Manx Financial Share Discussion Threads

[smithie6] 14/10/2024 11:15

sector news....from recent months
"lse:ipf
Retail partnership credit now available in 450 stores in Romania"

(IPF specialises in small personal loans at a high % rate to ppl who are high risk & who can't get loans from banks. So, not the same as MFX but it is a lender as MFX is).

MFX has plenty of liquidity.....be interesting to see if there is any news in H2 about it using that liquidity.
Perhaps by PA Ltd expanding, finally, in to another sector (dentists, lawyers, retail.....) or perhaps a tie up with a retail chain. Or perhaps one or more of the other subsidiaries expanding its lending. (one subsidiary/associate received £10 million from MFX not so long ago to increase their lending).
Or might the frequently mentioned interest in the insurance sector start happening ?

And MFX is expected to soon have a surge in cash available to lend out, because MFX says it will start taking deposits (on-line) in coming weeks in the UK.
(The UK has a population about 1000 times the population of the IoM (which is only `84 thousand !!) so the potential for growth is very big, if MFX can take advantage of the opportunity).

-----

Interesting to see that Revolut " almost tripled its revenue to £1.8bn in 2023. Its accounts are quick to open and offer competitive foreign exchange rates in an easy-to-use app."
...that shows how fast growth can be for an on-line banking service. "tripled its revenue" !.

MFX is seen as a much more sleepy slow moving banking company but there is always a chance that the new UK banking division could grow quite nicely, not with the same % as Revolut (where billions of £ were invested). Although, yes, 1 year after getting the licence MFX is still not yet taking deposits. :-((

[smithie6] 13/10/2024 14:19

btw
the IoM regulator has been asked to look at whether the rules for disclosure of % holdings are being complied with by this IoM registered co.
....
...if we are right that there should be some RNSs about % holdings (including for Zeno Capital, Rene Nominees & whoever the big recent seller was ) then perhaps we might see some action on that in the coming days; & perhaps some catch up RNSs.

(or perhaps I am being far too hopeful !; the IoM regulator might say it is an AIM market requirement, that they do not care ! & to contact AIM)

[smithie6] 13/10/2024 11:07

Tiger
so, at the moment it looks like the seller may well have completely finished selling ??

[castleford tiger] 12/10/2024 17:14

AIM should be fining them.

They are ignoring the rules.

I am fairly sure the company know who they are.

Tiger

tried to buy yesterday and a max of 5000 share could be bought

tiger

[smithie6] 11/10/2024 10:25

...to be more positive, & look more to the future, I copy & paste Tiger's post

Tiger
"we made 7 m last year pbt

we are 1/2 million in front at half way.

next year we have an extra million from PA thats without any growth,

If this company cannot make 10m pbt in 2025 then the board need moving on and the company be broken up.

We will be adding to the NAV again a few millions at the end of this year.

Lets pension off a director and spend that on a good PR firm

Get some targets for each division

clean up the accounts
Get the UK bank moving
Expand PA INTO golf clubs/football tickets etc

Get Jim to employ a writer for his reports and drop the politics.

This company has massive untapped potential and a valuation of 100m would be fair based on 10m a year profit.
Thats 80p plus per share.

It can be done.

tiger

Start by buying back the shares and getting 10% cancelled each year. Cost less than 1.5m"

[smithie6] 10/10/2024 08:24

very good suggestion

(apologies for so many posts from me, I will try to almost stop now since I've fully posted my calculations & views)

(as a regulated entity MFX must process any official complaint........
.....one will be submitted today
....& with it being copied to the senior non-exec on the bod
......let us see if it works, if it does then no future accounts will give 2 different profit numbers (1 number being double the other one !). for PA Ltd (or any subsidiary) unless a full explanation is given for the 2 very different profit numbers (otherwise ppl don't know which profit number is correct & are just left confused imo)

And the name of any/all subsidiary named in future accounts will hopefully be correct & be companies that exist !, (in the H1 2024 accounts the name of 1 subsidiary is wrong, the named UK company does not exist !).

[mikeep] 10/10/2024 05:24

I agree fully. But this would benefit all shareholders and this has never been the raison d'etre of Jim et el. Please address this to non execs and similarly Smithie write to non execs rather than swamp this thread with lengthy computations. We are over due some honesty.

[castleford tiger] 09/10/2024 14:04

we made 7 m last year pbt

we are 1/2 million in front at half way.

next year we have an extra million from PA thats without any growth,

If this company cannot make 10m pbt in 2025 then the board need moving on and the company be broken up.

