Manx Financial Share Discussion Threads

[castleford tiger] 20/10/2024 21:58

Still in a closed period I think

[smithie6] 20/10/2024 19:20

btw
'who was the share seller'..

Shares sold since 1st Sept (before then the sell volumes were low)
I make it ~9-9.1 million shares.
the number of shares is now ~119m, that is ~7.6% of the number of shares.

The share register should tell us the possible sellers. Very few holders of >7%.

Jim Mellon ~22m shares + CLNs
Gregory Bailey ~18m shares + CLNs. Vidacos Nominees
Aeternitas Imperium Privatstiftung. 17m shares. (Lichenstein or this year's tax haven !). Nominee Lynchwood

Lynchwood held ~6.3m shares for other(s).
Vidacos nominees held 7.1m shares for other(s).

My guess would be either of those 2. Lynchwood nominees or Vidacos nominees.
If any 1 entity held >3% of MFX inside either of those 2 nominee holdings, we don't know, since not revealed/reported).

Comparing with data on the MFX website, up to date for 9th Oct '24
it is clear that the seller was Vidacos Nominees, who held 7.1m shares at the end of '24 (ref the AR).

With Aaron Banks (Rene Nominees) popping up with >3% for the first time since all the Banks' shares were bt at 9.5p & cancelled in 2020. So he thought the shares were a bargain recently.
Should the MFX state that Aaron Banks owns Rene Nominees ? (it doesn't) & why was there never an RNS
for going up thru 3%

and no RNS for Vidacos going down thru % points nor for going down thru the 3.0% barrier ?

Clearly Aaron Banks is a big fan of the shares in this price area. And he knows the co. very well, David Banks (son ??) sat on the bod until during 2020. Aaron Banks had held ~29% of MFX in ~2018.

And Island Farms added. And Interactive Investor nominees, their holding has also risen. So, 3 rich buyers with lots of £ already invested increased their holdings while 1 big holder was selling hard. Overall that gives me a good feeling.

Why was 1 nominee so keen to sell for someone ?
Who knows, someone had a big margin call ?!, a big tax bill, their house was washed away !, a big divorce settlement to pay (it could easily be that, & that is quite common I think)......
-------

interesting look at the sell trades
started in mid August, at lowish volumes, 50k/day and then bang, on 3rd Sept. 500k shares sold at ~15.2p , ~2p lower than the day's opening price, 17p.
Clearly the seller was in a rush to sell volume, & knew he had more shares to offload. To attract buyers of volume he had to take a low price, ending up getting only ~13.1p/share. The cheap price did attract buyers, Island Farms, Aaron Banks (Rene nominees) & whoever holds in Interactive Investor (1 or many ppl, we don't know). (+ Tiger + me + some others).

-----
Up to the date (16th Sept) of buying the other 1/2 of PA Ltd the dirs were blocked from buying, since they had inside info. & also up to 24th Sept since it was a closed period before the H1 results.

But no dir. buys since 24th Sept, despite the cheap price, ~16.5p now, (& that MFX now owns 100% of PA ltd increasing the eps) but sadly that is phps just due to the previous & on-going non-interest of the non-execs & the CFO & the COO in buying/owning any shares. :-(

[smithie6] 19/10/2024 19:36

Simon Cawkell, tipster
....wrote in 2023 that he held 750k MFX shares.



I wonder if he still holds or if he bought/added any shares during the dip below 18-20p in recent months.

Because he mostly writes on the Master Investor website (& not very frequently, SK is 77-78 yrs old now) where Jim Mellon is the owner, he only rarely ever says anything about MFX.

[smithie6] 18/10/2024 16:02

point 1)
you didn't reply to the point that was made, imo

----
your second point.
I completely disagree.

At 13-13.5p there was quite a volume of trading going on, repeated selling (which we assume was from the same seller as in the 2-3 weeks up until then)
....and with buyers taking up those shares, including me (& imo Tiger & Island Farms &....)

& there was an RNS issued reporting that Island Farms had gone thru a reporting %, as a buyer.

...X hours or days with the price at 13.0-13.5p then the price started moving up, imo because the seller had stopped selling. This is shown imo by the reported trades on ADVFN being mostly (80-90% ?) buys.

imo the buyers at 13.3p thought it was a crazy cheap price, so afterwards at 13.5-16p they were probably also making up most of the buy volume. The largish size of the buy trades supports that theory (150k, 100k, 50k). And perhaps a small amount of buy volume from PIs who saw the price rising & were interested to add to their holding.

imo none of the buys were from anyone that had inside info that 1-5 days later the taking of deposits in the UK would start. While the market knew that it was expected to start soonish, (but no date was known) since the company had said that.
This text is in the H1 results :-

"In this regard, we will:
§ commence taking retail deposits in the UK in the autumn.
§ ........."

