Venture Life Share Discussion Threads

[apad] 18/6/2018 10:59

emailed this to BOO.

"I have a long-term, reasonably large shareholding.

I have been following Carl Kane’s statements on the brands carefully over the years.

Following the last six weeks reduction in BOO growth compared with a particularly good previous period I have been comparing PLT and BOO as brands.

I note that BOO has cut down on promotions.

I could not differentiate their markets based on products offered, so I researched some friends’ teenage daughters opinions.


Here are the results (not statistically significant samples).

“Daughter uses boo (a little) but not PLT - clothes a bit more pricey. Accepts quality of boo stuff isn't brilliant but its cheap and the free return postage makes it a safe gamble.”

"Frances’s friends agree that BooHoo and PLT target similar markets, but on the whole they use BooHoo more”

"My step daughter buys from asc and boo but asking her this Friday she now buys from a number of online retailers - most I’ve never heard of”

"I don’t think there’s much difference. Boohoo has a generally slightly lower price range with more basic stuff. Tends to prefer BooHoo because they have more offers.”

"Jenny agrees they look similar.”


So, my naive view is that BOO and PLT are aimed at the same market with BOO being slightly cheaper and lower quality.

If this is correct then they compete.


I would welcome a designerly view on this concern - preferably from Carol Kane 😊"

[al101uk] 18/6/2018 09:22

Hydrus,

I said the best bet, not one that I would take, I think I commented on the CEO, but it was the rating vs the franchise development risk that put me off.

Honestly not really interested in investing in the gaming industry, just offering a point of view from someone interested in it and its development.

If I were to invest it would be on the basis of a company that:

1) Owned good franchises with an avid player community
2) Had monetised that community without alienating them
3) Had a strong relationship with their publisher or published their own games

Which really rules out everyone, only Epic & Bethesda tick the lists for me, but they are privately held.

EA and Activision dominate from a publicly listed point of view, but their business practices are likely to increasingly infuriate their player base.

[hydrus] 18/6/2018 07:32

al101uk have you changed your mind on the CEO? I recall previously you were sceptical about their chances (excuse me if I've mixed you up with another person)

[apad] 18/6/2018 07:24

Interesting analysis of gaming, al1..

PTSG AGM statement.
Lots about orders, particularly emphasising the last two acquisitions.
Nothing about restructuring, and the meaningless:
".... in line with the Board's expectations."
Disappointing.
Interims Sept.

apad

[al101uk] 17/6/2018 23:50

My argument around the games market would be that it's not the developers that hold the power, it's the publishers/distributors and I'd be wary buying in to a game developer for that reason. I'd steer particularly clear of games developers that aren't developing their own IP (like Sumo).

FDEV is by far the best of the four I've seen mentioned here, they own good IP, can develop and are moving in the right direction from an investor point of view. Codemasters comes a distant second.

I wouldn't consider the others you mentioned.

In any decision to buy I'd be looking at the companies attractiveness to a purchaser and IP is going to be the watch word there.

[al101uk] 17/6/2018 23:18

A few choice quotes from the wiki on Steam:

2002 Announcement and beta release
2003 Official release
2005 First publisher partnership
2007 Steam Community launched
2008 Steamworks released

"The Steam platform is the largest digital distribution platform for PC gaming, estimated in 2013 to have 75% of the market space"

"By 2017, users purchasing titles through Steam totaled roughly $4.3 billion"

"By early 2018, the service had over 150 million registered accounts with a peak of 18.5 million concurrent users online."

"From its release in 2003 through to nearly 2009, Steam had a mostly uncontested hold over the PC digital distribution market before major competitors emerged with the largest competitors in the past being services like Games for Windows – Live and Impulse, both of which were shut down in 2013 and 2014, respectively.[289][290] Sales via the Steam catalog are estimated to be between 50 and 75 percent of the total PC gaming market."

