Mony Share Discussion Threads

[fugwit] 02/8/2011 11:06

2 August 2011



MoneySupermarket.com Group PLC interim results for the six months to 30 June 2011



Strong financial results and cash generation

Special dividend of £20m (3.93p per share)

[fugwit] 02/8/2011 11:01

Another good set of results, will post below. Well we got to 120, I am now looking at 133/135 on overhead channel resistance which I expect us to continue towards.
Interim divi of 1.5p, if the final divi also increases 15% then we could be looking at 2.9p plus the special divi annouced today of 3.93p. Total divi for the year then will hopefully conclude around the 8.33p level, even at todays price that is a yield of 6.9%.

Listening to the Q&A at end of presentation all seems well, chairman again reiterated intention of maintaining a progressive divi policy with continued special divi as cash position allows. And no intention of funding any divi with debt which I personally like no matter your feelings on balance sheet efficiency. Biz continues to be run for profit by an astute management team.
Conversion to cash remains fantastic at >80%, bodes well for when the market increases in size and transaction volumes grow as they inevitably will at some point.

Direct to site traffic which I forgot to come back with from previous post is stable at 66%, personally I had hoped for continued increases against this metric, and whilst size of market is increasing lets hope this metric isn't going to stall for too long.

One point to watch is Swinton entering market with marketing budget mooted to be around 20M/annum. Lets see how they fare.

DYOR & Good luck all.

[fugwit] 11/6/2011 21:44

Seems that way at the moment, the masses will arrive once the profits have been made.

Interesting strength in a weak market of late, nice to see.

[isis] 09/6/2011 09:28

110p

Seems only us two in this stock!

[isis] 08/6/2011 07:10

Broken out now 120p here we come! :-))

[fugwit] 17/5/2011 10:32

Should be interesting to see if pulls back to the 91/92 which should be support. 100 MA should be around this level as well by the time it gets there. 100DMA has provided decent support as well of late. Might pop a little spread bet on around this level to top up a little.

[fugwit] 11/5/2011 19:47

Looking at the weekly chart again; if the price can get through the 38.2 fib from the 2007 high then the 50% retracement at 129 corresponds quite nicely with the top of the current channel outlined a few posts ago. Usual caveat about it being a long way to go in %age terms etc etc. Would be hard not to take some profits around there if it weren't for not wanting to miss any takeover approaches. Good luck all.

[isis] 05/5/2011 12:28

Creeping up I see - I'm surprised they didn't take-off on that statement.

Seem to have been overlooked.

[fugwit] 04/5/2011 10:06

Nice to see revenues increasing at a greater rate than traffic, cash position looking nice and healthy, everything going well it would seem. Pretty quiet on here. Good luck all.

[isis] 04/5/2011 07:15

Trading Well ahead:-

RNS Number : 8686F

Moneysupermarket.com Group PLC

04 May 2011

Moneysupermarket.com Group PLC - Interim Management Statement

4 May 2011

In advance of its Annual General Meeting to be held at 11.00am today, Moneysupermarket.com Group PLC ("Moneysupermarket.com" or the "Group"), the UK's leading price comparison website, issues the following Interim Management Statement relating to the period from 1 January 2011 to 3 May 2011. The financial and operational data set out below is in respect of the Group's first quarter (1 January 2011 to 31 March 2011) unless otherwise stated.

The Group is trading well ahead of the same, relatively weak, period last year. Internet revenues and visitors (both measures excluding contributions from Financial Services Net Limited ("FSN")) for the first quarter were 22% and 13% ahead of the same period last year respectively.*

Money

Revenues in the Money vertical were 28% ahead of the same period last year. Revenues grew both in credit related and other banking products, particularly savings as banks once again competed for retail deposits. Visitor volumes were fractionally ahead, reversing the declines seen in 2010 following the deliberate actions taken to reduce traffic from portal partners who were not profitable to the Group.

Insurance

Revenues in the Insurance vertical were 24% ahead of the same period last year. Revenues grew fastest in home insurance but the Group also saw strong growth in both motor insurance and travel insurance. Visitor volumes were 20% higher.

Home Services

Revenues in the Home Services vertical were 23% ahead of the same period last year, primarily due to an increase in utilities revenues. Visitor numbers were approximately 6% up.

Travel

Whilst traffic to the Travel vertical as a whole grew by 22%, helped by a new advertising campaign at the start of the year, revenues in the Travel vertical were overall in line with the same period last year. The relaunched package holidays channel was ahead by 10% but other channels continued to be impacted by both low levels of consumer confidence and the turbulence in the Middle East which reduced consumers' willingness to transact.

