Venture Life Share Discussion Threads

[thelongandtheshortandthetall] 10/9/2018 21:43

I'm kind of hoping inflation will one day eat away at the mortgage a bit.
-
Poaching on the channel islands renders a whole different level of dinner :)

sounds very nice indeed.

[apad] 10/9/2018 20:05

ps
Cooked the lobsters - the trick is to plunge them into cold water, so they don't carry on cooking with the heat from the shell.

[apad] 10/9/2018 20:03

Real wages have not increased since about 1970, tlst.
Asset prices have rocketed.
Unstable, I reckon.
apad

[thelongandtheshortandthetall] 10/9/2018 19:48

will th UK follow do you think?

[apad] 10/9/2018 19:41

US showing some wage inflation - important.

apad

[apad] 10/9/2018 19:30

Mmmm tend to agree, attrader.
apad

[attrader] 10/9/2018 19:15

I don't have much insight as to why ABC selected Oracle ERP, it is one of the clunkiest softwares written ages ago. Complex to configure and with lots of features no one uses. Not a surprise it is taking them longer and project is running over budget:

[apad] 10/9/2018 17:57

Looking at ABC software expenditure it wouldn't surprise me if there is a pull back at the next FY. These capital expenditure problems tend to drag on.
My irritation with the language of the report has faded somewhat, as the key issues are properly described.

apad

ps
Got two lobsters, low water fishing this affy 😊

[toptrump1] 10/9/2018 17:38

With the exclusion of FEVr, a certain person’s folio has plateaued and now falling with another turned bad, one after another on the slide. Will FEVR be next? It’s ridiculous valn for a drink with no barriers to entry and no assets. It remains an enigma and imo not long before big investors cash out.

[apad] 10/9/2018 17:36

My interim ratios show a big fall in revenue for PTSG, red. However, there has been a big acquisition, hence big increase in debt, so its performance will depend on how well that has been integrated.
I like that they haven't had new acquisitions, but there is still uncertainty.
However, looking like it might be approaching BTFD territory.

Interesting posts, folks. Ta muchly.

apad

[apad] 10/9/2018 17:26

Expected to see some profit taking in ABC end of day.
Big benefit from TrumpTax flatters the numbers.
Tintins noting the software expenditure.
apad

[redartbmud] 10/9/2018 17:15

What on earth has happened to PTSG?
+185 new contracts and the share price nosedives:-(

red

[gsbmba99] 10/9/2018 16:35

I believe there is a commitment for the AdRatings business to rate every ad that airs on TV in UK and US for each category they cover. That's already a huge commitment as that was 900 ads in August as per blog post ( ). If Unilever is showing the same campaign across social media and TV then, it would get rated on the basis of the TV ad. If it's a social media ad only, then probably not. Part of the issue is that there isn't a central repository of ads for online ads. Theoretically, online ads are infinitely variable. I quite like the linkage between advertising and behavioural economics (of which I am a fan and where Kahneman and Thaler have won Nobel prizes in recent past) and the company strategy. It all seems to link together.

[thefartingcommie] 10/9/2018 15:55

Feeling good,Louis!

[attrader] 10/9/2018 15:52

Are these emotional ratings applicable for ads on social media ? If Unilever is running campaign on YouTube, would they still be able to measure it?

[gsbmba99] 10/9/2018 15:06

The SYS1 AdRatings business is to be a subscription service approx. £10k/company/category/region/year. Previously there were 6 categories. Recent blog post says there are 25 categories now (probably also where the £1.8m 1H19 investment went as they build the catalogue of reviewed ads). There are at least two regions EU and US. It's unclear how many categories someone like Unilever competes in. It could easily be more than 1. However, at one subscription per current client (c. 200) revenue potential is £2m, £4m if each client buys both regions and more if multiple regions and multiple categories. Company thinks there are 2,000 companies spending >$1m in advertising per year. This is ads on TV. The product is till in beta testing but appears to have been dramatically expanded in recent weeks.

[gsbmba99] 10/9/2018 14:38

SYS1 is a recent holding for me. I'm intrigued by their new AdRatings product and the potential to stimulate demand as a result of a lowered price point following wholesale automation. Maynard Paton did a good overview of the AGM in the comments to a post - There are also very useful presentations on slideshare ( and )

[gsbmba99] 10/9/2018 14:24

If you have an interest in IntegraFin (IHP) it is the third of three shares featured (others being Tesco and Rolls Royce) on a recent Brewin Dolphin podcast episode with Investec fund manager Blake Hutchins (equity income). He likes that IHP controls its own technology (actually they bought the AUS company they licensed it from but who's counting); that others have stumbled when implementing platform changes; that they are lowering fees to attract/retain IFAs; that CEO didn't sell a single share in IPO (says CEO holds approx 40%). Hutchins has it in the "compounders" portion of his portfolio (TSCO and RR in "special sits") Rss feed -

[apad] 10/9/2018 11:09

ABC
"Upgrading our systems in order to efficiently and effectively scale our business is critical for our continued growth. We set out to improve effectiveness and efficiency in four major business areas with Oracle Cloud ERP: customer contact, human resources, finance, and supply chain. To date, we have successfully completed what we wanted to achieve in human resources and customer contact. As we have learned more about the system and its maturity, we have decided to phase the remainder of the programme to reduce the risk to our business and customers. As a consequence, the programme will take longer and cost more than we predicted when we defined our requirements in 2015. We have established a new approach for more frequent and lower risk deployment and in this coming year we will focus on implementing the finance modules. Once completed, we will have substantially concluded three of the four major objectives of the programme."

Translates to "we screwed up"

Hirzel's language is appalling.

apad

[big7ime] 10/9/2018 11:03

The current share price is 50% higher than 18mths ago. Rev up 7%. Guess that's why -Prices overshoot in both directions but even out over the long term. Just a simple theory, I don't follow abc. Good profit/eps increase though but was it exceptionals this/last time ? I'm not researching it

[apad] 10/9/2018 10:49

ABC
Yearly Cash outflow from investing (m) (24.61) (21.54) (33.02) (37.70)
but it hasn't driven revenue growth this year.
Oddly, operating profit seems to be up 69% - I need to check the numbers carefully

Trades are streaming through at fair old lick. I guess there'll be some end of day profit taking.

I guess that's right, attrader. Needs to be balanced against revenue growth opportunities. They both look interesting, genuine companies.

apad

[attrader] 10/9/2018 10:27

I think ARC has better moat than BKS. Once ARC has a toe in the door and manage to get a front office data running through it, it will take a lot for a customer to switch .. BKS is a wrapper on generic cloud, infrastructure rental business, they will have to execute on land grab strategy to capture enterprise customers, hope for them to deploy critical applications which makes it harder to migrate when eventually competitors appear. All bets on sales execution. Cloud infrastructure is highly profitable but hardware investment got to be depreciated in 5 years ..