Park Group Share Discussion Threads

[sivadnoj] 21/10/2011 18:01

Does anyone have any 2011/12 forecasts please? Based on adjusted eps for y/e 31 March 2011 of 3.05p this is trading on a historic pe of around 15.

[wjccghcc] 21/10/2011 14:56

Thank you for calling me naive and innocent.

They are pretty standard resolutions - 90% of publicly listed companies have them. You may be right that they're planning to make an acquisition or they may just be bringing their board authorities into line with the majority of the market. Time will tell.

[a1samu] 21/10/2011 14:48

There is nothing standard about these resolution and the significance of them is that they betray plans that the board may have.
No plans in the last twenty years and therefore no such resolutions.
There is more to these resolutions then the innocent and naive interpretation of the above message. Well, I hope so in any case.

[wjccghcc] 21/10/2011 13:40

They're pretty standard resolutions. The first allows issuance of up to 33% of the equity to make an acquisition. The second allows up to a 10% placing without invoking shareholder pre-emption rights.

[a1samu] 21/10/2011 09:18

The Notice of the AGM included two unusual resolutions, one of which is to allot shares to the amount of £1.12M or 33.3% of the current issued share capital and to allot equity securities for cash to the amount of £168,030.98 or 10% of the curreny issued share capital.

It will remain to be seen, whether the company is going to do any of these and what justification will be used to do so, until the 20 December 2012, the date to which directors sought authorisation to proceed with these steps.

I pressume that these resoltutions were passed at the AGM on the 20th September, for unlike in the previous year, no RNS was issued this year, to inform shareholders of the results of the AGM.

[cockneyrebel] 21/10/2011 08:38

Been buying these over the past couple of weeks - chart setting up for a breakout here imo.

Nice to see you here Battlebus :-)

CR

[battlebus2] 21/10/2011 08:07

A nice run to Christmas would be nice. Added some more.

[a1samu] 20/9/2011 08:53

Dont get carried away!
Decent OK, but still small fry compared to Green Dot, the company of Prepaid Card King, Steve Streit, who has millions of prepaid cards in issue. See message 29.

When is Park going to appoint Mr Streit as a consultant and seriously develope this side of the business?

The 320,000 cards issued had an average load of just under £70 and I do not know what is good about this.

It is unclear as to what benefit the 430 corporate clients bring to the company and what is flexesaver, flexebens and flexible benefits market? Is the company actually paying interest on the flexesaver cards?

[battlebus2] 20/9/2011 07:54

A very decent AGM statement a1samu with Christmas sales ahead 5%.

[battlebus2] 17/9/2011 14:13

Yep 1.2p is very welcome indeed.

[a1samu] 17/9/2011 09:27

AGM on Tuesday the 20th September with dividend of 1.2p payment day on the 3 October 2011.

[battlebus2] 08/9/2011 08:22

I think if we can get through this 40/45p range we should climb very quickly to new highs.

