Hibu Share Discussion Threads

[ianio5691] 17/10/2013 16:40

I'm sure these will do really well, once they have got the shareholders out of the way!

You just have to look on Yell at how many 'one man band tradesmen' now have Hibu made website... Electricians, chiney sweeps, plumbers. There are thousands.

Absolute scam, but i am sure they will get away with it. They wuill have the best Barristers that money can buy.

[ianio5691] 17/10/2013 08:18

Not much reaction from the markets to those RNS's.... thought we might be in for a bluey.

GLA

;-)

[knigel] 17/10/2013 08:17

Well since the shares are not delisted we still get RNS updates...

[spennysimmo] 17/10/2013 08:04

That's because there aren't any.

[knigel] 17/10/2013 07:07

Two RNSs this morning.. as far as I can see, not one mention of the shareholders!

[freddie ferret] 16/10/2013 17:35

risk1.

The EGM will be called one way or another before April 2014.

EGMs should have been called long ago.

New directors will get on the board by being voted on.

The HSG is still picking up new members each day, it no longer publishes details of numbers or shares, makes the management sweat more that way. :-8))

[risk1] 15/10/2013 18:09

How will HSG be able to get on the board and oust the current directors?

That won't be easy surely?

When is the EGM?

TIA

[freddie ferret] 15/10/2013 17:00

I will now cautiously post on what I believe to be a rather sensitive subject.

The reason this is sensitive is that there is really insufficient information available to an outsider to draw any firm conclusions at the moment.

However here goes.

There is a fundamental contradiction to say at the same time that the management have been incompetent and negligent while at the same time saying that they have conspired and contrived the current predicament.

Let me say at the outset that I fall on the contrived side of the argument.

Many people believe what the derampers Ninja Lunar etc have been claiming that is that the company is shot, going downhill, of little or no value with enormous debts.

I do not agree with this, space sales in the hard copy directories business have fallen very heavily however we have been through a long and hard recession, advertising sales are always highly business activity sensitive. I do not fall for the argument that web advertising will totally eclipse hard copy advertising. I use public libraries a lot, and the hard copy newspapers are very heavily read by everyone. Virtually no one reads newspapers online in the library inspite of computer use being free of charge.
So to the new internet Hibu business, has it been run out on time? Rather slow to my mind. Only recently have the company started to roll out advertising for it (in hardcopy newspapers incidentally). Part of the objective of this advertising should be to build Hibu brand awareness, and hopefully it will.
Let us now, in brief, consider what the current management unhindered intend. Firstly to transfer to creditors the equity of the business with no form of compensation to shareholders. Secondly that the profits and cash flow will be more than enough to service a new debt level of around £1,200,000,000 inspite of the company having deliberately (they had the cash) defaulted on servicing loans and thereby knackering the credit rating.
Again there is talk that the management, no doubt with "advise" from their new bosses (banks Hedge funds and private equity), will rationalise, cut costs (manpower), and most significantly sell off portions of the business to other corporations.
It is this last aspect that I find most interesting. The most likely suitors are going to be the big US internet firms, Google and Microsoft come to mind. Now hold on here, we have had significant information revealed by a bloke called Snowden, to cut a very long story short all the big US internet corporations are in league with the US govt, supplying the US govt (NSA) with everything they can. Infact the US govt seems to be hoovering up information far beyond the remit of anti terrorism or national security.
So what is Hibu, well it is one bloody great data base of small and medium sized companies, not just UK but world wide. Hibu offers SMEs bespoke websites, marketing packages, advertising packages, payments systems and much else. So to control Hibu is to have access to boundless information and if one is less than scrupulous the ability to spy or interfere in the activities of its customers.

Now let me just make a point or two, Polariod is a US company it seems to have had a scandal or two. One of the current directors of Hibu was a director of Polariod. So the Hibu directors do have a knowledge of the US scene IMHO.
Many aspects of this matter seem to have an undercurrent of impropriety IMHO.
The company did not have to go into default on servicing its loans IMHO.
The smell is a bit nasty IMHO.

