Neo Energy Metals Share Discussion Threads

[monosodiumg3] 22/3/2009 15:00

Agree with you guidfarr that something is up.

[guidfarr] 22/3/2009 13:50

what we also need to consider is that something is underway:

we have a big time shorter shorting this company.

we have big chunks of shares exchanging hands with the share price barely moving.

[monosodiumg3] 22/3/2009 12:44

guidfarr,
That $15M includes a $10M bond posted with the regulator. No risk on that piece.

25c: DD only has 28%. According to Neo, they are continuing to look for strategic pieces to acquire. The only piece he can block with his stake is the IDTFSH piece because it requires Gib regulator approval - UK regulator has approved it. He won't be able to use that trick to block any acquisition that is not subject to Gib regulatory scrutiny so this is not a way of blocking acquisitions in general. If he really wanted to do that, he would need to acquire 50%, which would also give him a bigger share of the spoils.

DD has shown evidence of a specific interest in this business, in the form of a previous stake in neteller. He also has gaming interest with Paddy Power and Betdaq.

BTW, he supplied all the info the FSA required and they approved the takeover. He could have simply refused to provide the info for the FSA. Why bother satisfying the FSA if the aim is to block the operation?

You might be right that he is in it to strip the assets but you do not offer any evidence for it and on the face of it there are more plausible alternative hypotheses.

[25cent] 22/3/2009 11:20

$10 Million of that is regulator deposits but even so its effectively no longer available to spend.

The synergies between the idf purchase and NEO do seem to have some merit,how much? well that's down to personal interpretation and speculation depending on parameters out of our control and future events.

What i feel is happening is that D.D is not happy with the company strategy of spending the cash,again this is my personal take on it.

If Desmond was to sit back and let the company spend a significant part of shareholders cash like its stated it intends to, his cash is effectively in their hands to a certain extent with regards returns achieved by such investments.
The company could do very well out of such buys as IDF or the investment in new teller but why should he take the risk?
They may also fall flat and leave the company with little or unchanged profits but without $40 in cash reserves.
He may well feel that he would rather he spent his own cash rather than the NEO board.

This all must be linked to Ron being dispatched.
To be honest because i am no expert on IDF or prepaid loop cards i in this instance trust DD judgment over the NEO board.
That's not to say i am right but there is a reason why DD does not want this to go through and my hope is that is due to DD wanting to take out NEO almost on a self funding basis at a cheap price and then possibly sell off the parts of the group or merge them with his excising interests.

I remain hopeful that this wont be around too much longer after June, although to what price the share has been manipulated down to by that time may well be slightly unnerving,

[guidfarr] 22/3/2009 11:10

i disagree - spending $15.05 million in the current market turmoil is very risky and frankly i've never heard of idf - i much more prefer organic growth!

[25cent] 21/3/2009 18:23

monosodiumg3
@25c,

Which bit of "a substantial underlying shareholder...refused to provide the requisite notification to the FSC" do you not understand? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hi Mono,
I thought i was the first one on the thread actually saying it was D.D? just after the RNS on Friday.
I was never in doubt who they talked about as the major shareholder.
I think you meant your above question to be aked to restassured from reading back the posts.


Personally my take is that he does not want NEO spending money on IDT or anything else because he intends to get his hands on the pot himself, just my opinion.
Does that approach help the company? probably not! does it help the long suffering shareholders out, maybe?

[monosodiumg3] 21/3/2009 10:07

@25c,

Which bit of "a substantial underlying shareholder...refused to provide the requisite notification to the FSC" do you not understand?

In plain english: the gib regulator who canned this deal because a substantial underlying shareholder, lets tag him DD for short, refused to let them see his laundry. It may help to know that while the regulatory regime in Gib is easier to comply with than that enforced by the FSA, the FSC, Gib's equivalent of the FSA, is fussier about who gets to play there.