So, the market was "fully" aware it was going to happen, we just didn't know the exact date.

Btw the news for starting taking deposits in the UK only caused the share price to increase by ~3%. (personally I think that the % increase should have been bigger, but hopefully that might happen over coming weeks, perhaps if there an RNS at some time about the amount of money deposited or a tipster's article mentioning it is a major strategic step forward)

-----
kaos3
can I be nosey....
You have some MFX shares ?
Did you buy any recently <17p ?

(I was buying at <13.5p. I am hoping that <13.5p will turn out to be a crazy cheap price, we will see)

[kaos3] 18/10/2024 14:04

matching durations would add to the cost of deposits

i was wondering why the rise and i got the answer ... deposits rns few day later

[smithie6] 17/10/2024 11:48

any experts for banking regulations ?

MFX has ~£30m-35m borrowed via loan notes, which cost ~7% interest.
Could MFX replaces those as they end their time period & use money borrowed from Joe Public, which currently costs ~5% ?
(if pay 5% on ~£30m rather than 7% it would save MFX £600k/year. (an increase in profit))

[our haven] 17/10/2024 07:11

Good news this morning that the bank is going to start taking retail deposits this morning.

[smithie6] 16/10/2024 19:03

btw

some other good news imo

if one does some digging....there is some good news for big increases in lending from Conister Bank to some subsidiaries & associates....
note 25 of the AR for Conister Bank Ltd, which is available here:-



The increase in loans to at least 3 subsidiaries/associates is material to their possible/likely profit contribution to Conister/MFX & the value of that investment.
(& noting that MFX needs to increase its lending otherwise there is no point to increase the total of deposits)

In the last 10 years the profit contribution from subsidiaries/associates has not been a very exciting or motivating subject (apart from the major acquisition of the profitable PA Ltd) & the forex subsidiary having some good years (but some not so good). However this might be changing. In H1 2024 there was a notable & material total profit increase at the smaller subsidiaries, £1.7m pbt I think, £3.4m for a year. The info below with multiple increases in the lending to some subsidiaries/associates gives expectations of resulting increased profit for Conister from lending to subsidiaries/associates.

Here is the data for PA Ltd (where shareholders have imo been in the dark about the amount of money being provided from Conister). (loan facility increased from £36m to £68m from Dec. '22 to Dec. 23)

" Loan advance to Payment Assist Limited (“PAL”) An Integrated Wholesale Finance Agreement (“IWFA”) facility of £60,000,000 (2022: £28,000,000) and a Block facility of £7,602,000 (2022: £7,634,000) loan facility is available to PAL to provide the finance required to expand its operations. At 31 December 2023, £54,469,719 (2022: £24,755,000) and £3,550,011 (2022: £5,674,000) had been advanced to PAL under the IWFA and Block facility respectively. This loan facility is repayable in cash"

----
Rivers Finance. associate.
There is a name that 95% of MFX shareholders have forgotten (& rightly so since it is normally never mentioned in the MFX accounts).
"At 31 December 2023, £7,530,000 (2022: £2,737,759) had been advanced to RFG"
...loan growth of x3 !!
£7.5m, a fair chunk of money.

----
Lesley Stephen & Co. ltd. associate.
"At 31 December 2023, £10 million had been advanced to LSC"
-----

Pay it Monthly ltd. associate.
"At 31 December 2023, £2,677,000 (2022: £1,240,855) had been advanced to PIM".
The loan size doubled.

----
If MFX were to make another acquisition one assumes that one of these companies perhaps might be a contender.

----
Business Lending Exchange & Nakinsi (beer fermentation vessel renting).....both had stable loan sizes from Dec '22 to Dec. '23....(so very unlikely to change their production of profit very much imo).

[castleford tiger] 16/10/2024 17:24

i will be having some of the 5% fixed

Rates are down 1/2% next meeting ( my guess)

[gears] 16/10/2024 16:52

Thanks. Now the shareholders know the UK Banks active it must be good news.

[smithie6] 16/10/2024 16:03

GEARS

....it is live

via the Conister Bank website, click on "Apply now"

(it is not linked to from the % rate comparison website that you mentioned, since to enable that would require MFX to agree to pay a comission to that 3rd party website)

[smithie6] 16/10/2024 15:36

here is a link to the website for Conister Bank UK.

