London Finance & Investm... Share Discussion Threads

[rolo7] 30/9/2013 08:20

great results here today, todays nav around 62p, results 3 mouth out of date now! Bit concerned where the cash has gone big loan repayment!

[markt] 14/3/2013 20:16

I dont think they have any interest in reducing running costs.....

since the costs pay the staff costs at City Road offices....
which are providing, imo, various functions and services for the Marshalls. Marshall family trust funds and Marshall controlled companies

(and since 2000 the co. has shown no interest in reducing costs, instead when income struggled to pay the costs at WESP they issued a shed load of new shares, to increase the income base; and not the other way round)

and imo there are wages and expenses paid to at least 2 of DM sons at City Road
(there are 3 in total)

(a Marshall controlled company rents the apartment that LFI sold, perhaps used by son(s) or family ?? or DM when in London ?)

it would be illogical imo for the Marshalls to want to reduce these costs, since it would imo be reducing payments/benefits to themselves !!

and they want to maintain the City Road offices and its functions, not reduce it or close it.

(the listing cost for WESP is small, ISDX is cheap, maybe 10k, adviser is only 6k per year....out of 300k charged the listing costs are peanuts imo)

I note that LFI services part has seen reduction in income recently.....so that puts more incentive/pressure to "increase" the costs for LFI/WESP in order to support/shoulder the fixed costs rather than the inverse imo...otherwise they probably have to reduce staff numbers a little

[topvest] 10/3/2013 09:03

Interim results were reasonable I thought. They are sitting on £2m of cash - wonder what they will do with that! Maybe they should buy Western Selection and reduce the combined running costs?

[markt] 22/2/2013 12:41

...and the prize for the most useless RNS of the year for the LSE goes to

London Finance & Investments plc !!

----

And also for intentionally keeping shareholders in the dark for basic information
the winner is also

London Finance & Investments plc !!



they intentionally give the finger to the requirements to inform shareholders..and provide transparency

may as well run this LSE listed company out of their garage

[markt] 05/2/2013 16:12

general shareholders own over 50% of the company.....the Marshalls only have around 44%...

if 'we' are not happy we can call an EGM and kick 'em out....or propose any changes we think would be beneficial.

but so far I think there have been no posts indicating any support for an EGM.....

[callumross] 30/1/2013 12:25

Share your frustrations Markt but wht can we do? We are powerless as they control all the aces. If we are not happy, they will just say we should sell up? The assets are not for us to enjoy anyway.

[russman] 03/1/2013 21:17

My opinion is that the BoD would not vote themselves out of a job.
LFI have two investments: 15% FIF £3m & 43% WSE £3m plus General (-debt) £3.5
LFI trade at 19p compared to net assets circa 35p.
Plan A
I would suggest to the BoD that LFI liquidate the General & tender for the rest of WSE shares (57%)that LFI do not own.
As a condition, after a share consolidation, Marshall & Co would be required to sell their shares down to

[markt] 02/1/2013 11:42

Any interest or opinions ?

[topvest] 16/10/2012 19:23

Possibly, but they probably still need a distributor over there.

[topvest] 09/10/2012 07:52

Hartim accounts - main points below:

- Audit opinion not qualified or including an emphasis of matter on going concern which is very good news.
- Loss was £220k for the year ended 31 December 2011 after a £102k tax charge.
- Revenue up 4.6% to c£28m.
- Gross margins up to 14.7% from 13.8%
- £476k paid for new acquisition of Victoria Foods business which had net assets of £335k (looks like this was a trade and assets deal out of administration, but not really specified)
- It looks like the new business contributed about £6m of sales in 6m so it is very significant
- New loan of £204k and invoice discounting facility drawn of £657k. £51k of new loan repaid in the year
- Cash £529k versus £840k last year
- Net current liabilities of £1.6m versus £1.1m last year
- Audit fees up from £10k to £30k which implies some problems with the accounts only signed on 28 Sep
- 73 people versus 46 last year, giving sense of scale increase
- Stocks increased from £492k to £1,475k, trade debtors from £2.6m to £4.3m, trade creditors from £3.0m to £4.6m and payments on account increased from £0.8m to £1.2m - a relatively significant expansion of working capital of circa £0.5m or so net
- Net cash outflow from operating activities of £0.2m versus a £2m inflow in the prior year
- £300k lease cost not included as going into the H1 results for Hartim

My conclusion here is that the acquisition is either a bargain which will significantly strengthen the long term business (if turned round) or will bust the group (if they can't get things under control).

The positives are that they have a high quality debtor portfolio and should be able to use the invoice discounting facility further. Also, they have minimal unsecured bank debt of £150k in these accounts which is helpful.

Fingers crossed that they can turn this all around and float the business in the next year or two to clear debt and take this to the next stage!

Overall, this business has to be worth quite a bit more than a £1m to WSE if they can make it a success. It will be a circa. £35m turnover business in the current year I think.

[topvest] 05/10/2012 17:42

Hartim accounts have been filed. Can't download them yet, but will report back when I can get hold of them.

[topvest] 02/10/2012 19:53

Still no sign of the Hartim accounts. I will check again tomorrow.

Yes, Montanaro are good stock pickers. Will buy some shares in their trust at some point, although not at the moment as they have had quite a good run.

[markt] 02/10/2012 15:26

BTW


Previously I have highlighted the bad performance of LFI over the last 20 years....and made comparison with Blackstar sml co. fund I think,

well here is another one that blows LFI into the weeds imo


up over 300% since March 95

whereas LFI has gone down since March 95 !



-----

"Montanaro, an independent specialist fund manager,
was established in 1991 to research and invest in
European, including UK quoted SmallCap companies.
Funds under management are currently £1.4 billion".

1.4 Bn !!


Compare with LFI.
Cap. value of 6M pounds and been around for decades. From before 1991 when Montanero started.
Capability to grow by growing the NAV ?. Zero !

Interests of shareholders in any cash raising or subscribing for new shares ?
Nil !!

[topvest] 01/10/2012 17:11

Looking at this a tad more closely; the legal cost was £330k - circa £60k for 5 years + costs. This isn't all a cash cost now, but only probably about half of this.

The loss of circa. £350k in the year is pretty grim, but should be affordable provided the problems are being sorted.

I think some mention on what is going on is overdue, given this is very material to WSE's future prospects.

It is very unclear as to how much was paid for the Australian distributor. I agree that this could have been debt funded, albeit there is no evidence of that at Companies House through additional charges.

[topvest] 28/9/2012 18:39

Markt - on Hartim, I'm not sure that Western Rose went into administration post acquisition, but the acquisition last year was of its distributor out of administration and that has become Western Rose International. I will try and clarify once I have seen the Hartim accounts - due at Companies House today, so should be available next week.

[markt] 28/9/2012 13:45

personally I would be quite happy with

- winding up (we would save paying 5% of the cap. value every year as running cost, over 10 years it eats up a lot of our assetts)

or

- new investment manager (chosen for example from an invest. mgr within the top quartile over last 5 years or 10 years)

and ditching the investment strategy that LFI has used for at least 20 years...since it has produced bad results