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MADE Made.com Group Plc

0.52
0.00 (0.00%)
02 May 2024 - Closed
Delayed by 15 minutes
Made.com Investors - MADE

Made.com Investors - MADE

Share Name Share Symbol Market Stock Type
Made.com Group Plc MADE London Ordinary Share
  Price Change Price Change % Share Price Last Trade
0.00 0.00% 0.52 01:00:00
Open Price Low Price High Price Close Price Previous Close
0.52 0.52
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Top Posts
Posted at 06/11/2022 08:27 by onjohn
Hoberman, Li and fellow investors cashed in their stakes when Made was sold in a $1 billion (£832 million) initial public offering (IPO) last year
Posted at 01/11/2022 09:43 by tomboyb
Made.com valued at £775m in London IPO
Shares in online furniture retailer fall as conditional trading starts

“It’s a bit disappointing,” said one banker not involved in the Made.com IPO, adding that the 200p a share pricing was “some way below the levels that had been talked about”.

Valuations of up to £1bn had been mooted in the run-up to the listing.

Made.com sold 50m new shares in the IPO, raising £100m, while existing investors including co-founder Ning Li and Brent Hoberman sold 46.9m shares. A further 14.5m shares could be made available as part of the overallotment option. If exercised, that would increase the number of shares to 111.5m and 29 per cent of the issued share capital.
Posted at 27/10/2022 07:51 by ny boy
Isn’t always been a nonsense stock, turn the lights out ffs, beyond embarrassing, how not to waste shareholders monies!

Investors moving into quality retail recovery like ASOS (ASC)etc. buy dyor as usual
Posted at 26/10/2022 19:20 by tomboyb
hxxps://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/madecom-comes-apart-at-the-seams-as-inflation-drives-sofa-retailer-to-the-brink/ar-AA13pjCH

Made.com comes apart at the seams as inflation drives sofa retailer to the brink
Hannah Boland - 50m ago
Comments




“Sit tight,” a notice plastered across Made.com’s website read on Wednesday morning.

MADE.COM Philippe Chainieux CEO - Made.com
MADE.COM Philippe Chainieux CEO - Made.com
© Provided by The Telegraph
The furniture retailer said it had taken down its website to make “some important updates to improve your shopping experience". “We’ll be back soon,” the notice read.

It’s now looking increasingly unlikely that Made.com can stick to that promise.

On Wednesday, as it teetered on the brink of collapse, the retailer said it would temporarily stop taking orders.

Its talks with potential buyers and investors, which had been going on for weeks, had ultimately ended without a deal and the £70m cash injection it had been seeking appeared less likely than ever to materialise.

Made.com, which was set up in 2011 by investor Ning Li and Lastminute.com founder Brent Hoberman, said it had no choice but to take "appropriate steps" to preserve value for creditors.

“There's a pretty clear indication in all this,” says Paul Zalkin, a restructuring expert at Quantuma. “It seems highly likely that the business is going to have to go through some sort of formal insolvency process.”

City sources describe the situation as “disastrous221;. The company, which had only a year and a half ago commanded a valuation of £775m, now appears almost worth nothing.

Made.com on Tuesday warned that shares may be suspended after they plunged to 0.5p, valuing the company at just over £2m. In truth, City sources say, “it is just plain f—ked”.

Many have been left scratching their heads over how it all went so wrong.

In the past year alone, Made.com has lost its chief executive and its chief financial officer, and has warned over profits three times.

In its latest set of results, to June 30, it said its cash pile had shrunk by £143m in the space of a year to just £32m, after it started storing more furniture in warehouses to avoid supply turmoil. It also splurged on more warehouse space “in anticipation of strong growth” this year, only to be hit by a downturn in spending among squeezed shoppers.

“One has to question if they've really understood the mechanics of the furniture industry,” says Shore Capital analyst Clive Black. “It doesn't look like there's been any slack in their system”.