Financial Performance during Q1

The Group continued to manage costs appropriately. As indicated in the Preliminary Announcement issued on 1 March 2011 the Group increased its investment in offline marketing in the first quarter to support its growth plans. Television advertising costs were consequently 20% ahead of the same period last year and 40% ahead of H1 2010 run rate. As a result EBITDA in the first quarter was well ahead of the same period last year and approximately 25% ahead of H1 2010 run rate.

Financial position

The Group continued to remain cash generative and as at the end of March 2011 had cash balances of GBP40.4m.

Current trading

The Group continues to trade significantly ahead of the relatively weak comparator period and in line with expectations. The Board remains confident in the Group's prospects for the full year.

Peter Plumb, Chief Executive Officer, said:

"moneysupermarket.com has made a strong start to 2011 - building on the momentum from a great performance last year when we saved our customers GBP750m. We continue to lead our highly competitive market with our unparalleled breadth of product, our unique brand and our strong relationships with providers. Given the uncertain outlook for consumer spending, our offer has never been more relevant for consumers. Against that backdrop, we remain confident that our clear programme of continued investment in technology and brand will ensure moneysupermarket.com makes further good progress this year."

* Internet KPIs including vertical and Group visitor numbers and vertical revenue numbers exclude FSN, which owns and operates a number of website domains and was acquired by the Group in October last year. The directors believe that this enables the users of the financial information to gain a better understanding of the financial performance of the business.

- Ends -

For more information, please contact:

Moneysupermarket.com Group PLC

Paul Doughty, Chief Financial Officer, 01244 665700

Tulchan Communications 0207 353 4200

Susanna Voyle

Tom Murray

-- This interim management statement may include statements that are forward looking in nature. Forward looking statements involve known and unknown risks, assumptions, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Group to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward looking statements. Except as required by the Listing Rules and applicable law, the Group undertakes no obligation to update, revise or change any forward looking statements to reflect events or developments occurring after the date such statements are published.

-- The information in this release is based on management information.

This information is provided by RNS

The company news service from the London Stock Exchange

END

IMSUGUWWAUPGGBW

[fugwit] 03/5/2011 09:15

Any takeover is reliant on Nixon, without him cannot be done, with him will def, go through. I suspect anyone after this firm will just pick him off and get it locked down to avoid a bid battle (Not sure if that is feasible with LSe regs etc). I remain hopeful that this firm will stay public for a very long time, there is huge potential here and the team running the show are doing a terrific job......a few more special divi's would be appreciated as soon as the cash position allows.....and I am sure they will come.

[isis] 28/4/2011 15:17

Still holding a few of these - looks a bit of breakout, but holding 95p


Surprised no Takeover bid yet.

[fugwit] 28/4/2011 08:34

Interesting read Isis

Mony has broken overhead resistance from previous high in Sept 2009, If we can close the week above 91.8 would be a pretty positive sign. We have a nice trend channel in play starting from the March '09 low. A 2nd touch on the overhead trend channel resistance would have us north of 120p, a big %age increase from here but I shall watch with interest.

[isis] 10/4/2011 07:21

Website payday: Go Compare hits all the right notes

The price comparison site may divide opinion with its adverts, but its dividends are booming greater than an opera singer's voice
Matthew Goodman Published: 10 April 2011
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Go Compare, known for its TV ads, paid big dividends to Parsons and her staff (Handout)
Hayley Parsons, founder of Go Compare, shared almost £6m in dividends with her staff last year, and a further £2m payout is on the way.

The award follows a successful year in which turnover at the price comparison site, founded less than five years ago, topped £100m for the first time. Accounts just published for Go Compare Holdings reveal that the company paid out dividends of £11.8m in the year to December 2010. Of this, 49% - or £5.8m - went to Esure, the insurer that backs the site, with the rest split between Parsons, staff and founding shareholders. Parsons' 23% stake means she received £2.7m, with the rest - £3.3m - shared among workers and other early backers.

The accounts also reveal that since the year end, the company has proposed a further £4m in dividends. Last year, it made a pre-tax profit of £29.9m on sales of £101.5m. This was a big improvement on the previous year when Go Compare achieved profits of £12.1m on turnover of £75m.

Parsons, 37, set up Go Compare after working for the insurer Admiral and its Confused.com web operation.

[fugwit] 09/3/2011 08:41

Nice find, thanks Isis. Will try to get round to taking a closer look at percentage of traffic that is direct to site, versus via paid search results. I think they are doing a great job with branding, cross sells improvingso people running 'accounts'. I would bet on MS vs Google for the UK market.
Results looked good to me, everything remains on course it would seem.
Good Luck all.