We will be adding to the NAV again a few millions at the end of this year.

Lets pension off a director and spend that on a good PR firm

Get some targets for each division

clean up the accounts
Get the UK bank moving
Expand PA INTO golf clubs/football tickets etc

Get Jim to employ a writer for his reports and drop the politics.

This company has massive untapped potential and a valuation of 100m would be fair based on 10m a year profit.
Thats 80p plus per share.

It can be done.

tiger

Start by buying back the shares and getting 10% cancelled each year. Cost less than 1.5m

[clocktower] 09/10/2024 09:52

Yes but I don't always give in to temptation and of late, I regret to say, the outcome has not been positive in a couple of cases.

So for now, I am still sitting on a spiked fence, and though it is not the most enjoyable place to be, it gives one time to contemplate and take stock at my time of life.

However I must say, it really does look oversold and due if nothing else for a bounce back to the 18's

[smithie6] 09/10/2024 09:05

Clocktower, you tempted to buy some ?

[clocktower] 09/10/2024 08:49

A sigh of relief for many or is this the turning point?

[smithie6] 09/10/2024 08:46

The price action this morning on tiny volume, only ~27k shares bt

and the share price to sell has moved up to the price those 27k shares were bt at.

..which infers that the MM has no more shares to sell !! at this instant anyway

after the MM selling shed loads over the last 2-3 week, and then always having more left to sell, from a seller in a rush.

fingers crossed that the seller has now finished, :-)
(& small buys are then likely to cause the price to rise, imo, :-) )

we will see.

[smithie6] 09/10/2024 08:38

nice to see a little rise in the share price, better than the falls on the way down to this price area.

----
Be interesting to see if the announcement/info that MFX has started to take deposits in the UK gives a boost to the share price, or not. Set to happen in the autumn, which is now. Been preparing for 1 year.

----
Still surprised that no dirs. bought shares below 14p.
Or they have insider news perhaps, that prohibits them from buying ?

[smithie6] 08/10/2024 20:28

..not if it is a compulsory pro rata buy back.

All shareholder % would stay the same.

eg. 2 shares in 10. Would cost ~£3.2 million if done at the current price, or pay +20% to avoid shareholder moans.

This year I assume that MFX could not afford it since spent £5m on buying the 2nd half of PA Ltd. But could announce in '24 that might/will do it in H1 '25. (but it probably needs approval via a shareholder vote).
Lots of text that the co. is looking at acquisitions so that might be a more likely use of the annual profits.

-----
Now that MFX owns all of PA Ltd & its PAT & the smaller subsidiaries are contributing a higher combined profit & hence on-going profits are up....perhaps it is time to up the divi payment to 20%, from the current 10%, of the group PAT.

[m1keg] 08/10/2024 17:53

Tiger

Good idea but maybe stymied by JM+Doc holding increasing in percentage as total goes down.

[castleford tiger] 08/10/2024 16:00

I would be buying some shares back and getting them cancelled with surplus cash

[smithie6] 08/10/2024 12:56

value of MFX

...if we ignore the poor quality of the accounts & imo lack of transparency as to what is going on inside the group & that the cost of the bod at £1m seems high.

The cap. value of MFX does look too low.

Just PA ltd made £2.05m PAT last year (ref. its own accounts). And now that various founding directors have departed one assumes that its costs have reduced & hence that its monthly PAT has now gone up. (was that the remedial action ?! remove the founding dirs & their cost !).

If PA Ltd is valued at 10x PAT (2023) then its value is

£20.5m.
(higher than the cap value of MFX of £16m)

10x PAT is a return after tax of 10%. Money sitting in Govt treasuries gets ~4%.
So a p/e of PAT x10 is not high.
The valuation also looks about right versus what MFC paid, ~£8m (£9m cash- ~£1m divi). If you buy an entity that you have helped grow over X years & which depends on your loyalty & your cash, then you rightly pay a price below what it might be worth on the open market.

so, it looks imo like just PA Ltd is worth more than the cap. value of MFX
...& you also get £3.4m/year pbt !!
from the other subsidiaries which lend out money (Forex parts, Edgewater, Nakinsi (beer fermentation vessels), Business Lending Exchange, Bluewater.....)
If one values this pbt of £3.4m at x6 then it is worth £20.4m

(if you add £20.5m for PA Ltd & £20.4m for the subsidiaries lending out money borrowed from Conister (+ forex part)

= 20.4m + 20.5m= £40.9m

More than double the cap. value of ~ £16m @13.3p

The difference looks too big imo & surely the cap. value will increase imo)

and the main IoM banking part, not too profitable recently imo if you allocate the plc HQ costs to it.

and the potential due to having the UK banking licence.

