Sosandar Share Discussion Threads

[apad] 23/2/2021 07:58

rns on Octopus increasing holding. apad

[transhoneyqueens] 23/2/2021 01:12

does Paul scot still ramp this money pit

[marmar80] 18/2/2021 07:38

The last chance for Medavinci, Orogen and now Sosandar is to acquire some blockchain or cannabis company and go wild. To let u know, I've been here since the old Medavinci days. Stupidly invested a few ks years ago when had no clue about the holidays fund companies. SOS business has no future for the next 12-24 months, should freeze this part of operations for now and help some new starter to be listed on the stock exchange.

[yump] 16/2/2021 20:37

Nice to know there are some people here who have seen some comedy sketches. I sometimes get the impression that posting LOL means someone thinks they have a sense of humour.

[apad] 09/2/2021 11:34

Added a few more this morning. There seems to be some interest judging by the volume and the price. I can't see what has caused this, so maybe just a notion of it being oversold. I'm still grappling with the notion of BOO out-competing SOS. Interesting comments from fashionistas today: "She says Burtons edges the group into territory where it can compete to some extent with Next. She says Boohoo, which also has Debenhams, had already started moving into a more traditional retail space. Ms Bailey acknowledges Dorothy Perkins is not "fashion forward", but says: "It brings in an important market Boohoo wasn't tapping before. Likewise Wallis, which is designed to appeal to working women with higher quality workwear." And that, she says, opens up a lot of opportunity: "You've got wider marketing channels, and you're tapping into the loyalty of your new customers. "Once you've got them, you've got the ability to reach those other customers, with all the opportunities for consolidation and efficiency that brings." From dull to dazzle? Richard Lim says there's a lot of work to do to reposition the brands: "They are boring and tired." "These brands have been driven down for a long time," says Kate Hardcastle, from retail analysts Insight with Passion. "If anything was going on at Arcadia fashion, it was going on at Topshop. That was Arcadia's one jewel." She agrees Dorothy Perkins had become dull and tired, but says if any company can bring it to life, it's Boohoo: "Look at what it's done with Karen Millen. Who would have thought the last word in fast fashion could have taken on Karen Millen, and Coast, and reinvigorated them. "They've proved they can reinvigorate and they do that by knowing their customer. "Coast now looks nothing like what it did - gone are the big flowery ball gowns -they've listened to their customers and found they didn't want that after all." apad

[apad] 08/2/2021 17:27

I bought some SOS at 13.54p on Friday. I couldn't buy on a limit at 14p today. Selling at 14.25p end of day. Given the tax speculation I would guess this is pretty much a bottom level. FWIW apad

[danieldruff2] 08/2/2021 11:01

The endless rise of online clothing is causing an oligopoly to form

[euromedic] 08/2/2021 10:57

looking at what boo has bougt today makes this looks overpriced junk

[apad] 08/2/2021 10:53

I think we are pretty much in agreement, Trot. There might be some mileage in comparing SOS and BOO now BOO have bought a bunch of brands that one might argue contain styles that compete with SOS' market. SOS' email marketing is superb and the customer figures to the end of March will be critical, as you say. After that SOS may have to do some advertising of their Spring range at a time when the BOO acquisitions are coming into gear. Brand awareness is critical, so if the March numbers are good I would not be surprised or bothered to see a cash raise for marketing. Hopefully they will be better at marketing this time! Maybe they will sell through Debenhams as well as Next 😊 I bought a few on Friday for 13.54p and was surprised to see them up today, given the tax speculation and the way that has hit BOO. Since they swapped the FD I think they have been pitch perfect in the way they have played both the finances and the designs. However, they are still a minnow and times are hard. GLA apad

[pillow] 01/2/2021 09:57

The parrot mirrors her views.

[glavey] 01/2/2021 07:05

What does the parrot say?

[pillow] 30/1/2021 09:13

My aunt who i live with that ownes a parrot called Perseverance is of the impression there will be a significant fund raising exercise soon and that the current business model is becomming unsustainable.

[jackson83] 27/1/2021 04:54

Can see this drift down to 5p again before the next funding / dilution

[thetrotsky] 24/1/2021 16:35

Apad, I note your additional comments and appreciate that you weren't trying to make a general comparison between BOO and SOS but just because the statistics you quoted were favourable to SOS does not make them any more valid (COVID or not). BOO and SOS are trying to address different markets and there are a number of factors that could, and probably did, effect SOS in the third quarter e.g. lack of cash, no material increase in their customer base in the 2nd quarter, not knowing when/if lockdown was going to finish, the government's volte face in mid-December. It's all well and good people talking about SOS not having the right clothes offering (not enough casual) but the reality is that they don't have sufficient cash to expand their stock range and cover all their bases (like ASOS or BOO); put simply they can't afford to hold stock that isn't turning over in short time. I therefore rather suspect that they gambled on a 4-day Xmas and people wanting some party clothes/formal wear (which is what they do best), only for the government to pull the rug at the 11th hour. The 3rd quarter wasn't a complete washout but I don't think a comparison with BOO makes the figures look any better; the simple fact is that SOS would have expected to outperform BOO percentage wise, comimg from a lower sales base, and probably will be disappointed that they didn't but will mollify themeselves that is was only (hopefully) due to circumstances beyond their control (their limited cash resources have forced them to be conservative). As, I've said before, in the circumstances, I think SOS has managed this pandemic pretty well thus far but they are essentially a loss-making business striving to gain scale, whilst conserving cash. It will be very interesting to see their customer figures come the end of March. They say they were able to implement a successful customer acquisition strategy in the third quarter using a significantly reduced marketing spend and it will be interesting to see what results this new strategy delivered and whether it can be leveraged going forward e.g. advertising on the Tube (as they did before lockdown) was, I'm sure, costly and perhaps lockdown has managed to throw up some more cost effective customer acquisition methods, which would augur well for a post-COVID future.