Aside from the operational side of things, Black says there also appears to have been a similarly odd approach to the finance strategy. “It just looks like the bank is empty.”

Made.com does not have any pre-arranged credit or overdraft facilities. Its liabilities are made up of “trade”, meaning its suppliers, and leases, where it has taken warehouse sites. At the end of June this year, it owed both of these groups around £72m.

In the face of dwindling demand for furniture as shoppers are racked with a cost of living squeeze, and in light of Made.com’s financial situation, analysts say it is unlikely any loan would now be forthcoming from banks.

“No one would loan them any money,” says Davy’s David Reynolds. “In their short public history, Made.com has been characterised as moving too slow - to flex the business into a downturn, to remedy mistakes, and in this case to move to a trade sale scenario.”

The threat of an imminent collapse is something which is now spreading within Made.com itself. Days earlier, staff had been sending emails to customers offering 15pc off all lighting and “furniture in time for Christmas”. Now, insiders say there is “lots of worry”, with no-one certain whether they will still have a job by the end of the year.

Meanwhile, executives “must be terrified of all the public company obligations,” says another source. “Governance has to be extra tight when administration looms,” they say, amid pressure any slip-up could lead to legal action against directors.

All this is breeding anxiety within the business. The company had already started making more than a third of its workforce redundant as part of cost-cutting efforts, which also included consolidating its supply chain in Europe and Vietnam.

Now, though, those who had thought their jobs were safe are facing the threat that the business could ultimately go under. “It's possible, of course, that it could just cease to trade entirely,” says Zalkin.

For customers, there is a clear desire for some clarity on whether orders they have placed will still be coming. “Is it likely that I’ll get my bed on November 9 or shall I just cancel my order?” one customer asked the retailer on Twitter.

Another said they had “used our wedding presents to order a sofa from you and we can't even get on your website anymore”. Made.com had not replied to their questions by Wednesday afternoon.

While ceasing to trade is one option, there are others which could materialise. For one thing, a rescue funder “could come in and is able to recapitalise the business in order to sort of keep it solvent,” says Zalkin, although he says the recent updates from the company suggest that is unlikely.

A pre-pack administration is a more likely outcome, Zalkin says, something which would allow a buyer to come in and essentially leave the creditors behind for the administrator to deal with, portioning out what remaining cash there is after accounting for costs.

Such a process might attract more interested parties. Davy’s Reynolds says it might be a similar situation to Eve Sleep, the mattress retailer which last week crashed into administration and that same day was bought out by Benson for Beds. “Like Eve Sleep, buyers will emerge who clearly did not want to pay the equity price but are more prepared to acquire distressed assets,” he says.

For now, Made.com only says that its board is “considering its position and a further announcement will be made in due course”.

“There can be no certainty that the terms of any offer or investment received will be suitable,” the company told the market.

Made.com may be keen to reassure customers that it will be “back soon”, but the reality of the situation is that it is already out of the retailer’s hands.
Posted at 26/10/2022 18:21 by supercity
Because they are allowing the big funds to sell to the mug private investors before they do so - most likely get suspended tomorrow or Friday once they are done.
Posted at 26/10/2022 10:46 by bob1995
Only the buyer will be loading up. Investors are finished
Posted at 25/10/2022 17:56 by ny boy
All too obvious a while ago but you still get gamblers(not investors), who end up lose their shirts with nonsense stocks like this one.

NY Boy22 Aug '22 - 12:02 - 397 of 986 Edit
0 1 1
Another zombie Company, the rising interest rate environment is the final nail in the coffin for all these zombie Companies

Why waste time with high risk (or very high risk) stocks when there are so many well run Companies that have just got washed out with the bath water.

This one will just fail, if it hasn’t already
Posted at 11/10/2022 15:17 by firestorm911
Good luck, all Genuine Investors, I took all my chips off the table. I hope you guys make zillions here; I will be with you in spirit...