------

while yes there are also some negatives such as the company being controlled by 2 people Jim Mellon & Gregory Bailey via their shareholdings & their sizeable convertible loan notes
....that with Denham Eke (an employee of Jim Mellon) they have 3 votes on the bod, not a majority but a notable chunk of votes on the bod.

[smithie6] 08/10/2024 09:02

....Conister UK is expected to start taking deposits at any moment .....fingers crossed that that might help change the atmosphere for MFX shares.

[smithie6] 07/10/2024 14:19

btw

today

various banking shares are up 3% today

Santander
Natwest
Bank of Ireland

[smithie6] 07/10/2024 12:02

Tiger
...so Rene Nominees Ltd now has 3.6%.

I thought that it might be Mr D.Banks, (ex- MFX director): or his son Aaron Banks who owned a notable % (15-19%) of MFX in the past but which was all (~18 million shares) bought by MFX & the shares cancelled in 2020. And it is him.

Mr Banks was imo receiving turnover & profit from MFX for comissions for loan business introduced by him to MFX, as well as being a director at MFX.

Those comissions were killing the group's PAT.
MFX made a decision to reduce the comissions that it was paying. During a number of years that has continued & the comissions paid have reduced. However it now appears that Mr Banks (junior or senior) is back as an owner of >3%.

Is he again also receiving comissions by introducing loan business to MFX noting that the amount of comissions paid has jumped up in the last 12-18 months ??!!

-----

Here is a link to information that shows that Mr Aaron Banks is the owner of Rene Nominees Ltd
....and that he was trying to benefit personally via business with another listed company Iofina.....and when that business did not happen ....Mr A.Banks was not happy at all & he called an EGM to remove a director & put himself on the bod !!



-----

Mr Banks bought >3% in MFX , held by Rene Nominees ; if he did it recently at these recent prices it shows that Mr A.Banks thinks the shares are cheap.
Or did he buy at 16-20p and only bought a few shares below 16p to go over the 3% reporting % ?. (if he bt at 16-20p then he surely must think that 13.3p is a cheap price to pay to buy shares !, so, will he add more ?).

Do we know when A.Banks went over the 3% reporting limit ?....was an RNS issued ?

----
Zeno Capital of Tortola, British Virgin Islands no longer holds >3% based on the info we can see. In Nov. '22 it held 3.2%. I think its holding went up to 5% at one time. It first appearred when the shares first went from 8p to 15-20p.
In the AR for '22, Zeno Capital had 5 million shares. ~4.3% at that time. Held by Vidacos Nominees.

-----
trying to track the sales/buys (& motives, logic) of any declared holders of >3% is of course very tricky, since someone holding 2.999% only needs to buy a small number of shares to go over 3.0000% & have to get an RNS issued. And vice versa, from 3.001% a seller may go to 2.999% or may go to 0% & they don't have to report they holding/sctions below 3%.

[smithie6] 07/10/2024 09:39

I get 0% on my bank account. (ie. a perfect bank client !!!)

I need to look at moving it to an account that pays a %.

[smithie6] 07/10/2024 09:37

1chrism

who is the possible seller ?

here are the holders of 3-6% listed in the 2023 AR
(perhaps the website gives more recent info)

Rock nominees. 3.4%
Vidacos Nominees. 6.1%
Interactive Investor 3.95%

Zeno Capital, on Caribbean tax haven ?? they once had ~5%

(there is also Island Farms Ltd but the recent RNSs show that they have been buying, not selling)

----

update
from MFX website, valid 3/10/24



Rene Nominees (IOM) Limited 4,298,063 3.60
Rock Nominees Limited 4,059,975 3.40

...a lot of change since the AR

so, the Vidacos holding of 6.1% in the '23 AR is not visible now
nor the 3.95% of Interactive Investor...but might that have been moved to be at Rene nominees ??

Rene Nominees. Who is behind that ? not Mr A.Banks phps ???

----
What % is held now by the seller ?

[smithie6] 07/10/2024 09:32

5.25% !

that's high....

MFX might not be able to afford you as a client if you want/expect >5% !
je je !