[a1samu] 27/8/2011 18:25

Recent article in the Fortune magazine, dated 5th September 2011 by Charles P. Wallace about The Prepaid Card King Steve Streit age 49, Fast growing GREEN DOT, GDOT, has Wal Mart as an investor but its stock keeps falling.
Not many fledgling entrepreneurs could survive the discovery that their brainchild was a flop. But Steven W. Streit, 49, had a eureka moment that turned his fortunes around. In 1999, Streit, a former adult-contemporary radio programmer, started a business called iGen in the bedroom of his Monrovia, California apartment. The goal: to give teenagers a debit card loaded with prepaid cash so that they could shop online.
When the card was rolled out, kids didn't show much interest-but adults who couldn't get checking accounts or credit, bought the cards in droves, using them for such prosaic tasks as paying household bills. "I thought , 'We have the right product, just the wrong target market, so we retooled" Streit recalls.
Streit rechristened the company Green Dot, got backing from Silicon Valley venture capital firm Sequoia Capital, and now is the largest provider of prepaid debit cards to the "underbanked" in America, a class estimated at 73M people. Green Dot went public in 2010.: Sequoia;s original $5.5M stake is now worth around $270M.
Its breakthrough came in 2005, when Wal Mart partnered with it for the Walmart Money Card, which customers load up with money when they cash a paycheck or tax refund at Wal Mart. The retailer now accounts for 60% of Green Dot'ts revenue, which hit $117M in 2011's first quarter, up 26% over 2010. With 4.3M cards outstanding, it is far ahead of its closest rival, netSpend, with 2.3M. WalMart was so impressed that it bought 9% of the company last year. Even U.S. Treasury has started a pilot program to issue refunds on Green Dot cards.
Yet Green Dot is facing some strong headwinds. Competition is heating up. AmEx is introducing its own prepaid card and commercial banks are hinting they will join the fray. Although the AmEx card appears aimed at a niche market - a way for people with normal checking accounts to give money to college kids, for eample - it is charging minimal fees. That could mean trouble for Green Dot, which charges to buy the cards and reload them, then adds a monthly maintenance fee. Now Florida's attorney general is investigating prepaid firms to see whether they fully disclose their charges. Green Dot insists it does.
Legistlative changes are another uncertainty. The Durbin Amendment tucked into the Dodd-Frank Act specifically excluded prepaid cards from its limits on how much banks can charge for processing debit card transactions, because they serve the low income market. That could change if prepaid cards become more widely supplied.
All those doubts have had a dampening effect on Green Dot's stock, which is selling @$27, about 24% below its IPO price of $36. That is down from $65 just a few months ago. "There is a lot of controversy over the stock because of doubts about future growth." says Tien-tsin Huang, a banking analyst at J.P.Morgan, who nonetheless has an overweight on the company. Streit says he welcomes new competitors because he believes they will expand the category. But the pressure may force him to conjure up yet another eureka moment.

[battlebus2] 17/8/2011 21:15

Sounds good and the best bit is we are relatively unknown to most investors.

[a1samu] 17/8/2011 20:26

Going 1.2p xd next Wednesday, 24th August 2011. I already loaded up and I have much of my disposable capital in this stock. My aim is £1 over the next three years and steady dividends while I am waiting.

[battlebus2] 17/8/2011 17:56

Told you not to worry a1samu a nice rise over the last few days. Sticking with my 70p target.

[a1samu] 02/8/2011 10:54

Received accounts this morning 2nd August, with envelope postmarked for sending Monday 1st August 2011,from Valley Road Birkenhead CH41 7ED.

Directors remmuneration up 65%, dividends up 29%. What is the good in that and where is fairness got to?

The Notice of Meeting, resolutions 9 to 10.2 are dealing with authority be given directors to issue 56Million and another 8.4Million shares, @ directors discretion.

In the many years that I have seen accounts from Park, I have never seen such resolutions and it would appear that something is about to happen. I can just hope that it will be something positive for shareholders. Who knows? Perhaps acquisitions? and of the right companies not potato chips or loans!

After all Chris Houghton Group MD, has mentioned on page 6 corporate, that the UK voucher and gift market is valued at £4 Billion and therefore, there seems scope to expand through UK acquisitons.

[battlebus2] 01/8/2011 18:43

Don't think you need to be too concerned at the minute a1samu.

[a1samu] 29/7/2011 17:28

Accounts were promised to be released on the 25th July 2011, according to the preliminary announcement on the 24 June 2011, but by the 29th, they have not yet arrived.

I rang Mr Martin Stuart, the Company Secretary, on 0151 653 1700, in the morning of the 29th, and he told me that there was a delay with the printers, but accounts are ready to be shipped out today and they should be with the shareholders by tomorrow.

I asked him if the company did not pay the printers bill and told him that the market is very suspiciou of delays like this, escpecially after many years of reliable promises and prompt delivery on such promises to sharholders.