Regards,

F911
Posted at 19/8/2022 12:54 by tomboyb
hxxps://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/liontrust-clients-lose-58-million-as-made-com-shares-collapse-9dmcg688w

Liontrust clients ‘lose £58 million’ as Made.com shares collapse

Clients of Liontrust Asset Management appear to have been the biggest losers from the collapsing share price at Made.com, which was yesterday dubbed the worst-performing flotation of 2021 after warning it needed more capital.

Majedie Asset Management, now a subsidiary of Liontrust, was the main cornerstone investor at the time of the fateful initial public offering of Made.com in June last year, buying £50 million worth of shares, giving it a 6.45 per cent stake at the time.

Other big buyers into the flotation were Axa, NFU Mutual and Premier Fund Managers.

Made.com shares have since collapsed from 200p to just 9.90p at yesterday’s close, leaving investors who bought £200 million worth of shares at the time of the flotation nursing losses of 95.1 per
Posted at 13/8/2021 18:30 by simon gordon
One for the plungers! It's long....

Swen Lorenz - 13/8/21

CONCENTRATED BETS – HOW THE WORLD’S BEST VALUE INVESTORS GOT RICH

Edwin Dorsey is a present-day wunderkind of the investment world. He publishes an influential newsletter on fraudulent companies, and his Twitter feed is followed by some of the world's most influential investors. Institutional Investor featured him in an in-depth profile on 16 November 2020 when he was just 22 years old!

Dorsey is also a value investor who makes concentrated bets.

He recently disclosed an investment of 50% (!) of his personal portfolio in a single value stock, Twitter (ISIN US90184L1026). Putting half of your money into a single stock is what you could call a truly concentrated investment strategy.

I have been a lifelong believer in concentrated bets and always wanted to share my experiences and observations with my readers. Dorsey's investment in Twitter gave me a reason to finally get on with it.

If you are eager to learn about an investing strategy that is not commonly taught elsewhere, this may be one of the most important articles you have ever read. It won't offer you any fixed, iron-clad ideas, but it'll help you get onto a new path that might work for you.

A common denominator among many successful outliers

Diversify, hedge your bets, spread your portfolio across many stocks. It must be the finance industry's most frequently dished-out advice not to put all your eggs into one basket.

This advice is not wrong per se, but it won't apply to everyone. Everything depends on what you aim to achieve and what your circumstances are. For some, diversifying could indeed be the wrong strategy.

One of the inconvenient truths of the stock market is that very few people get rich through investing. You have a much higher likelihood of getting rich from starting and building a business. Trying to get rich on the stock market is tempting for all sorts of reasons, but it's insanely difficult to say the least.

Some say that spreading your bets and aiming to gradually get rich on the back of the economy's long-term growth is the only way the stock market could ever work in your favour. They aren't wrong, but their theory is up against some serious competition.

If you study the world's greatest investors, you will find that many of them completely ignored all advice about diversification. Going the opposite way led to immense riches, and for quite a few of them, it did so rather quickly.

Stanley Druckenmiller, the billionaire investor who rose to fame and wealth alongside George Soros, nicely summarised it in his interview with The Hustle on 26 May 2021:

"When I've looked at all the investors (that) have very large reputations — Warren Buffett, Carl Icahn, George Soros — they all only have one thing in common.

And it's the exact opposite of what they teach in a business school. It is to make large concentrated bets where they have a lot of conviction.

They're not buying 35 or 40 names and diversifying.

I don't know whether you remember that Icahn a few years ago put $5B into Apple. I don't think he was worth more than $10B when he did that.

[In 1992] when I went in to tell Soros that I was going to short a 100% of the fund in the British pound against the Deutschmark, he looked at me with great disdain. He thought the story was good enough that I should be doing 200%, because it was sort of a once-in-a-generation opportunity.

So, [these investors] concentrate their holdings. This is very counterintuitive."

Pretty clear words from someone who has been around for a long time, and who has walked the talk.

Which begs the question, could such a strategy of concentrated bets work for you, too? And if so, what are some of critical factors to make this strategy work?

