Kape Technologies Share Discussion Threads

[mrnumpty] 12/1/2022 08:42

“ dat fingers “ !

[mrnumpty] 12/1/2022 08:07

Corrections to my post . Should have read “ Darktrace shares closed 6.9% higher at 422p “ . Also , at the end of the article , it should have read “ Darktrace has previously warned investors that the allegations could be a RISK to the company “ . Predictive texting and dat fingers are a bad combination !

[mrnumpty] 12/1/2022 07:40

There’s an article in the Business section of today’s Telegraph about one of our competitors , Darktrace . Titled “ Shares jump as Darktrace lifts sales forecasts by up to 44% , it reports the following : “ Darktrace shares soared yesterday after the Cybersecurity company upgraded forecasts , reversing a decline that has halved its value in recent months . The stock jumped as much as a quarter after the company revealed that annual revenues were expected to rise by up to 44% . Darktrace shares closed 6.9# higher at 422p yesterday , leaving it worth just over £ 2.9bn . The company , whose founding investor and second-largest shareholder is the software entrepreneur Mike Lynch , enjoyed one of London’s biggest tech floatations last year . Shares soared after its April debut but had fallen by more than 60% from their September peak before yesterday’s rise . Darktrace had been hit by sceptical analyst notes and the end of a shareholder lock-up period that allowed insides to sell . US prosecutors who have charged Mr Lynch with fraud over the 2011 sale of his software company Autonomy have also attempted to drag Darktrace into the fray , seeking emails from executives who were at Autonomy at the time . In a halt-year trading update , Darktrace said it expected annual revenues to rise by 42% to 44% , up from a previous forecast of 37% to 39% . It also said it’s EBITDA margin , a measure of profitability , would be higher than expected . The FTSE 250 company said it expected half-year revenues to be at least $ 190 million ( £ 140 million ) , an increase of at least 50% . Sales were partly improved by the dollar falling in recent months . The update prompted Peel Hunt , whose downbeat note had sent shares crashing in October , to update its recommendation for clients to ‘ hold ‘ rather than ‘ sell ‘ Darktrace shares . Peel Hunt had previously said Darktrace’s marketing was not matched by reality . Mr Lynch , who owns 17.5% of Darktrace alongside his wife Angela Bacares , is fighting extradition over US fraud charges . Darktrace has previously warned investors that the allegations could be arise to the company “ . The market cap of Darktrace is about twice that of Kape and , as stated above , Darktrace’s HALF-YEAR revenues were at least $ 190 million . In contrast , the combined ANNUAL revenues of Kape and its latest acquisition ExpressVPN were about $ 400 million ( Kape was $ 122 million and ExpessVPN was ( FY 20 ) $ 279.4 million . So , and I know it’s a very unsophisticated comparison , annual turnover of Darktrace and Kape are similar , but the market cap of Darktrace is twice that of Kape . Let’s hope it’s a good year here .

[basem1] 11/1/2022 13:05

Post 2795 just a reminder of what could occur here

[mrnumpty] 01/1/2022 22:31

The largest holding of the Gresham House UK Micro Cap fund is KAPE , which constitutes 3.86% of the fund .

[dicktrade] 31/12/2021 12:25

New ATH , albeit on small volume but all the same a very nice surprise .
GLA

[suetballs] 31/12/2021 10:55

Soon be £5 at this rate.
Suet

[rivaldo] 31/12/2021 09:10

Cheers igoe104.

Good to see KAPE heading into the New Year at the highs - buying coming in at almost the full new offer price of 445p now.

[igoe104] 29/12/2021 16:04

Positive wrire-up. 3 dirt cheap shares for 2022.

[mrnumpty] 29/12/2021 07:11

The Questor tip section of today’s Telegraph looks back on the performance of the tips which it has previously made . The tips include two cyber security companies : “ Crowdstrike , an American computer security firm , gained 274% following our tip in January 2020 “ ; “ Cybersecurity specialist Darktrace has managed to lose 43.5% since September “ . Whilst we would all love Kape to climb as much as Crowdstrike did , can anyone here explain why Darktrace fell so badly ? As a holder of Kape , l like the low valuation and the fact that has Tedi Sagi repeatedly acquired more shares whenever there has been an issue of new shares in order to maintain his holding .

[gswredland] 20/12/2021 17:14

Thanks Rivaldo. Great to see Slater buying lots here
interesting to note that during the last downturn in March 2020 Kape fell heavily with other stocks. This has not been the case thus time around as I feel investors can see the long term value here

[rivaldo] 20/12/2021 13:25

Another RNS from Slater - he's bought around another 160,000 shares and increased his holding to 5%, or 17.458m shares:

[rivaldo] 20/12/2021 07:18

Two holding RNS's today.

Slater Investments have bought around another 2.3m shares since their last RNS on 12th November. They now own 17.3m shares, or 4.96%.

Unikmind have the same holding at 187.44m shares as before, but of course their percentage holding has decreased, as has Slater's, due to the shares issued for the ExpressVPN completion.

It's noteworthy that Slater has continued to buy heavily in the market even after increasing in the ExpressVPN placing.

[johndoe23] 16/12/2021 17:46

Well yes. Looking at level 2 near end of day, could be a large seller/s at play.Was just a bit surprised as decent update yesterday and markets bouncing back today.

