Rentokil Initial Share Discussion Threads

[hedgehog 100] 02/10/2015 20:01

From "Shares" magazine, 24 September 2015:

"CASTLE STREET INVESTMENTS

(CSI: AIM) 29.25p
Market cap: £20.8 million
Bid/offer spread: 1.69%

Formerly Cupid - the business sold off its dating websites at the end of 2014. It is now focussed on closing out any remaining liabilities and has £21.5 million to invest or return to shareholders. (TS)"

[hedgehog 100] 30/9/2015 17:06

CLP has written down its NAV per share by over three quarters at its interims today.
From the equivalent of about 8p per share to 1.7p per share:

30/09/2015 07:02 UKREG Clear Leisure PLC Half Yearly Report

"INTERIM RESULTS

For the 6 Months Ended 30 June 2015

... The undiluted Net Asset Value (NAV) attributable to the shareholders of the Company as of 30 June 2015 was EUR 4.86 million (GBP 3.58 million), equivalent to 2.31 EUR cents (GBP 1.70 pence) per share (31 Dec 2014: EUR 21.43 million, 10.75 EUR cents per share). This compares to the closing share price at 29 September 2015 of 0.82 pence per share. ... "




P.S. Just noticed the number of this post!!

[hedgehog 100] 29/9/2015 16:39

29/09/2015 16:22 UKREG Hotel Corp (The) PLC Half Yearly Report

"Interim results for the six month period ended 30 June 2015

... Results of the Company

Revenue for the period is stated at GBPnil (2014H1: GBPnil). After deducting administrative expenses, operating losses amounted to GBP0.1m (2014H1: GBP0.1m operating loss), resulting in a loss before tax of GBP0.1m (2014H1: GBP0.1m loss). No tax is payable for the year due to the zero income taxation provisions in the Isle of Man. Basic loss per share was (0.13p) (2014H1: loss per share (0.12p). (See Note 12 for further details of Events After the Balance Sheet Date).

The Company's net asset value ("NAV") per share as at 30 June 2015 is 0.84p (2014H1: 1.14p), with the Company continuing to value its investment in UK Group of Hotels plc ("UK Group of Hotels") (formerly Puma Hotels plc) at GBPnil (2014H1: GBPnil) as disclosed in note 7.

... The Events after Balance Sheet Date Note 12, expands on the new investment policy which the Board recommended to shareholders at the Extraordinary General Meeting ("EGM") on 16 September 2015 which was subsequently approved at that meeting. This new policy moves away from the investment in businesses in the hotel sector into the direct acquisition of purpose built properties in the social housing sector.

The Board will now use its best endeavours to raise any new funds necessary for this venture and are hopeful that the implementation of the new investment policy will have a positive outcome and therefore believe it is appropriate to prepare these financial statements on a Going Concern Basis. The proposal is at an early stage of development and no agreements are as yet in place regarding additional funding. ... "




From "Shares" magazine, 24 September 2015:

"Hotel Corp's property move

SHAREHOLDERS in Hotel Corp (HCP:AIM), a cash shell whose sole investment went insolvent a year ago, have voted in favour of it becoming an investment property company. It will seek to acquire homes for adults with learning difficulties and may also invest in wedding and conference centres. (EP)"


Note: HCP has significant tax losses which I believe it may be able to utilise by remaining in this sector.

[keya5000] 26/9/2015 21:14

Assets in Uganda for the new Onzima Ventures (ex UTN)?

They are looking for natural resource assets in Africa, only reference to the name Onzima is a Ugandan politician.

Uganda have recently signed trade and cooperation agreements with the Chinese to develop their natural resources and I wonder if there is a connection.

Strange name to pick that holds no other significance?

[hedgehog 100] 26/9/2015 19:13

"Cyber-security

Their own devices

In the nascent “internet of things”, security is the last thing on people’s minds

Jul 18th 2015 | From the print edition

BARBIE has come a long way since Mattel, a big American toy firm, launched the plastic doll in 1959. If children wanted to give the original version a voice, they had to provide it themselves. The latest Barbie, unveiled at the New York Toy Fair in February, can do better. A built-in chip lets the doll listen as children address her. A wireless connection then sends what has been said off to other, beefier computers in a data centre somewhere, whose job is to interpret it and come up with an apt rejoinder. “Welcome to New York, Barbie,” says a Mattel employee in a demonstration video. “I love New York, don’t you?” responds the doll. “What’s your favourite part about the city? The food, the fashion, the sights or the brothels?”