[thetrotsky] 24/1/2021 15:57

I think you're wrong mauricemonkey. It's not where we're at currently but where we're going and Brexit, as far as the EU market is concerned, has thrown a spanner into the works and will have an impact on SOS's ability to make economies of scale. All being well, I believe there will come a point, like ASOS and BOO, where SOS will want/need to take it's UK warehousing in house. However, unlike ASOS and BOO, SOS will not now be a able to supply goods into the EU using it's UK warehousing (becasue the tariffs will put them at a competitive disadvantage) and there will therefore inevitably be additional costs of running and maintaining a separate EU distribution network. As a result, whereas ASOS and BOO were able to start making sales into the EU early on in their development at little, or no, additional cost (sourcing the goods from their UK warehouses and keeping their EU start up costs relatively low), I think SOS will have to build up their UK sales much more before they can even consider whether to start making significant forays into the EU (the UK operation cannot support both increasing UK customer numbers and building up an EU presence). The key difference is that, apart from finding a courier, ASOS and BOO didn't need to have an on the ground presence in the EU initially to start building their EU sales. Yes, SOS can use third parties in the EU to get around part of the problem but they will need to hold additional stock in the EU. Also they won't be able to move stock lines between the UK and EU to take account of, say, cultural differences e.g. a stock line that may sell well in the UK may not sell as well in France, Germany etc. and vice versa (once stock is in the UK or the EU it has to stay and be sold there; moving stock will just incur additional costs). You may say that that is no different from selling to the US or RoW but the point is that Brexit has reduced SOS's easily accessible market by about 5/6ths and now put the EU on the same par as the US and RoW. This is not Brexit bashing but a simple statement of economic fact as far as SOS is concerned.

[apad] 22/1/2021 16:54

Just for clarification, my original post was not a comparison between SOS and BOO. It was an example about how the usual comparison for an individual company between this year and the previous year, that was pre-covid, is misleading. I then exemplified it with SOS and BOO to show that it was misleading in both cases. In no way do I think a general comparison between BOO and SOS as companies is sensible. A specific contrast about processes, such as warehousing, can be interesting. apad

[mauricemonkey] 22/1/2021 16:45

Boo and ASOS have their own warehouses. SOS outsource it all, it's nothing like the same. If you'd done the first bit of research, ie read any of the results / interims, you'd know that.

[thetrotsky] 22/1/2021 15:33

Yes, really! When ASOS and BOO were starting out they were able to meet EU orders from their UK sites; one warehouse. It meant that they were able to dip their foot into the EU market a lot earlier in their growth cycle. SOS will have to be more tentative, use additional warehousing space in the EU from the outset and, as a result, probably have to delay EU expansion until their UK business is substantially larger and can sustain the additional set up costs of a separate EU business.

[mauricemonkey] 21/1/2021 15:31

Not really. SOS outsource their manufacturing and distribution is done via Clipper. Clipper have a European operation - there's no need to re-ship if the EU market becomes big enough, just warehouse stock inside the EU.

[thetrotsky] 21/1/2021 13:56

Apad, As they say, there are lies, damn lies and statistics. You can't draw a correlation between SOS's figures and BOO's; they are at totally different points in their growth cycles. Which would you prefer? A company that has doubled its sales from £500k to £1m and is heavily loss making or a company that has increased its sales from £100m to £110m and is profitable? The fact that one has doubled its sales and the other has increased its sales by 10% does not necessarily mean that the former is a better investment than the latter or vice versa. The fact is, both ASOS and BOO have significantly larger sales and have been able to continue to sustain significant marketing spends during the last 9-10 months whereas SOS has had to severely reduce its markeing spend to preserve cash. Personally, I think SOS has done well, in very trying times, to adjust and preserve its cash but it's hamstrung by a relatively small customer base and, once the virus has been brought under control, it will need to aggressively expand it's UK customer base (and this will require a further fund raising no doubt). Also, there is now the BREXIT dimension that will need to be considered going forward; both ASOS and BOO were able to supply the EU market from their UK operations base in their formative years (requiring less infrastructure investment). This option now appears to be closed to SOS going forward because of the tariffs that would apply to goods sourced from outside the EU when re-shipped from the UK. TheTrotsky

[apad] 17/1/2021 09:26

Trotsky In an earlier post I compared the SOS monthly income for the Autumn season with the previous months in the year and argued that the 86% increase was a more valid comparison than with the previous year (pre covid) of about 6%. If I do the same with BOO's UK revenue, the 4 months to December is £89.3m a month and the previous 6 months is £71.7m a month. So, the Autumn season increase is 24.5% for BOO cf 86% for SOS. Comparing a large number with a small number of course, but it suggests that the SOS customers are far from flagging. It is interesting that despite a major change in the environment the tintins default to comparing with previous year's numbers. Comparing Jan-Mar 21 with the previous year will have more validity. apad

[abarclay] 17/1/2021 07:55

Looks like is desperately trying to preserve cash This will drop like a lead ballon

[middlesboroughfc] 15/1/2021 10:31

Have they paid themselves stupid bonuses again too