Triggered by Dorsey's bet on Twitter, I've had a look for useful source material on the idea of concentrated investing, so that I could point you its way.

It turned out there is one book that contains everything about the subject that you need to know: "Concentrated Investing: Strategies of the World's Greatest Concentrated Value Investors", published in 2016.

Today's Weekly Dispatch will look at three key questions:

-Who can you learn and take inspiration from?

-How to go about concentrated investing in practical terms?

-Is it really the right strategy for you?

Let's dive right in.


Four role models to learn from

Needless to say, the world's #1 best-known investor who has made concentrated bets is Warren Buffett. However, it's worth recapping just how concentrated some of the bets were that got him off to a good start during the earlier phase of his career.

In 1964, Buffett invested no less than 40% (!) of his investment partnership's portfolio in a single stock – American Express (ISIN US0258161092). The story behind the investment is legendary. Amex had gotten burned by the scandal surrounding the Allied Crude Vegetable Oil company, which was the Enron of its days. Amex took a major financial hit from the scandal and its stock tanked, but the question was, how were customers with American Express credit cards going to react? Staking out restaurants, hotels and banks, Buffett and his partners found out that customers continued to use Amex cards just as before. He saw an opportunity to strike big, and went all in at a time when Amex stock was down and out. The investment quintupled and Buffett's investment partnership made a huge leap forward.

In the history of Buffett's investing, he never invested a higher percentage than in the case of Amex. However, taking concentrated bets was not unusual for him. Five years earlier, Buffett had invested 35% of his partnership's assets in Sanborn Map, a business that was shrinking but which sat on a valuable investment portfolio. As Buffett once explained to students: "If you are a professional and have confidence, then I would advocate lots of concentration."

His sidekick, Charlie Munger, took the concept of concentrated bets even further. Munger defined a very concentrated portfolio as "no more than three stocks". His approach made his portfolio a lot more volatile, but Munger was willing to accept the valleys because he knew the peaks were even greater.

Someone you are less likely to have heard of before is Joe Rosenfield. In 1968, Rosenfield took charge of managing the endowment of Grinnell College in Iowa, when it stood at a paltry USD 11m. By the time he stepped down in 1999, the endowment had grown to over USD 1bn, even though it had to pay 4.75% of its assets to the college every year while he was managing it.

Rosenfield's key to success? Concentrated bets AND holding them (almost) forever. In three decades, he bought not even half a dozen major investments and kept most of them for perpetuity. Unusually for a conservative endowment fund, in 1977, Rosenfield made an investment in an unknown fund: no less than one-third of the endowment went into a relatively young fund managed by a largely unknown fund manager – the Sequoia Fund managed by Ruane, Cunniff & Goldfarb in New York. At the time, endowments would have been more likely to invest in US treasuries than tying their fate to an emerging fund manager. Rosenfield's assessment proved spot on and the Sequoia Fund became one of the most successful equity funds in US history. Had you invested USD 10,000 in the Sequoia Fund in 1970, you'd now be sitting on USD 7.8m. The college's investment in the fund at one time became one of the largest individual investments in an American mutual fund.

Investment comparison

Another highly successful investor you are unlikely to have come across before is Kristian Siem, often dubbed the "Warren Buffett of Norway". Very much in line with his country's strong presence in oil and shipping, Siem focussed on making concentrated bets on undervalued oil and shipping assets. Between 1987 and 2014, he increased his net worth from USD 5m to around USD 2bn, which is equivalent to a compound annual return of 30%. Siem made big bets AND he only ever focussed on assets in oil and shipping. At the peak of his career, he controlled one of the world's largest cruise ship companies.

There'd be plenty of other names to add to this list of examples. The message is loud and clear, though: if you want to make it big in investing, highly concentrated bets certainly are *one* possible way.

What does it take in practical terms, though? Is any of the approaches described above better than the others?

More than one potential path to pursue

The bad news first: there is no ready-made formula.