[johndoe23] 16/12/2021 15:19

How/why is this down today?!

[rivaldo] 16/12/2021 11:57

The respected Techmarketview web site is very positive on KAPE today:



"Thursday 16 December 2021
Kape completes ExpressVPN acquisition

Kape completes ExpressVPN acquisitionKape Technologies will significantly expand its revenue after completing the acquisition of ExpressVPN. The US$936m deal doubles Kape’s customer base to over 6m and creates a global workforce of 720 people.

ExpressVPN has seen a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 35.1% over the past four years, we think boosted by particularly strongly demand since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic as more people found themselves needing a virtual private network (VPN) when working from home.

London-headquartered Kape (formerly Crossrider) has rapidly extended its VPN portfolio in recent years. The US$96m acquisition of Private Internet Access (PIA) in 2019 helped to push its FY20 revenue up 85% year on year to US$122m. The company’s final FY21 results are yet to be published but Kape forecast turnover would be in the region of US$197m-US$202m after the further US$149m cash addition of Webselenese announced last March.

ExpressVPN will add another hefty chunk to that total in FY22 after it grew its own FY20 revenue 37% yoy to US$279m. The company is reported to have over 3m customers, 40% of which come from North America. Kape also expects synergies to shave US$19m off its opex in 2022 and a further US$30m a year from 2023 onwards on an annualised cost basis.

Kape was already well on the way to becoming a leading provider of secure, remote access solutions for consumers and small businesses before the pandemic, but now looks even better placed to capitalise on continued demand for its enlarged portfolio of software and SaaS-based VPNs. The company will no doubt be keen to maintain ExpressVPN’s OEM agreements with laptop manufacturers including HP, HMD Global, Acer, Dynabook and Philips, but it looks to us very much like a case of being in the right place at the right time for Kape."

[rivaldo] 15/12/2021 15:42

RNS - great to see that completion of the mega ExpressVPN acquisition will complete tomorrow.

Also confirmation that current trading is in line with upgraded expectations - in fact very much at the top end of those expectations.

And the acquisition is "highly earnings enhancing" - transformational for KAPE, who will have over 6.5 million paying subscribers:

[mirfield] 15/12/2021 15:41

Encouraging RNS ....- Revenues expected to be at the upper end of the US$197-202 million range with Adjusted EBITDA of between US$73-$76 million for FY 2021
Substantial paying subscriber growth in enlarged group to over 6.5 million

[suetballs] 15/12/2021 15:41

Strange time for a rns but good news is always welcome.
Suet

[rivaldo] 22/11/2021 11:50

Cheers re the above posts - good to see the IC Alpha write-up is free to read as it's extensive and informative.

It concludes that the shares "could comfortably support a share price above 500p", and could "be taken up to another level entirely" alongside the likes of Symantec, McAfee etc "if viewed as a Tier 1 cybersecurity company".

[mesteve] 19/11/2021 17:45

Just FYI here - there was too much of the article left on the LSE post, but still an excellent positive article anyway..


Kape Technologies (LSE: KAPE) is another dirt-cheap UK share I’m thinking of snapping up. Sure, it doesn’t offer a dividend. But I think forward price-to-earnings growth (PEG) ratio of 0.4 could be too good to miss. Like iEnergizer, its rating below 1 suggests it could be undervalued by the market.

Kape Technologies is a tech company I think will thrive as the problem of cybercrime grows. Businesses are investing vast sums in software to protect their operations, a phenomenon which blew underlying organic revenues at Kape 27% higher in the six months to June.

I also like this UK share because its excellent cash generation is allowing it to execute shrewd sales-boosting acquisitions. In September, for example, the firm splashed out a cool $936m on the purchase of ExpressVPN.

An appetite for acquisitions can create huge risks to a company. These can include unexpected costs, overestimating synergies and disappointing revenues. However, its my opinion that this risk is more than offset by the possible rewards Kape Technologies could reap as the cybersecurity market swells. ENDS HERE

[igoe104] 19/11/2021 15:53

Small positive IC writeup.

[mrnumpty] 19/11/2021 10:00

Readers might be interested in a post on the LSE chat site for Kape , which was a posted last Wednesday at 15.25 pm by " Alwaysone " , who posts a comment by the Motley Fool concerning the prospects for Kape . A couple of points of interest are that the Motley Fool states that Kape is " Dirt cheap .... We think it could become as big ... or even bigger than Shopify " . Yes , I know that there are sceptics concerning the Fool , and I have never seen a post by " Alwaysone " before . Nonetheless , to show the potential for Kape , which is currently valued at a market cap of £ 1.23 billion , Shopify ( not Spotify , by the way ) , is on a mkt cap of £ 211 billion , therefore about 170 times bigger than Kape at the moment . Yes , dreams maybe , but Terri Sagi keeps putting money in to buy more shares and maintain his huge share of the company and , even though there's many a " slip between cup and lip " ( known as " execution risk " to the clever ones amongst us ) , even a part of such a rise in the share price ( 170 X the current price would be almost £ 700 per share ! ) would be more than a little welcome . Yes , do your own research , be sceptical , don't take advice from Mr Numpty , but cheer yourselves up by reading the Fool's article .