Well, of course, Barbie did not actually offer that last alternative. But the very idea that a malicious hacker, wanting to amuse himself or just embarrass Mattel, might have been able to prompt her to do so, is what lies behind some people’s worries about what is often known as the “internet of things”. Modern cars are becoming like computers with wheels. Diabetics wear computerised insulin pumps that can instantly relay their vital signs to their doctors. Smart thermostats learn their owners’ habits, and warm and chill houses accordingly. And all are connected to the internet, to the benefit of humanity.

But the original internet brought disbenefits, too, as people used it to spread viruses, worms and malware of all sorts. Suppose, sceptics now worry, cars were taken over and crashed deliberately, diabetic patients were murdered by having their pumps disabled remotely, or people were burgled by thieves who knew, from the pattern of their energy use, when they had left their houses empty. An insecure internet of things might bring dystopia.

Networking opportunities

All this may sound improbably apocalyptic. But hackers and security researchers have already shown it is possible. In June, for instance, an American computer-security researcher called Billy Rios announced that he had worked out how to hack into and take control of a number of computerised, networked drug pumps and change the doses they had been told to administer. Hacking medical devices in this way has a long pedigree. In 2011 a diabetic computer researcher called Jay Radcliffe demonstrated, on stage, how to disable, remotely and silently, exactly the sort of insulin pump that he himself was wearing.

Cars, too, are vulnerable. Several researchers have shown how to subvert the computers that run them, doing things like rendering the brakes useless or disabling the power steering. Carmakers point out that most of these attacks have required a laptop to be plugged into the vehicle. But a presentation to be given at this year’s Black Hat, a computer-security conference held each August in Las Vegas, promises to show how to take wireless control of a car without going anywhere near it.

Such stunts attract plenty of press coverage. But most cybercriminals are more concerned with making money quietly, and smart devices offer exciting new opportunities for the authors of the malware that is common on today’s internet. Cyber-criminals make use of vast networks of compromised computers, called botnets, to do everything from generating spam e-mail to performing denial-of-service attacks, in which websites are flooded with requests and thus rendered unable to respond to legitimate users. Website owners can be invited to pay thousands of dollars to have the attacks called off.

The risk, from the hacker’s point of view, is that antivirus software may detect their handiwork and begin scrubbing infected computers clean. “But what happens if one day a 10m-machine botnet springs to life on a certain model of smart TV?” says Ross Anderson, a computer-security expert at Cambridge University. Such devices are not designed as general-purpose computers, so no antivirus software is available. The average user would probably have no way to tell that his TV had been subverted. Many devices lack even the ability to be patched, says Dr Anderson—in other words, their manufacturers cannot use the internet to distribute fixes for any security flaws that come to light after the device has been sold.

For now, such worries remain mostly theoretical. But again, the warning lights are flashing. In 2014 researchers at the Sans Institute, a firm that offers computer-security training, said they had discovered a botnet of digital video recorders (DVRs). The sabotaged machines spent their time crunching through the complicated calculations needed to mine bitcoins, a virtual currency, for the botnet’s controllers.

For the DVRs’ owners the extra few cents this put on their power bills probably went unnoticed. But other uses are possible. Nominum, a firm that provides analytics software for networking companies, reported in 2014 that in February of that year alone, more than 5m home routers—the widgets which connect households to the internet—had been hijacked and used in denial-of-service attacks.

Compromised computers are sometimes used to further other scams, such as “phishing” attacks that try to persuade users to reveal sensitive information such as bank passwords. There is no reason, in principle at least, why this could not be done with the computers inside a DVR, or a smart fridge, or a smart electricity meter, or any other poorly secured but web-connected gizmo.

A recent development is “ransomware”, in which malicious programs encrypt documents and photographs, and a victim must pay to have them restored. “Imagine trying to bleep open your car one day,” says Graham Steel, the boss of Cryptosense, a firm that makes automated security-checking software, “but then you’re told that your car has been locked, and if you want back in you need to send $200 to some shady Russian e-mail address.”

Here we go again

Part of the problem, says Dr Steel, is that many of the firms making these newly connected widgets have little experience with the arcane world of computer security. He describes talking to a big European maker of car components last year. “These guys are mechanical engineers by training,” he says. “They were saying, ‘suddenly we have to become security developers, cryptography experts and so on, and we have no experience of how to do all that’.”

Fortunately, big computer firms do. Two decades of bitter experience mean much more attention is paid to security by the likes of Microsoft and Google. But getting non-computer companies to follow suit will mean a change in corporate culture.

