Proactis Share Discussion Threads

[eagle eye] 15/9/2017 20:06

A few notes from the Proative Investors event held on Wednesday:

The new CEO Hamp Wall presented for 20mins and took 10mins of questions.
There was also a good opportunity to speak to management and staff after the event.
Many senior managers were attending, so a good chance to speak to the Proactis team.

Hamp commented there were very good synergies between the two companies, with little product overlap. In the UK the company will be able to tender for Tier 1 opportunities with Perfect Commerce's products. In the US there appears to be a big opportunity for the Proactis Tier 2 products and Hamp commented that this is a '90% green field opportunity'.
The model is to achieve organic growth of approx 10% and boost top line growth to 20 - 25% via acquisitions. Going forward, M&A will be a big part of the growth strategy.

I got the impression the intention is to bed the new enlarged business down as fast as possible. With revenue split approx equally between the US/UK/Europe the objective is to operate internationally with scale and build a platform so acquisitions can be integrated as fast and efficiently as possible.
One interesting bit I gleamed from the evening was that Perfect Commerce owns specialist software that speeds up the process of network integration. It's called Hubwoo and was acquired by Perfect Commerce in November 2015. Management consider it a key strategic asset.

Consenus earnings expectations are approx 8.6p for the year to July just ended, and with 11.4p pencilled in for 2018. With the current share price at 176p, that puts the prospective PER on about x15.4.

Hamp Wall said there is a real momentum within the company and I didn't see that as a cheap throwaway comment. The next couple of reporting periods will be critical as the companies morph into a single entity, but it looks like interesting times lie ahead IMHO.

Eagle Eye

[deltrotter] 14/9/2017 09:00

Well I have added... lets see

[nimrod22] 14/9/2017 08:57

looks heavily oversold to me, due for a rebound....?

[deltrotter] 14/9/2017 08:28

Looks like last nights event went well.

;-)

[deltrotter] 13/9/2017 21:00

New research report:

[deltrotter] 12/9/2017 20:13

Thanks eagle eye, that would be really appreciated.

[eagle eye] 12/9/2017 18:42

Thanks for the tip-off that Proactis are presenting in London tomorrow evening.
I expect to be there, so will report back over the next few days.

[deltrotter] 11/9/2017 11:53

Tx Riv - appreciated.

[rivaldo] 11/9/2017 11:46

Capital Network issued this morning a new report on PHD.

They see 65% upside from here if the shares were to re-rate to 5x EV/revenues. Peers trade between 3x and 8.3x, whereas PHD trades at 3.1x. They go for 8.6p EPS to July just gone, with 11p EPS this year to July'18.

[p1nkfish] 09/9/2017 11:20

Tempted to average up given changes to scale and new structure.

[p1nkfish] 08/9/2017 18:41

Gearing up for growth with these arrangements. Craig Slater for UK.
Expect share price to consolidate then run again.

[deltrotter] 07/9/2017 09:33

Anyone going to the event on the 13th guys?

[aim_trader] 30/8/2017 11:28

Proactis Holdings will be presenting at the Proactive One2One Investor Forum on the evening of 13th September in London. For details and registration, please click here:

[p1nkfish] 29/8/2017 07:52

Options awarded - paragraph 6 of part vii of admission document offers no real meat as to what the targets are.

PHD need to make this clear, ideally at Interims. Awards without clearly published incentives is WRONG and not what I would expect of PHD of the past.

Having held these quite a while I found them to be relatively transparent but in this case less so. Woolly. Not good.

[p1nkfish] 27/8/2017 16:45

Where did "rather successful" come from?
That wouldn't necessarily be my opinion.
However, the more joining the phd register the better.

[eagle eye] 25/8/2017 11:11

Pity Amati hadn't bought 3 years ago.
Proactis has come a long way since then. Henderson was a consistent seller at the time, so there was opportunity to buy a decent block of stock.

[rivaldo] 25/8/2017 10:36

The rather successful Amati UK Smaller Companies Fund have just sent out their latest newsletter, and they've initiated a new position in PHD:

[p1nkfish] 22/8/2017 09:10

250p is just for now.

Through inflation or deflation cost saving bpo offerings/services will flourish and a functioning vendor/purchasing market place will be in demand.

[rivaldo] 22/8/2017 08:35

Finncap reiterate their 250p price target today:

[rivaldo] 22/8/2017 07:36

Agreed - everything looks very good indeed. You can't argue with revenue rising 31%, EBITDA up 43% and PBT up 71%.

Great to have achieved £1.4m of cast savings on the Perfect Commerce acquisition within just 2 weeks!

Excellent stuff.

[p1nkfish] 22/8/2017 07:12

TU released today.
Well on track - STRONG BUY and hold for 2 yrs imho.
Dyor.

Savings on acquisition already and looking for 5M savings by year end.

Good growth, solid performance and path.

[pj0077] 18/8/2017 08:18

Interim results not until OctoberAs for a 'current trading' update, they covered that on 7th July when they announced the acquisition

[p1nkfish] 17/8/2017 12:44

That 226p is conservative imho and leaves room for upgrades.
Benefits won't show immediately but are obvious from reading the company released material and knowing something of that market.

Alan Aubrey (ipo, ivo buy, Ind strategy, chinese pulling out of funding for 23M etc plus PHD) has a lot on his plate currently, as does Sykes. That may account for some of the interim release date slippage compared to previous years.

Not expecting fireworks just steady as she goes with good forward look with increased scale and Cross-selling opps.

[rivaldo] 17/8/2017 12:25

N+1 Singer have increased their price target to 226p and their EPS forecasts considerably as follows:

"We have upgraded our forecasts following the completion of the acquisition of
Perfect Commerce for up to $132.5m. This transformational deal positions the
enlarged PROACTIS group as the sixth largest pure-play provider of ePurchasing
solutions globally, as well as one of the fastest growing and most profitable. The
commercial and operational synergies arising from this combination are
considerable and warrant the acquisition multiples paid (max. 3.4x est. FY 2018
revenue and 19.0x est. EBITDA). Our FY 2018 group revenue, EBITDA and EPS estimates
increase by 105%, 119% and 18% respectively. We raise our target price from 201p to
226p and reiterate our Buy recommendation."

[p1nkfish] 13/8/2017 16:16

In future, news is probably going to be of a bigger variety. Small deals will be part of everyday work in the bigger organisation. If it's RNS worthy in the combined company it's bigger news than in the past.

Keep an eye on spending on software/development too. The totally combined group will have impressive capabilities but need spending to exploit the opportunity and tailor systems.

An exciting couple of years ahead for PHD much of which may be hidden from PI's as it will take a while to show up in the numbers.

My take on a fallback potential towards 160p is some holders won't want to wait during what may be a period of consolidation as they merge operations.

The final outcome should be a global growth company at market cap very much above today's. Well worth the wait imho. Buy if it approaches 160p, even mid-high 160's.