As to the long term future for the group I believe it is very good. It is effectively a start up business in internet services to SMEs (but with the massive backing of the database and the best telesales operation in the business) read dot com boom for that. At the same time it has an old established business that is likely to rebound strongly as the economy in the UK gains strength and confidence rises. Again if one constructs the accounts rationally (excluding dubious markdowns of goodwill and the like) then it seems to have been profitable and cash generative such that it was more than capable of servicing its loans and probably still is.

I believe to suggest more than this would be improper without a view of the internal accounts of the business. This I believe is now likely to happen sooner rather than later since the announcement of an EGM now seems something the mgmt is no long going to be able to avoid and the new directors are likely to be far more willing to reveal the true situation than the old. The new directors all going according to plan will be HSG directors :-8))

[freddie ferret] 15/10/2013 16:21

Information update.

Methinks things are getting rather exciting and the lavs have run out of bog paper in Reading!!!

[ggekkko] 13/10/2013 21:22

I'm sure that Egm document will be checked for errors before being formalised ....

[freddie ferret] 10/10/2013 15:43

Softly softly catchee monkey!

An EGM will shortly have to be granted. The board cannot delist without going to court and there will face HSG solicitors and barristers. So there is now going to be an EGM, it will not take place tomorrow but within two months at the most.

Here is an outline of what the board are going to face.



The question then is who is going to vote which way, this is another way of saying "Will the HSG have garnered sufficient support to overthrow the current regime?"

That is the question.

So little blippy2 have your fun today for tomorrow you will have none.

[blippy2] 10/10/2013 15:31

Given that shareholders are extremely likely to lose all their money ("The Group can confirm that the terms of the restructuring allow for no payment to shareholders and that the shares of hibu plc have no value."), I fail to see how I'm wrong and how things are fine. In the end, your numbers mean nothing. That's like saying that the operation was a complete success, but the patient died.

[freddie ferret] 10/10/2013 15:29

I will put it in the header yachtie.

[yachtie8078] 10/10/2013 13:05

hxxp://www.getreading.co.uk/news/bus...d-meet-6160742

Interesting reading - If you hold hibu shares it's a must read..........

[themoocha] 10/10/2013 10:41

Blippy - Wrong. Things are fine. The company have the money to pay the interest on the loans (did you know they had £90 million more in the bank this year than at the same time last year, and if you include the £222 million spirited away as legacy issues they would have had over £400 million, yes read it again £400 million in the bank. Enough to pay interest on the loans for two years in advance) and it was the BoD that stated they were stopping the payments to both the 2006 lenders and 2009. They then cleared the 2006 lenders at a face value of 38% of the debt leaving just the 2009 lenders. The money was in the bank all along. That is one of the points the HSG are questioning and that is the actions of the BoD that put the company in to default.

Also bear in mind that they have reduced expenses by £300 million per year from 3 years ago and that goes straight to the bottom line.

Regards

TM

[blippy2] 09/10/2013 20:37

That's all well and good, Freddie, but the restructuring update says that the old owners will get nothing, which is pretty much what the so-called "bashers" have been saying all along. The people who deserve blame here are not the bashers, but the "rampers" - people who said everything would be fine, when in fact the situation was far from fine. Not by a long shot.

[freddie ferret] 09/10/2013 16:04

Just seen this on another thread, ring any bells?





"Identifying a Stock Basher

Countless investors find their way to the message boards only to see false posts about company news, "problems" and "Share Price Correction." Such boards are filled with bashers using a variety of aliases, posting false or misleading information, all in all making it very difficult for a newcomer to tell fact from fiction.

For nervous investors, it is often easier to sell the stock and put the money in the bank. These are the people on whom the bashers prey. Bashers bet on a stock to go down and they do their best to help it happen. They are not concerned with the risk of losing money like the average investor, because they are usually paid to bash the stock. In other words, they are not using their personal funds and are not actually investing themselves, or at least not in that stock. Additionally, bashers do not wait for the markets to go up or down; they make them move themselves. Bashers use fear, lies, and falsehoods to prey on the nervous investor, thus influencing the markets in their favour.