[cbootle] 17/6/2018 18:27

APAD - agree with GDPR findings, having a sample of one mailing list. A customer with 4000 clients requested confirmation to their mailing list. Just over 25% confirmed their subscription. My customer was delighted, expecting decimation of their list. Instead, they now have 1000 confirmed clients who have really shown interest. It's sorted the wheat from the chaff.

Look on the bright side...

[janeann] 17/6/2018 17:17

BOO - daughter uses boo (a little) but not PLT - clothes a bit more pricey. Accepts quality of boo stuff isn't brilliant but its cheap and the free return postage makes it a safe gamble. I had the impression before that the quality was very poor so this was more positive than I expected

[apad] 17/6/2018 13:29

GDPR
"Internal research from Huge found about 38 percent of Americans are ignoring these emails, and 23 percent have actually used them as an opportunity to unsubscribe. Email marketing firm PostUp has even grimmer stats, estimating that only 25 to 30 percent of recipients globally, and only 15 to 20 percent in the U.S., are opening the emails at all."

[apad] 17/6/2018 08:52

"Snake oil is an expression that originally referred to fraudulent health products or unproven medicine but has come to refer to any product with questionable or unverifiable quality or benefit. By extension, a snake oil salesman is someone who knowingly sells fraudulent goods or who is himself or herself a fraud, quack, charlatan, and the like."

I didn't manage to stay till the end either, j.
So bad it was fascinating. I wonder how many holders sold after watching it?

apad😊

[al101uk] 16/6/2018 23:32

dacian,

"The gaming market is going through a period of transformation that investors should take notice. For a publisher, digital distribution can generate significantly higher margins due to savings on the costs of manufacturing goods..."

If that quote was taken from an article 10 years ago, it's a bit late! The ship has sailed for digital distribution and sailed a long long time ago.

There are two things driving game company revenue at the moment:

The move to micro-transactions and pseudo gambling mechanics much like what is already available on mobile. Star Wars Battlefront II is the current pinnacle of that particular steaming pile of ...

Games as a service, where a subscription is charged for access to a game or games library. I suspect this will be the vector that publishers will use to attack Steam, the definitive and dominant digital distribution platform.

For those that were interested in FDEV, Jurassic World Evolution has had some very mixed reviews.

[redartbmud] 16/6/2018 23:08

Don't read it myself, but there was an article on Boo in the Daily Mail today.

red

[janeann] 16/6/2018 19:36

snake oil ? I generally apply the term to products that claim the world and deliver something very different; are you referring to the ceo - nearly stopped watching the moment he came on; or the company? snake comes to mind! lasted about 5 mins - when he said the audience should be pleased to be in the room!!

Ill give my daughters view on boo later - doubt you will like it.

[apad] 16/6/2018 18:16

www.piworld.co.uk/2018/06/16/proactis-phd-investor-presentation-june-2018/?ct=t(RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN)

Snake Oil.

apad😎

[apad] 16/6/2018 18:03

"Frances’s friends agree that BooHoo and PLT target similar markets, but on the whole they use BooHoo more"

apad

[apad] 16/6/2018 18:00

Yup.
Can't argue with that, Hydrus.
apad

[hydrus] 16/6/2018 16:11

Don't punish success APAD

[hydrus] 16/6/2018 16:09

It's not really APAD. It's a product of superb returns, not through allocating a large part of my portfolio to ZOO. I've already taken out something like 2.5 times my original stake. It's up around 950% on my average stake. In my opinion the way to make extraordinary returns is to allocate a decent part of your portfolio when you find a great opportunity. Think I put in something like 8%-10% at average of 11p. Much more productive than drip feeding and building a stake over time.

[apad] 16/6/2018 15:03

That's a lot of commitment to a 'disrupter' Hydrus.
Particularly one that is not delivering a divvy.
I have no cash balance. This is normal for me.
Ta.
apad

[hydrus] 16/6/2018 14:08

Added back a few ZOO I sold on Friday also APAD. 37% of my 'invested' portfolio, although I have a fairly high cash balance currently.

[panic investor] 16/6/2018 12:46

My step daughter buys from asc and boo but asking her this Friday she now buys from a number of online retailers - most I've never heard of !