Nb Private Equity Partners Share Discussion Threads

[essentialinvestor] 09/6/2022 14:59

Can anyone make a buy case at under £14 atm?.

Recession, or something very close now looks inevitable across multiple industrialised countries.

[my retirement fund] 08/6/2022 13:02

Anyone remember Jamjar.com ? I bought my first ever brand new car from them, still remember the vision of the lorry pulling up with my car sat proudly hidden in the back out of the kitchen window. Fantastic service.

Anyway it was privately owned and venture funded by Directline and they pulled the plug on that after 3 years or so simply because it was an unworkable business model and lost so much money.

You have to ask yourself if the business model failed then, why the hell would it suddenly work today ? The only difference between now and then is we ordered stuff on our laptops and PC's instead of on phones and tablets.

Crazy really, I guess it took the market that long to forget that it was an unworkable stupid idea !

[spectoacc] 08/6/2022 12:52

And yet the Hill Report was desperate to loosen UK listing rules to allow the likes of Cazoo (-85% last I looked) to float here rather than in the US.

The US can keep them, I say. No founder shares, no tiny free floats, no chronically unprofitable rubbish. Can buy any number of Baillie Gifford UK-listed ITs for those.

[essentialinvestor] 08/6/2022 12:51

Do any of the predominately online car retailers make a profit?, little wonder
they are now beginning to acquire physical dealerships.

Can you imagine the cost of delivering a vehicle to someone's doorstep in the
UK with current labour shortages and fuel costs.

Institutional investors have largely underwritten this largesse, not for much
longer in some cases would expect.


One of the UK motor trade publications last year highlighted a loss of approx £300 per car sold,
la la land stuff.

[ali47fish] 07/6/2022 15:39

director buys wonder if ir is a positive sign!

[toffeeman] 06/6/2022 15:58

Constellation own webuyanycar.com; Cinch; CarNext.com

Cazoo is a UK company listed in the US.

[ali47fish] 06/6/2022 13:07

thank you sky so hopefully porfolio is not affected unduly

[skyship] 06/6/2022 12:42

ali - Constellation Auto is our 2nd largest holding @ 5.6% of portfolio. Personally I don't see a strict read across from problems in the US.

[ali47fish] 06/6/2022 12:14

toffee what all this long article to do with nbpe

[toffeeman] 06/6/2022 10:21

The online disruptors like Cazoo, Cinch and Carzam have over-promised and under-delivered

Car Dealer Magazine

Time 12:04 pm, May 24, 2022

Our feature was prompted by recent news reports of US-based Carvana shedding 2,500 jobs after posting a $260m (£208.2m) loss for the first quarter, rumours Carzam is looking for a buyer, and Cazoo’s share price plummeting by 82 per cent in nearly six months.

You can read exactly what our experts said here, but one of our participants comments were so fascinating we’ve run them in full here.
He’s what Steve Young, managing director at the automotive retailing research and strategy specialists ICDP had to say.
There is, and always will be, a small percentage of car buyers (new and used) who would ideally like to buy their car 100 per cent online without any physical visit.
Our consumer research indicates that only around six per cent prefer this option. Although no quibble guarantees, high quality imaging and use of finance to remove the mental hurdle of a large up-front payment all help, the vast majority of buyers want to conduct some part of the process face-to-face.
That does not mean that the pure online model is impossible to operate, only that such players are confining themselves to a specific customer segment, and it will be tough for them to break out of that without more investment in physical capabilities in some form. For example, 74 per cent of UK used car buyers take a test drive, with some evidence to say that logically this is more important on younger higher value cars.
For me, the main issues for the new players are the unsustainable level of marketing spend and the challenges of sourcing at competitive prices in the required volumes. Advertising makes an impact when it is relevant to the customer, and most of the time, most consumers are not in the market for a used car, so you have to be relentless with the advertising.
That need is reduced if you have an established brand and a network of showrooms like Arnold Clark, so although the unprompted brand awareness for the likes of Cazoo and Cinch is impressively high for young businesses, Arnold Clark does the same with a fraction of the spend.
This high spend has been funded by investors rather than by operating profits, and if that tap is now turned off as seems to be the case from the last fund-raising round by Cazoo, then they cannot afford to continue to generate the awareness.
Personally I’ve not seen any advertising for Carzam which may reflect a more prudent approach to spending, but may also hold them back in terms of growth.
On sourcing, the newcomers in the UK are operating in a closed market with very sophisticated competition. This is not true of their counterparts in continental Europe, such as Auto1 and Driverama who routinely source cross-border and are competing against franchised dealers and used car traders who are nowhere close in most cases to the sophistication of Arnold Clark, Lookers or Vertu.
In the UK, there is no ‘low-hanging fruit’ for them to buy, so they will need to compete for every unit, and this will squeeze margins. The fantasy that Alex Chesterman promised of a 15 per cent margin will remain just that, at least in the UK, and other players in continental Europe are starting to wake up too.
I accept that the general market conditions have affected share prices for Cazoo and Carvana in the US, but other listed groups there and in the UK have not suffered to the same extent.

[skyship] 06/6/2022 08:08

Problems at Cazoo? Enlighten us please - last news item there was for new branch in Spain last month - can't see anything else...

[skyship] 06/6/2022 07:55

Toffeeman - I hold NBPP from sometime ago. It has been a good place to park some of the cash in my SIPP.

Even now at 125p you could BUY 10k at a cost of £12505. They redeem at 126.74p on 30th September, so you get back £12674 in just under 4months. So a 1.35% return; annualised the GRY = 4.46%.

[toffeeman] 06/6/2022 07:23

Assuming that the recent weakness is due to Constellation value given the problems with Cazoo?

There could be a big value write-down?

[toffeeman] 02/6/2022 09:25

>> Skyship

Is there any point in NBPP?

[starpukka] 01/6/2022 19:36

pin also dropped late afternoon.

Didn't hear it though !!

[lozzer69] 01/6/2022 16:20

Down 5pc at the close. The share price is all over the shop at the moment.

[ali47fish] 23/5/2022 11:57

this is regularly up- time to add!

[skyship] 17/5/2022 07:58

Thanks both. Certainly shorting the NAS has been a great play - well done with that.


free stock charts from uk.advfn.com

[flyer61] 16/5/2022 17:37

I think the SUK2 is quite risky at the moment SKYSHIP. Everyday GBP goes lower against the USD which is a positive for a chunk of the FTSE 100. I’v3 had more joy with QQQS.

[cousin jack] 16/5/2022 17:11

Sky.

Wisdomtree Ftse250 1X Daily Short (1MCS) would enable you to short Ftse250. Good luck if you decide to give it a go.

[skyship] 16/5/2022 14:59

Flyer - good point - do you know the EPIC for a FTSE250 short?

I did however top up SUK2 at 400p a few moments ago.

[flyer61] 16/5/2022 03:59

It is a 2 times short FTSE 100 product operated by Legal and General.

I would have thought SKYSHIP you would be tinkering with shorting the FTSE 250.

Still like NBPE at these prices for the long term.

[ali47fish] 15/5/2022 17:00

and what is suk2 sky

[skyship] 15/5/2022 14:11

Good to see Friday's 4% bounce back up to 1475p. Far less deserved was the 2.5% rise in the FTSE indices. Will be topping up my SUK2 on Monday...