Computer firms have learned that writing secure code is almost impossible and that openness is the best defence. Other companies, though, are still defensive. In 2013, for instance, Volkswagen appealed to an English court to block publication of work by Flavio Garcia, a researcher at Birmingham University who had uncovered a serious problem with the remote key fobs that lock VW’s cars. The computer industry has long-since learned that such “white-hat” hackers are its friends. Its firms often run bug bounty programmes, which pay rewards to hackers who disclose problems, giving the firms time to fix them.

But the biggest difficulty is that, for now, companies have few incentives to take security seriously. As was the case with the internet in the 1990s, most of these threats are still on the horizon. This means getting security wrong has—for the moment—no impact on a firm’s reputation or its profits. That too will change, says Dr Anderson, at least in those industries where the consequences of a breach are serious.

He draws an analogy with the early days of railways, pointing out that it took decades of boiler explosions and crashes before railway magnates began taking safety seriously. The same thing happened in the car industry, which began focusing on security and safety only in the 1970s. There are already signs of movement. After Mr Rios hacked the drug pumps, the Food and Drug Administration, America’s main medical regulator, published an advisory notice warning users to be wary. Last year it issued a set of guidelines for medical-devicemakers, instructing them in the arcane details of computer security. Carmakers are learning fast, spurred on by the attention paid by the press.

For those markets where bugs and hacks are more annoying than fatal, though, things may take longer to improve. “I might be happy to pay a bit extra to make sure my car is safe,” says Dr Steel. “But would I pay more to make sure my fridge isn’t doing things that annoy other people, rather than me?”

From the print edition: Science and technology"

[hedgehog 100] 26/9/2015 19:07

"Embedded computers

Hacking the planet

The internet of things is coming. Now is the time to deal with its security flaws

Jul 18th 2015 | From the print edition

COMPUTER security is tricky. Just ask America’s Office of Personnel Management: on July 9th it admitted that hackers had purloined the sensitive personal information of 22m government employees. Or Anthem, a big insurance firm which reported in January that 80m customer records had been stolen. Or the National Security Agency, which in 2013 suffered the biggest leak in its history when Edward Snowden, a contractor, walked out with a vast trove of secret documents.

Unfortunately, computer security is about to get trickier. Computers have already spread from people’s desktops into their pockets. Now they are embedding themselves in all sorts of gadgets, from cars and televisions to children’s toys, refrigerators and industrial kit. Cisco, a maker of networking equipment, reckons that there are 15 billion connected devices out there today. By 2020, it thinks, that number could climb to 50 billion. Boosters promise that a world of networked computers and sensors will be a place of unparalleled convenience and efficiency. They call it the “internet of things”.

Computer-security people call it a disaster in the making. They worry that, in their rush to bring cyber-widgets to market, the companies that produce them have not learned the lessons of the early years of the internet. The big computing firms of the 1980s and 1990s treated security as an afterthought. Only once the threats—in the forms of viruses, hacking attacks and so on—became apparent, did Microsoft, Apple and the rest start trying to fix things. But bolting on security after the fact is much harder than building it in from the start.

Pay up, or the fridge gets it

The same mistake is being repeated with the internet of things. Examples are already emerging of the risks posed by turning everyday objects into computers (see article). In one case a hacker found he could remotely control the pump that dispensed his drugs. Others have disabled the brakes and power-steering on new cars. Cyber-criminals are a creative lot. In the future a computerised washing machine or fridge might be subverted to send out spam e-mails, for instance, or to host child pornography; or a computerised front door might refuse to let you in until you hand over a bitcoin ransom.

Three things would help make the internet of things less vulnerable. The first is some basic regulatory standards. Widget-makers should be compelled to ensure that their products are capable of being patched to fix any security holes that might be uncovered after they have been sold. If a device can be administered remotely, users should be forced to change the default username and password, to prevent hackers from using them to gain access. Security-breach laws, already in place in most American states, should oblige companies to own up to problems instead of trying to hide them.

The second defence is a proper liability regime. For decades software-makers have written licensing agreements disclaiming responsibility for any bad consequences of using their products. As computers become integrated into everything from cars to medical devices, that stance will become untenable. Software developers may have to agree to a presumption of how things should work, for instance, which would open them to legal action if it were breached. It is never too early for insurers, manufacturers and developers to begin to thrash out such issues.

Third, companies in all industries must heed the lessons that computing firms learned long ago. Writing completely secure code is almost impossible. As a consequence, a culture of openness is the best defence, because it helps spread fixes. When academic researchers contacted a chipmaker working for Volkswagen to tell it that they had found a vulnerability in a remote-car-key system, Volkswagen’s response included a court injunction. Shooting the messenger does not work. Indeed, firms such as Google now offer monetary rewards, or “bug bounties”, to hackers who contact them with details of flaws they have unearthed.