@those who never saw the point of this acquisition:
The acquired piece was a BANK. Neo needs a bank in order to hold clients' cash. 1) Neo currently pay a third party in the IoM to provide those services. That's a significant slice of margin which could be brought in house.
2) Whenever Neo comes up with another product or a new wrinkle on any product, it must get approval from the bank for the changes. That could be time consuming as the external bank may take its time and ask for lots of detail etc or just be reluctant to agree to anything that doesn't fit its own risk envelope. Having your own pocket bank expedites that process.
3) The bank and the company will both have compliance and fraud control functions. Merging the two should result in some saving over and above the effect of capturing the bank's margin house.

@those who think the price for ITDFS was too high:
Do let Neo know where to find an actively operating bank with prepaid experience cheaper than $5M ($10M of the $15M paid is returnable bond held by the regulator).

I'll bet Neo hasn't been sitting on its hands all this time. It will have started work on integration etc. It will have signed a contract with IDT. How much has this abortive exercise cost Neo?

Perhaps Neo has been delaying reporting to capture the outcome of this exercise.

For DD to orchestrate this would be odd. The business bought IDTFSH before DD's stake was announced. If DD then arranges for the deal to fall through at the 11th hour, then his stake becomes worth that much less. The conspiracy nuts can off course claim that DD might have an ulterior motive of buying IDTFSH through some other vehicle (unlikely - same regulatory problem) or having Neo buy some other bank (fold it into AIB?) or maybe he's trying to depress the IDT parent group share price to take it over or any number of more or less wacky theories.

[restassured] 21/3/2009 07:38

With "Ron the Con" gone they should save $1 million a year in salary for starters.

[guidfarr] 21/3/2009 01:26

we agree for once 25cent [:)] and yes it seems that the departure of the CEO is linked to this affair. Neovia can do a lot of things with $15.05 million - hopefully with a new CEO and a determined big investor on board we will have a change of strategy.

I would suggest two:
- re-entry into Canadian market
- portuguese version of the site
- customized branded plastic card payout programmes offered to casinos

but was the push in the market price today related to this rns - it happened before the rns - so much for market sensitive information!!! i see green pastures ahoy ;)

[25cent] 20/3/2009 19:56

You betya!

I think the smoke is starting to clear at NEO, it looks more and more apparent that D.D is unhappy with the direction that the company was heading and is taking direct action.
Its probably on his say so that Ron has been removed from his post, and now he scuppers the expensive and like guildfarr say's not completely compelling buy of idtfs.

On the other hand the shorting still looks linked to Desmond IMHO and everything seems up in the air with regards the company.

I am now personally convinced that Desmond is not happy with NEO spending the cash pot, it looks like he is on the side of organic growth and retaining the cash, probably due to him having his eyes on it.
If that is the case that DD is not happy with the cash burn then its hard to see how the company will be able to spend it without the backing of him.

Personally i think that is great news,i simply am not convinced that the spending of huge amounts of $ on the projects so far announced would significantly enhance earnings/profits to justify the outlay.

I am now confused with the connection with the short position being built up, the trading statement was downbeat but not truly horrendous, and it looks like Neo will be keeping the $15 million cash,maybe it is just a orchestrated attempt to bring the price down in the prelude to a low bid by DD?

[restassured] 20/3/2009 19:04

I wonder if the substantial shareholder was Dermot Desmond?

[guidfarr] 20/3/2009 19:01

i just hope it will never go through - such takeovers are rarely good value for money and i couldn't see much advantage in them taking over IDTFS

[25cent] 20/3/2009 16:14

Just when the share price looks like its recoveing the board slip out a well timed rns.
What the hell is going on?

Edit,

Horrendously times rns that prompted a late sell off, who's side are the board on?

It looks like D Desmond is not playing ball, he certainly does not look like he his happy with the companies plans to spend all his and other shareholders cash.

I wonder why he does not want them spending all the $15 million cash on that bolt on purchase, i wonder now...........?

On reflection i think the RNS its good news but not due to its content, that promts uncertainty but rather what it alludes to with regards D Desmond intensions..

[adh0] 20/3/2009 16:10

So is this good news or bad news?

I have no idea whats going on at all, i wish they would just grow the company, pay back excess cash as dividends and stop faffing around.

[guidfarr] 20/3/2009 15:46

if this isn't insider trading i don't know what is - at the time my personal feeling for the acquisition was that it was expensive/unwarranted and a waste of available funds!