The good news: this leaves room for you to carve out your own niche, based on your needs and making use of the opportunities available to your generation of investors.

Usually, as soon as one particular approach in investing has become a huge success, the opportunity is gone. Every generation gets a few big opportunities thrown its way, but no one knows in advance what they will be. If you have an idea of what the next big thing could be and tell your friends about it, they are likely to laugh about it.

That'd actually be a good sign. As I once wrote in a Weekly Dispatch: "Don't invest in it if they don't call you crazy!". The article refers back to my idea of investing in vegan food-related companies in 2017. How well-timed an idea that has turned out, and how much ridicule I faced back in those days!

Druckenmiller and Soros developed an acute sense for trends in the currency markets, and their concentrated bet against the pound sterling literally broke the Bank of England. Their raid on the pound is now part of investment lore, but no one would have thought it possible had you told them in advance. In hindsight, everything looks a lot more obvious and easier.

Buffett made heaps of money by buying Coca-Cola (ISIN US1912161007) and riding a long-term consumer trend. However, will sugary drinks remain a growth market now that half the planet is overweight and diabetes-ridden? Probably not. That ship has sailed, too.

However, nothing should stop you from emulating a few of the methods applied by the star investors mentioned above. For example:

Find an industry that you are extremely familiar with and make your concentrated bets solely in this sector (Kristian Siem).

Do the opposite of what the previous point mentions, and instead focus on finding undervalued cash flow in any industry. Develop a deep understanding of accounts and business processes to identify which unfavoured sector currently offers you the chance to buy a future dollar of income for a fraction of its value (Warren Buffett).

Bet on an emerging fund manager instead of going with an established one. Emerging fund managers offer you a much higher statistical chance of earning outsized return, not the least because smaller funds are generally more agile (Joe Rosenfield).

Dig through small, unknown stocks. Everything else has already been grazed over by bigger investors. It's in exotic niches that you find hidden gems (Charlie Munger).
Many roads lead to Rome, but you need to pick one and get walking.

Does that sound like a realistic goal for you to pursue? You'll have to honestly answer this question for yourself, but the chaps mentioned above can help you derive at a conclusion.

Could this work for you?

Further up, I only gave you half of Buffett's quote from his talk with students. The complete version reads:

"If you are a professional and have confidence, then I would advocate lots of concentration. For everyone else, if it's not your game, participate in total diversification."

Charlie Munger has a fairly stark way of dividing investors into two categories: professional investors who have what it takes to get an edge in the market, and the "know-nothing investors".

Indeed, making concentrated bets is not for everyone. Much as concentrated bets become fashionable during good times, most people abandon the strategy again during bad times. Concentrated bets magnify market volatility, which can wipe out investors.

However, it's a strategy that is much more open and accessible than you may expect. E.g., you could excel at this strategy even if you have not yet reached world-class analytical skills for understanding companies. Does that surprise you?

Another author looked into this question. Tobias Carlisle, the author behind "Quantitative Value" and "Deep Value" analysed whether success was down to finding the right *companies*, or holding them in the right *amounts*. Surprisingly, world-class skills in analysing companies may even stand in the way of success as you can be so stuck in forever weighing the pros and cons of an investment that the big opportunities sail right past you. Someone else may not have the same analytical skills, but the ability to recognise that sometimes in life, you just have to go for it!

Just to illustrate this point from my own personal experience: in the early 2000s, a foreign brewery conglomerate made a bid approach to a publicly-listed regional German brewery. While the bid terms were a bit unclear, one of the executives of the target company was quoted with a few likely numbers in a local newspaper. If you believed these figures, there was a huge amount of money to be made by loading up on the stock. But could this executive really have spilled the beans in a local newspaper, and could markets be so inefficient that an article in a local newspaper had not yet made it to everyone else's awareness? Proponents of the efficient market theory would have told you this was never going to work. Everyone would have advised you to assume this was a case of "when it sounds too good to be true, it must be too good to be true". I concluded this was one of those instances of life throwing you an opportunity with an outstandingly good risk/reward ratio, bought as much stock as I could afford, and made a serious bundle of money quickly.

