Stride Gaming Share Discussion Threads

[czar] 11/12/2016 09:10

Apparently the placing at 225p was many times oversubscribed and since then there has been news of beating expectations, major bank providing very competitive facility, increasing market share and indications of the clear profit drivers of organic growth, new vertical markets, and geographical expansion. I'm not expecting and improvement in the share price until this institutional seller is cleared and sadly they will just keep taking it lower for now IMHO. The good news is we can get in cheaper soon than the institutions who invested at 225p.

[alphabeta4] 09/12/2016 14:41

Agreed - I think it's a bit under the radar which has put the seller in control for now, albeit the chart may now good support via a great risk:reward ratio, at 2.25 it's at a 10% discount to the exceeding expectations statement let alone any upgrades from the acquisition synergies.

[tomstone12] 08/12/2016 09:00

quite calm here for a while we wait for recovery. seems as if that one seller really held us back.

[czar] 28/11/2016 15:04

Still a persistent seller, they have taken STR down from 285p over the last few weeks!

[alphabeta4] 28/11/2016 13:15

News coverage & interview:

[alphabeta4] 28/11/2016 09:52

Working may way through this as had a couple of key statements this morning. Looks pretty positive. Couple of key paragraphs for me are:

The acquisitions already present attractive player fundamentals, including the opportunity for significant improvements through leveraging off Stride Gaming's leading software platform and marketing expertise, together with delivering synergies through cross-marketing, lowering of CPA, increasing customer LTV and reducing player churn. We expect the acquisitions to be accretive in the first full year of ownership (pre-synergies), deliver cost synergies (marketing, administration, distribution) of an estimated GBP2.5 million (post earn-out) and deliver revenue synergies (increase in LTV, yield and net cash hold) of an estimated GBP3 million (post earn-out).

Recent discussions around the new proposed TV daytime advertising regulations for the bingo-led market are expected to have very little direct impact on the Group since the Group is focused more on digital media as a source of traffic.

These are key for me as to be accretive pre synergies and then have a further £2.5m is a significant proportion of group profits. Finally the shares seemed to take a dip from concerns on daytime advertising whereas as already highlighted on this board today it's been confirmed digital is the key source of traffic.

Taking these into account if the price stays around here Stride will become a takeover target in it's own right IMO from an operator trying to diversify ahead of changing regulation.

[czar] 28/11/2016 07:44

Great results but this Company has only just started;-

Outlook

Stride Gaming has delivered another excellent year of progress with further transformational acquisitions under its belt and robust organic growth. With 105 brands and 10% of the UK bingo market, Stride Gaming occupies a pre-eminent position in the soft gaming market. Stride Gaming now has the scale and fire power to accelerate its organic growth and undertake further acquisitions. The Board believes the outlook for the Company is highly exciting.

[czar] 15/11/2016 16:53

Wow this facility with Barclays is on better terms and is a great vote of confidence. Apparently there have been sellers over the last couple of weeks panicking about the proposed ban on TV advertising for online Bingo operators but they are extremely ill informed; Stride have no TV advertising but their key competitors rely on it, so in fact Stride is a huge beneficiary of a ban on TV advertising! Talk about efficient markets.

[alphabeta4] 20/9/2016 08:45

They weren't the only ones Czar - from the Telegraph article Shore Capital have a target of £3.62 with the following commentary:

Shore Capital added that the stock currently trades at around 7.4 times is 2017 earnings compared to the rest of the sector, which typically trades a premium of 10 times forecast earnings. Shore sees the potential for Stride to trade at a premium to the wider sector based on the group’s “expertise, technology and the significant opportunities to build a sizeable business”.

On a separate point I noticed on the GVC statement today that whilst their general performance was good - 15% organic at constant currency their gaming/other NGR revenue line which includes Foxy Bingo was down 6% (3% constant currency).

From the statement:

'Currency weakness and a competitive bingo market led to an NGR decline in Games labels of 6% to EUR103.7m'.

I wonder if Stride is hurting competitors at these growth rates?

[czar] 20/9/2016 07:47

Chief executive Eitan Boyd says he is delighted by organic growth across the underlying business.

Now the UK’s fourth largest bingo operator, Boyd says the group is well on the way for becoming a “£500mln plus company”.

That equates to an £8 share price.

[alphabeta4] 19/9/2016 23:58

Quite a bit of press coverage today, highlights of 30% organic growth and target of £500m market cap (3x the current business).

[someuwin] 19/9/2016 08:00

Very good.

[czar] 19/9/2016 07:38

This is a very very good company and I can see several years of upgraded forecasts which continue to be beaten, soft gaming is a goldmine.

[johnwise] 19/9/2016 07:27

19 September 2016

Stride Gaming PLC Trading Statement

The Group is pleased to report that trading in the second half of the financial year has been very strong. As a result, the Board now expects its results to be ahead of market expectations, with Net Gaming Revenue for the year ended 31 August 2016 to be not less than GBP47m (2015: GBP27.8m) and EBITDA to be not less than GBP12.3m (2015: GBP7.3m), notwithstanding that the prior year contained only nine months of the Point of Consumption tax.

[czar] 07/9/2016 22:28

Alphabeta we should get a trading update soon and hopefully they made the £11m. Current year is hard to guess but with acquisitions should be something around £15m to £17m so single digit pe for sensational growth, starting to look very attractive. Bought a bit with a view to topping up as things unfold. Soft gaming is a great space to be in, very good people and a sensible model, it should be a real winner over the next couple of years IMHO.

[alphabeta4] 01/9/2016 16:18

On a separate point I would be interested on thoughts around how the remaining acquisition payments will be financed. If 2017 EBITDA was due to be £13m and then the max earnout is if the acquired companies do EBITDA of £9m then we have £22m available less some tax. This compares to them needing £20m in cash and £20m in shares. With the payments in shares bit does anyone have some information on how this will work? I.e. is this shares issued to the current owners and if so at what price? Is it a price based on the time of the acquisitions or the price prevailing at the time of earnout? Or, is it saying Stride will do another issue (placing?) to complete the earnout payments?

[alphabeta4] 01/9/2016 16:10

Morningstar has forecasts of £12m EBITDA and £11m PBT for 2016 and for 2017 £13m EBITDA and £12m PBT. They are still clearly pre the recent acquisitions so at the very least they haven't seen some revised forecasts yet.

Found this link with quite a bit of detail on the acquisitions and strategy which I found helpful. This has been on my radar for a while and IMO it came down to trusting the management to execute which when weighing up their previous track record of building up cos and achieving successful exits swung it for me.

[czar] 15/8/2016 14:50

Thanks jambo, have you seen any research with the forecasts for this year and next yet? It must be looking pretty good and I doubt these will be the last deals they do. Soft gaming is a great business IMHO.

[speedsgh] 29/7/2016 16:35

Closing of Placing -

... A total of 12,000,000 Placing Shares have been placed at a Placing Price of 225 pence per Placing Share (the "Placing Price"), raising gross proceeds of £27.0 million...

[czar] 29/7/2016 11:24

Impressive deals, this should be a real winner.

[battlebus2] 23/5/2016 08:08

Exceptional year to come and a maiden 1.1p dividend, great increase in revenues but PBT is lower.

[dave2608] 19/5/2016 20:50

Czar

I'd hardly call it a bit of nosy buying. There were 5 trades totaling £1.47 million. Odd how it never shifted the share price upwards when sometimes a small volume of buying or selling can move the share price several percentage points in either direction.