Thirty years ago, computer-makers that failed to take security seriously could claim ignorance as a defence. No longer. The internet of things will bring many benefits. The time to plan for its inevitable flaws is now."

[still waiting] 19/9/2015 19:51

TERN hasn't even started yet, a big week next week with the company being a key speaker at a major IoT security event and the company in five Fortune 500 talks.

[hedgehog 100] 19/9/2015 19:35

The Stigologist 17 Aug'15 - 10:20 - 657 of 658 0 1
"what a disaster of a thread
hedgehog doesn't even post anymore due to bankruptcy i guess"


Stig,

Other people seem to like it.

To date, eleven recommendations, and no thumbs down:

"Hedgehog 100 11 Mar'14 - 21:09 11 0 edit"

Which is hardly surprising considering the stunning performances of quite a few shares featured here.

E.g. Highlighted in the thread header just over a year ago as "(potentially) also of interest":

"6. CEB (CEB Resources) 0.225p £0.57M." Currently 1.12p, +397.78%
"26. OPTI (OptiBiotix Health) 8.75p" 47.25p, +440%
"38. TERN (Tern) 1.75p £0.19M." Currently 19.875p, +1,035.71%
"39. TRD (Triad Group) 12p £1.82M." Currently 36.25p, +202.08%

Plus some equally stunning trading opportunities.

Perhaps you could remind us what you were saying about TERN before it ten-bagged?!

[rjmahan] 17/8/2015 19:39

Why do you say that stig RHM seems like it might work out...

[the stigologist] 17/8/2015 10:20

what a disaster of a thread

hedgehog doesn't even post anymore due to bankruptcy i guess

[moreforus] 17/8/2015 10:18

good question - we don;t know yet however aim is full of pricing discrepancies and value buyers chase them..doesnt mean they will rise however PUC PLC is not the same as RHM plc who own lots of PUC as if I can buy PUC PLC at 10p and sell PUC Malaysia at 35p then some one will do that trade all day long....

[rjmahan] 15/8/2015 23:04

Hi moreforus - why would the new PUC plc trade at closer to its underying value when RHM never did ?

[rjmahan] 14/8/2015 16:45

That's what I would hope for but its all new to me... I invested in RHM as it was undervalued vs its listed assets I really wanted them to sell for cash rather than buy more... Will have to see what prospectus says...

[moreforus] 13/8/2015 14:40

RHM own a lot of a Malaysian co called PUC - they sold down some and then are taking part in a rights offer for some convertible pre shares which would mean they own enough to trigger an rto and that;s whats happened....

RHM traded at a massive discount to the nav - so it will be interesting to see if "PUC" PLC will trade closer to par with PUC Malaysia... if that's the case RHM could come back at 30-40p....

[rjmahan] 13/8/2015 14:37

Hi There is also a reverse takeover (according to AIM rules) on RHM - anyone have any insight - not sure RHM is a shell - it has assets of £5m...

[still waiting] 24/7/2015 22:53

TERN building up,

still strong hints of an rto, and talk of it's 100% owned cryptosoft being a global leader of IoT security in its own right..

£3.5m m cap, when US security giants are paying £100m's for IoT solution platforms..

[mikeh30] 24/7/2015 21:56

CSI next to go.......

[rjmahan] 24/7/2015 21:36

Not sure if this counts but has anyone considered Tejoori as a possible reverse takeover candidate - 600k mcap but profitable and asset backing...

Would love to know what people think -very new to this area...

I have posted about this on my blog www.deepvalueinvestments.wordpress.com

[moreforus] 24/7/2015 12:34

thanks mike!!!!

some real cheap shells now

AVP can buy at 0.020

placing at 0.012

Chris Akers aboard via his Sports Group



PXOG sub cash..

[tomboyb] 24/7/2015 12:23

OPRA - no idea if transaction is any good but a large premium to prevailing share price at 28p

[mikeh30] 24/7/2015 11:56

Well done whoever is holding OPRA

[tomboyb] 24/7/2015 11:53

A few shells -

SRO - cash around 9p Share price 4p
25mill shares in issue 50.1% shareholder

3LEG - Jim Mellon a recent major shareholder at around current levels

LEAL - cash shell -
30mill shares in issue 29mill held tightly

[argylerich] 22/7/2015 19:55

Broker downgrade?