This is what Buffett calls "temperament". As he described in 2011:

"The good news I can tell you is that to be a great investor you don't have to have a terrific IQ. If you've got a 160 IQ, sell 30 points to somebody else because you won't need it investing. What you do need is the right temperament. You need to be able to detach yourself from the views of others or the opinion of others.

You need to be able to look at the facts about a business, about an industry, and evaluate a business unaffected by what other people think. That is very difficult for most people."

As a private investor who manages his own money, I was able to defy conventional wisdom and grab the bull by its horn. Actually, there are several areas where private investors have a real edge.

Why private investors have a few real advantages

As a private investor, it's much easier for you to abstain from group think (at least, as far as your investments are concerned).

If you invest your own money, there is no corporate policy forcing you to subscribe to the latest investment craze. No boss disagreeing with your view, no investment guidelines influencing your decisions, and no compliance department slowing down your decisions.

You also have the advantage that your savings will (likely) be permanent capital. Why is that relevant and why does it put you ahead? If you are seeking outsized returns, you will have to put up with outsized volatility. If you invest permanent capital, sitting through a period of volatility won't have to bother you. As an employed fund manager, you are likely to get fired for outsized volatility – unless your investors have given you permanent capital, as in the case of Berkshire Hathaway's shareholders. Being able to invest permanent capital is a HUGE advantage, and as a private investor investing their own money you naturally have that advantage on your side.

You are also usually much more agile. If you have a few hundred thousand or even a few million to invest, you can access relatively small, obscure, illiquid stocks (and other thinly traded securities, commodities, or alternative assets). The biggest gains are usually made in relatively obscure areas, and if you oversee a portfolio of a few billion, these opportunities will simply not be accessible to you.

Obviously, for all of these points, there will be exceptions and limitations. E.g., there are actually some investment funds that make their clients commit capital for lengthier periods to deal with the issue of volatility. Also, I concede not everyone will be in a position to stash away their investments for the long haul.

Everyone's circumstances are different. This Weekly Dispatch aims to give you a sense for the key aspects of this issue and where you might have an edge. There might not be one for yourself, in which case you should honestly conclude that your needs and possibilities are simply different – at least for now.

Also, circumstances can change over time, just as your investment style can change over time. Rosenfield started as a speculator and became one of the ultimate long-term investors. Buffett famously missed out on the tech stock boom of the late 1990s, only to become one of the largest (and most successful) investors in Apple (ISIN US0378331005) in recent years.

The world is in constant flux and you'll have to adapt your investing to changing times and personal circumstances.

Without a doubt, though, you've got some extraordinary opportunities. I mentioned one such opportunity at the beginning of this article, and it actually makes for a specific investment idea.

Check out Twitter – or regret later

Edwin Dorsey isn't just the current go-to genius for spotting securities fraud, he is also an extremely successful content creator and entrepreneur. With little more than a keyboard and his intellect, Dorsey has created a small publishing operation that is earning him oodles of subscription income.

One of the keys to his success? Dorsey is really good at using Twitter for building an audience for himself.

He "gets" Twitter, and as a result, he has deep insights into the likely future of the platform.

In this regard, he is similar to Kristian Siem. Dorsey has made a huge bet in an industry that he is extremely familiar with, because he spends most of his time in the ecosystem of content creators that has sprung up around Twitter.

What's more, Twitter is a value investment, and one with outsized potential - as concluded in my November 2020 research report "Twitter: Humanity's brain". Twitter stock was USD 43 back then, and it's USD 65 now. I also believe it has a lot further to run, and it might multiply over the coming years.

What makes Twitter the ONE social media stock to own? If you don't know the answer, I urge you to check back to my report.

Just don't put 50% of your net worth into that one stock! (Unless you are a content creator with deep knowledge of the company, that is).

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