Friday, 20 March 2009 - NEOVIA Financial Plc (LSE: NEO) (NEOVIA or the Company), the independent global online payments business, provides a further update on the IDTFS acquisition following its statement made on Friday 13 March.

The Company announces that the proposed acquisition of IDT Financial Services
Holdings Limited ("IDTFSH"), which was announced on 1 December 2008, will not be proceeding. The Gibraltar Financial Services Commission ("FSC") has advised the Company that it is unable to consent to the acquisition. The Company anticipated that the FSC related condition to the proposed acquisition would be achieved within a number of months of announcement of the transaction. The Company has co-operated fully with the FSC and made every effort within its power to satisfy this condition. However, a substantial underlying shareholder of the Company, who under Gibraltar banking law was to become a controller of IDTFSH and about whom information therefore needed to be provided to the FSC in connection with the approval process, refused to provide the requisite notification to the FSC. The FSC has in these circumstances determined that while it does not have any objections to the proposed acquisition of IDTFSH by NEOVIA, it is unable to consent to the change of control of IDTFSH from IDT Corporation to NEOVIA.

The Company is currently reviewing this situation in conjunction with its
advisers and will provide a further update to shareholders in due course. The
Company continues to investigate strategic opportunities arising from the
current economic conditions and which the Group is well placed to capitalise on.

As previously announced, NEOVIA expects to release its 2008 full year results on or around Thursday 23 April 2009.

[25cent] 20/3/2009 15:15

Note the absence of the sellers large orders on the sell but buy orders appearing on the buy side as level 2 and the order book almost does a full 360 on the past 7 weeks trend

[targatarga] 20/3/2009 14:31

must be a mirage....

[restassured] 20/3/2009 14:26

coming back to life :-O

[snowman10] 20/3/2009 10:17

off we go.
up 12.5% this am

[25cent] 20/3/2009 10:06

This snippet was from the interim results via RNS dated 3/9/08

PRESIDENT & CEO'S REPORT
FOR THE SIX MONTH PERIOD ENDED 30 JUNE 200....................
..............................................................................
The Company is currently on track to announce
its maiden dividend payment with the 2008 final results in line with its previously communicated intent to commence a progressive dividend.
....................................................................................................................


I hope if they do not pay one the shareprice does not take another beating!

Looks like the Wednesday reversal on large volume may well have been the bottom, quite often it's just like the good old saying" its always the darkest before dawn".

[snowman10] 20/3/2009 09:32

The company have not yet decided to pay a dividend it will be upon the final audited accounts, and current market conditions.My guess is not? but thats a guess.

The clarity issue over cash and free cash is just that. The company had reports that its market cap was lower than its free cash. So it clarified the situation.
With the results will/should be a phone in question and answer session, that will be open to us all.

Snow

[25cent] 18/3/2009 18:37

Nice turnaround today, i really did think this was going to get skinned alive at one stage.
Maybe just maybe we have seen the low?
Someone is at least having a go back, someone took that 400K of the offer at 4.16pm.
That's what's needed, if it is a shorter that block getting bought will hurt as they usually only put large orders like that on the L2 to attract more selling,and force it lower, Otherwise they would put small chunks to break up the amount to try and hide the large sell order.
Todays intra day reversal and ending blue is about the most promising sign i have seen in this share in the last 7 weeks.
Lets see what Thursday brings, it could well bounce on that reversal that had good volume over the next few days.

Moon with reagrds....

"You initially stated p.e. of 8 and eps of 8c which makes 64c (45.7p). Your new eps figure of 4.5p = 6.3c gives an estimated value of 6.3 x 8 = 37.8p, a little above your stated 32p. I expect the difference is down to wetware rounding error."




Yep a mix up with $ and £.
The main concern i have is that the consensus figures that are approximately what i state above are all based on Neo business more or less how it is today.
I would not be over please if NEO intend to spend $38 million to just stand still on earnings/profits?

What is also relevant is that the cash pile that the board plan to spend has been a significant enhancement in the figures with regards the interest payments received on this deposit.
So unless the $38 million spending enhances profits its a double lose whammy?