Bashers bring up old news that you have heard many times. All companies always have a few bits of bad news. The basher will post these bits over and over again. The stupid basher will try to make the old news a bit fresher to try to fool you. Don't be fooled!

Bashers post many times a day. They try to wear you out. They comment on everything, every other post, and can answer every question. To hear them say it, they know it all.

There is no positive comment they won't bash. They try to control the board with their negativity. If they seem to be working on this one stock full time, that's because they are! Even more than full-time.

Bashers will lie to your face (or your keyboard). Never trust a basher. The truth on most companies is that mistakes are made and losses happen. The basher will try to make you believe all companies make a profit, release financials every quarter, and have all aspects of the business running smoothly from the start. This is not true. Anyone who says it is true is either lying or ignorant. Don't listen to either kind. Small AIM companies can go years without profits; this is the nature of the beast.

Bashers know that you can't verify their statements. That's why they make the statements they do. You can't check them out and you may just believe them and then they win. Either way, they don't lose.

Bashers play on your lack of knowledge. They count on the fact that they can lie about information and you won't know the difference. And you won't, unless you have done your assessment of the company and know truth from lie.

Bashers play on your lack of patience. You have held a stock for a while, knowing it will be a big stock someday. The basher can get to you because you are tired of waiting for your gain. When you are getting your plan, you are ripe for a bashing. You are tired and you've forgotten that the goal for the stock was to hold it for one year, then see where it stands. The basher is bothersome and tiring, so you dump it on a bad day and so do others. Then you get angry about your loss and you return to the board to let everyone know how mad you are. Congratulations, you too have become a basher. The basher has won and gained a new, unwitting, partner. At this point the basher will buy low and become a pumper, maybe using a new alias, and will try to reverse the trend. Your loss becomes the basher's gain as your stock rises after you sell it.

The basher is all about bringing the price down. That is the nature of a basher. The truth is not important; lies are the norm. They are trying to hit the newbies visiting the board for the first time, so they post continuously throughout the day. They are trying to wear out the longs on the board and they will do whatever it takes to do so.

Bashers will try to create doubt and get you to research items that they know will lead to the creation of doubt in you and in other stockholders. A typical trick of an advanced basher is to propose that there is a potential "problem" because "we" don't have the facts on a particular subject. The basher dares someone in the group to find out the answer to the question. The basher already knows the answer and knows what you will find. The power of this tactic is that the basher is now in control of the actions of the stockholders; the basher has you in his web of lies. Most stockholders will do due diligence when confronted with a questionable news story. When the stockholder cannot confirm or deny the story because of too much conflicting information, the basher gains credibility.

What do you do?
It is important to find answers on your own terms. Pick up the phone and call the company, talk to the investor relations person or the CEO until you get a satisfactory answer. The problem here is that the advanced basher has you doing his bidding; you have essentially joined his ranks. So, develop your own little "Due Diligence Package" and answer questions by placing the information into the package. Then you can refer new investors to read your well-researched answers to questions raised in the Investor Information package. What you need to avoid is getting into a conversation with the basher himself or herself about the topic. Once you get into direct conversation with a basher, you give the basher credibility. Answer the question if you need to, but do it indirectly. Never use the basher's name. Never get into a personality contest with a basher."

[freddie ferret] 08/10/2013 17:26

Now a brief and some may say silly post.

If the payout is to all holders on the basis of equality then.

£10m gives a bit over 0.4p per share.

£100m gives a bit over 4p per share.

£1bln gives a bit over 40p per share.


If the payout is only to members of the HSG then the more members the lower the payout per share. So the fewer the members the better!!!!! Only joking.

However this might be a consideration if some institutions leave it right to the last to jump on the bandwagon IMHO. (There is going to be a payout, so we will have some of that, but buzzerd if we will help them).