastly the company continues to buy 405k shares a day back when the board deems the fund is trading at a significant discount to its NAV which to me indicates they feel confident the NAV discount is market pricing and not justified by any credit deterioration in the portfolio (at present).

pyufak
20/12/2018
13:34
CITI Sell rec today I believe. FCIF the other day won't have helped.
spectoacc
20/12/2018
13:16
No comment, eh?
Not as bad as AML!

napoleon 14th
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