[isis] 08/3/2011 11:11

makes you wonder what this is worth which already makes good profits:-

Google buys BeatThatQuote
US search giant's £37.7m buyout nets eight-figure sum for price comparison site's British founder John Paleomylites

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Dan Sabbagh
guardian.co.uk, Monday 7 March 2011 19.29 GMT
Article history

Google plans to build up BeatThatQuote as a standalone UK brand
Google made a rare UK acquisition on Monday, paying £37.7m to buy price comparison website BeatThatQuote and making a second eight-figure fortune for the company's founder.

The US search engine giant's cash will largely go to north London entrepreneurJohn Paleomylites who owns 90% of BeatThatQuote, a smaller rival to sites such as Go Compare and Compare the Market.

Google wants to expand its involvement in price comparison products – it already runs a service called Comparison Ads in the US and has some limited offerings in the UK focused on credit cards and insurance.

Paleomylites used to run internet security company JCP, which was set up in 1995 and originally financed using his credit card. He sold it to Sun Microsystems in 2000 for £40m, netting him an estimated £10m according to the Sunday Times rich list.

BeatThatQuote was founded in 2005, and in the year to 31 January 2010 – the last year for which accounts are available – the company generated £8.5m in turnover and a loss of £2m.

Although BeatThatQuote is not considered to be a market leader, Google is understood to be keen to run the business as a standalone brand at first, gradually building up its marketing and distribution power through increasing tie-ups with the search engine itself.

Google also believes that the price comparison market should be simplified – and that existing competitors are either too complex, requiring consumers to make too many clicks, or bombard customers with email marketing. However, there are no plans to expand the company internationally.

In a statement on the company's website, Paleomylites said: "We are confident that by combining BeatThatQuote's expertise in UK financial products with Google's technology, we'll accelerate innovation in this field."

[isis] 03/3/2011 20:50

Confused.com retreats under attack from all sides

It's not all over until the fat man sings but Gio Compario has helped to push Confused.com into the wings
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It's not all over until the fat man sings but Gio Compario has helped to push Confused.com into the wings
Miles Costello
Last updated March 3 2011 12:01AM
Confused.com has suffered the toughest year since it was founded almost a decade ago as a fat opera singer, an aristocratic mongoose and the comedian Omid Djalili ate into its profits.
The price comparison website, set up in 2002 by the insurer Admiral, said that its market share, revenues and operating profits all fell last year.
In a market where success is almost wholly dependent on high-profile TV marketing, Confused admitted that it had lost out to GoCompare.com, Comparethemarket.com and Moneysupermarket.com.
Gio Compario, the moustached tenor who fronts adverts for GoCompare, and Aleksandr Orlov, the meerkat whose broken English has boosted Comparethemarket, helped to topple Confused from the top spot among the price aggregators. Moneysupermarket stepped up its media marketing efforts using the British-born Iranian Mr Djalili.
Confused ditched its own branded character, a stringy cartoon guitar player, in favour of Carla, an animated singer of Queen songs, late last year.
David Stephens, Admiral's chief operating officer, said yesterday that Confused's market share of about 25 per cent had stabilised since the new campaign began, although it had not yet increased. "In this market you live and die by the success of your media advertising," he said.
Admiral's media relaunch for Confused came too late to prevent a one-third drop in the unit's operating profits to £16.9 million for the year to December 31 on a 10 per cent drop in revenues to £71.8 million. This cast a shadow over the Admiral group's record pre-tax profits of £266 million, up 23 per cent on a year ago. Turnover at the group soared 47 per cent to £1.58 billion. Profits were spurred by a surge in car insurance premiums in Britain, which rose by 33.2 per cent last year, according to the AA. Its customer numbers rose 32 per cent to 2.75 million.
The shares fell 3 per cent, closing down 53p at £16.55, despite a record final dividend of 35½p, taking the full-year payout to 68.1p.
The final payment will boost the fortune of Admiral's founder, chief executive and biggest investor with 15 per cent. The dividend award will be worth just over £14.37 million to Henry Engelhardt, whose stake is worth more than £665 million at yesterday's prices. Each of Admiral's 3,500 staff in Britain are shareholders and will receive a further £12 million in shares - worth £3,428.57 each on average - through the group's profit-linked employee share scheme.
• The European ban on gender discrimination by insurers should boost revenues at Admiral in the short term, as premiums jump for young female drivers and hold relatively stable for men under 25. David Stephens, the chief operating officer, said the impact over the longer-term would "not be a big deal" as charges would balance out eventually.
Admiral reported record profits a day after the European Court of Justice introduced the ban, effective from late December 2012.