!!

it exists, the start of UK operations for Conister Bank looks to be happening !!

NOW !

A major step forward for MFX.
The population of the UK is about 1000 times that of the IoM. The possibilities for growth are clearly much bigger.

:-)



-----

In terms of presentation, I'd say it looks good.

-----

It would be good if any MFX shareholders that are UK residents could consider to make a deposit (£5k minimum)...& keep notes (or make a video) about the process and then send any notes/comments to the company for any possible improvements. (Tiger ?)

[gears] 16/10/2024 13:45

5% for 1 year looks good but tried to open & think the sites not live.

[smithie6] 16/10/2024 12:59

btw

another company doing lending in the UK, lse:stb
..it has a p/e of ~6, double the p/e of 3 for MFX.

I guess that MFX perhaps deserves a lower p/e because with a cap. value of only £18m many institutions/fund surely are not able to own any shares in MFX, (& some PIs avoid companies with such a small cap. value) whereas STB has a cap. value of ~£150m, where many institutions/funds are allowed by their own rules to invest.

but being half price in comparison, that looks way overdone imo.

------

How do STB & MFX compare for growth

2019 & 2023. Revenue
(data taken from financial summary page of advfn)

STB. £165m. £185m. increase = x 1.1
MFX £26.7m. £53.3m. increase = x 2.0
(revenue 2023/revenue 2019)

(MFX. doubling the revenue in 4 years, impressive)

For revenue growth MFX wipes the floor with STB, yet the p/e of MFX is half that of STB !
Doesn't make sense imo.

imo either STB is too expensive or MFX is too cheap !

[gears] 16/10/2024 12:37

hxxps://moneyfactscompare.co.uk/savings-accounts/1-year-fixed-rate-bonds/
Just in case it's not already posted

[smithie6] 16/10/2024 12:09

clearly there is still interest in buying

100k shares bt at 15.75p
£15.75k....in 1 trade

[castleford tiger] 15/10/2024 21:20

Bid up 1.5 p on the day.
Mm need shares

[lennonsalive] 15/10/2024 21:13

Not my small buy in

[smithie6] 15/10/2024 15:33

btw
imo the trade of ~32k shares listed by advfn's automatic guessing system as being a sale at 15.5p

was imo a buy
because the price to buy up till that moment had been 15.5p
& after that buy the price to buy moved up to 16.0p, which it would not have done if that trade had been a sell
---

imo the price has been moving up in recent days because the number of shares being sold is tiny & swamped by the buy volume, so the price moves up.

(& there is a chance imo that there has been a buy trade not yet reported ...as part of the cause for the rise in the share price today)

[clocktower] 15/10/2024 10:16

Well L2 is looking strong.

[nakedmolerat] 15/10/2024 09:30

just need some fundies to but in and shift it!

[clocktower] 14/10/2024 15:07

That 100k buy seems to have turned the tables, so upwards and onwards again it seems.

[smithie6] 14/10/2024 12:50

stewy_18
annual current run rate of PAT is now
~£6m

versus a cap. value of ~£17m.

p/e <3.

if all the profit was paid out as a divi the yield would be 35% !

imo its so cheap the share price can only go up !
even if the dirs took holiday for the rest of the year !

----
while, yes, for me, there are various aspects the dirs should improve, communicating to shareholders etc etc.

[smithie6] 14/10/2024 12:39

...I guess that if MFX could borrow some dirs for say 6 months from say Revolut, Equals or Time

I guess that MFX perf. might well improve a lot.

.....but with so many experienced dirs on the MFX bod (9 directors now !!) one might hope that MFX have all the experience/knowledge they need ??
or am I being overly optimistic ?!

Well, with the UK banking part of MFX soon starting up, 1 year !! after getting the licence, we should find out in the next 3-9 months how good, or not, the MFX directors are !
(with 1 year of preparation !! & plenty spent on IT, one hopes it will go well. Plenty of time & money has been spent. Perhaps the work done has been good. (MFX apparently had ~60-70% of client activity in ~2020 without papers, ie. its digital, so, in theory MFX have some years of experience & also existing working IT for operating on-line).

[stewy_18] 14/10/2024 12:06

Yes Smithie,

Re Revolut growth, this only happens with a competent management team who have outlined an ambitious strategy of where they want to go.

The MFX board needs to start demonstrating at least a basic level of competence for this investment to succeed.