[a1samu] 13/7/2011 15:40

In October 2010 Park announcede the acquisition of Celtic Hampers and Family Hampers of the Republic of Ireland, saying that this will take them into the Euro zone.

In the recent Interim Accounts, they said that the gift voucher market is worth £4Billion per annum in the UK. There are many small players and no doubt some very large players in this industry.

Park say that they are a leading market player, but it appears that all other companies, regardless of their sizes, in this insdustry, are saying the same thing.

It would really be seriously enabling for the company and shareholders, if Park started a careful campaign of acquiring, merging amalgamating with some of the other players in the industry to gain a bigger share of the £4Billion a year avaialble.

There are small players like Voucherexpress. co uk with a turnover of £38M who are into Spain, Germany, Poland, China and France as well, or One4all Gift vouchers employing 65 people, who operate through the 10000+ branches of the Post Offices in the UK.

With cash available for selected acquisions, perhaps expanding to have a market share of closer to 20%, could be a viable corporate aim, now that they seem to have moved on from hairbrained acquision attempts of the past, all resulting in millions of losses, like the potato crisps or the loans business episodes. I do not understand, why Park did not stick with what it knew best and acquired similar business, instead of the futile attempts of trying new activities.

Of course, then there is IDT Financial Services Limited trading as the Master Card Gift Card, which claims to have millions of Gifts2Go Gift Cards in use all over the world and which can be used wherever Mastercards are accepted.

Or Grassroots.com of Tring with a turnover of £300M+ who trade the Bonusbonds Visa gift vouchers.
.

[a1samu] 01/7/2011 11:16

From RDF Group the sofware development company behind the flexecash concept.

New payment system

Park Group wanted an entirely new payment system, all of their own, in order to differentiate themselves in the savings and corporate rewards market. Our past record in financial transactions proved invaluable as we conceived, designed, developed and tested the new flexecash® system.

The challenge

Park Group wanted to shake up the Christmas savings and corporate rewards markets with their own branded payment system. Park Group are the UK's leading high street gift voucher provider, so while they wanted to offer customers a pre-paid magnetic card, they were less keen on losing margin to third party payment institutions. Instead, Park Group had plans for a new, independent payment processing platform.

The solution

With our rich history of designing, developing and testing software that handles financial transactions, we were a natural choice as Park Group's IT partners. We helped conceive, design and build their new flexecash® platform, which was carefully tailored to support their business goals and complement their existing business processes. Taking 1 year to go from conception to launch, flexecash® went live in 2010 with the initial participation of 13 high street retailers and now has 24.

The result

Park Group's new flexecash® platform supports all business processes concerned with the issuing of pre-paid cards and the acquiring and settlement of card transactions, and interfaces seamlessly with Park Group's back office processes and systems. Retailers can connect to the flexecash® authorisation host with a minimum of effort and using their existing network infrastructure.

With the new flexecash® platform, Park Group have achieved their aim to establish themselves as a provider of card-based financial services and are looking to expand into new markets and products using the flexible data model and architecture of flexecash®. We continue to support the software and our client.

According to the last paragraph, this is just a beginning and perhaps they may have already set themselves up in providing similar services to that of VISA and MASTERCARD and clearly it will make sense for paper voucher issuers to join the Park developed platfom and pay Park a fee for the processing of their vouchers.

Mind, I have used Asda internal electronic gift cards or even B&Q internal electronic gift voucher cards, so there are others who have some sort of a system in existence, even if they only apply to their own companies.

Therefore I am still wondering as to what makes the Park system unique, if anything?
Is the Park sytem attemting to become universal , so that it will be acceptable everywhere, just like a credit card?

[davdreamer] 19/6/2011 22:00

Don,t say to much, I don't want to spoil the ride. Lets keep it to ourselves

[battlebus2] 16/6/2011 23:14

RECESSION PROOF MAYBE.

[davdreamer] 16/6/2011 21:18

keeps on rising, This seems to be going upwards in this recession