[isis] 01/3/2011 07:14

Great figures and dividend up.

Financial highlights

-- Strong financial results in a challenging consumer environment, driven by focused investment in product and brand.

-- Improving trends through 2010 with all verticals delivering stronger second half revenue performance

o Insurance: H1 growth 10%, H2 growth 13%

o Money: H1 growth 11%, H2 growth 20%

o Travel: H1 growth -21%, H2 growth -5%

o Home Services: H1 growth 10%, H2 growth 14%

-- Total revenue of GBP148.9m (2009: GBP136.9m).

-- Adjusted EBITDA of GBP41.0m (2009: GBP36.0m), with profitability improving throughout the year.

-- Gross margin increased to 71.3% (2009: 68.9%).

-- Cash balance of GBP36.6m (2009: GBP53.8m) at the year end. The Group remains highly cash generative, converting 107% of EBITDA to cash. The Group is debt free.

-- Final dividend increased to 2.53p per share (2009: 2.2p per share). Full year dividend of 3.83p per share (2009: 3.5p). Commitment to adopting a progressive dividend policy.

Operational highlights

-- Market-leading position and market share maintained.

-- Investment in product and brand has delivered good results:

o Direct-to-site revenues now increased to 67% (62%)

o Significant improvements to the website offering , with six new channels launched

o Brand further strengthened with successful offline advertising campaign. Sponsorship of Britain's Got Talent contracted for 2011

o Acquisition of FSN provides a strong foundation for further brand extension

-- Growing customer database driving CRM revenues.

-- Relaunch of travelsupermarket.com on track: investment programme in place for 2011.

Outlook

The Group has made a good start to the year, with trading in line with management expectations. Group revenues and EBITDA are ahead of the same period last year where trading was relatively weak. Revenues in Money, Insurance and Home Services are all ahead by around 20% whilst Travel has returned to growth reversing the declines seen over the course of last year.

The Group continues to invest in growth. Offline media spend to date is approximately 20% ahead of the same period last year and includes a travelsupermarket.com campaign for the first time in two years supporting the newly launched Package Holidays channel. The Group recently announced its first major TV sponsorship of Britain's Got Talent which will air over the course of the second quarter consistent with the strategy of driving more direct to site revenue. This will see offline media expenditure increase over last year. The Group is investing in core technology during 2011 to increase flexibility, further enhance speed to market and lower operating costs in 2012 and beyond.

Overall, the Board remains confident in the Group's prospects for the full year.

Peter Plumb, moneysupermarket.com Chief Executive Officer, said:

"2010 was clearly a good year for moneysupermarket.com. We saved our customers GBP750m as more and more people bought their car insurance, savings accounts and credit cards through our market leading site. Our success is driven by our strategy of focused investment in brand and product and our strong relationships with providers and customers. These results show that we continue to lead a competitive market at the same time as delivering good revenue growth and increased profit margins.

"Looking ahead 2011 has started well. We have the right strategy and a clear programme of continued investment for our technology and brand. Our business is well placed to continue to benefit from consumers' growing use of price comparison sites, in a time when there has never been a bigger need to watch the pennies. We are confident that moneysupermarket.com will continue to make good progress through the year. "

- ends -

[isis] 12/1/2011 16:49

Big volume in these today.

I would hazard that these are being seriously looked at for a takeover, number one and all that.

[isis] 12/1/2011 08:09

Good trading statement - takeover target if ever I saw one.

[fugwit] 06/1/2011 08:32

Mony at a few technical levels at the moment, sat on daily 200 moving average and a few points off trendline from march '09 low. Will be interesting to see if these support levels are broken. Providing support holds then this area and down to 73 could represent a good top up opportunity. Time for another look the fundamentals to check everything on track. Good luck all.

[dick grasso] 10/12/2010 08:35

well I've done my bit for MONY yesterday, bought a new motor for my dearest, always been loyal directline customer but switched and gone though here, actuallly very pleased with the outcome!

[dick grasso] 08/12/2010 09:48

Sold in the morning, bought in the afternoon, a common theme with MONY these days!

[fugwit] 17/11/2010 16:05

wcjan26, I am surprised these days if the market doesn't lift a stock sharply on news 'before' an rns. I take the lack of spike as a hopeful sign of nothing going on. I do believe it is only a matter of time though sadly, I view mony as a well managed steal at these prices. As & when the personal finance market does recover they will throw off cash by the bucketload. The lack of debt must have a number of private equity outfits dreaming of taking them over and loading them back up. I remain hopeful of independence and an increase in divi.