Wey Education Share Discussion Threads

[shanklin] 12/11/2020 08:45

bdh1

Any idea on the planned timescale "for 10s of thousands of pupils" and what that would do for WEY's finances please?

[bdh1] 11/11/2020 23:25

Other key takeaway - Invested an additional £400k in marketing most in Q4 which is all about driving pupil numbers in 2021. In essence could have not done that and added £400k to this years profit. Though as hamida says aiming for scale. Jacqueline Daniel mentioned 10s of thousands of pupils a few times.

[hamidahamida] 11/11/2020 17:09

Biggest takeaway Aiming to be the size of a multi academy within two years.

[hamidahamida] 11/11/2020 15:58

https://www.investormeetcompany.com/investor/dashboardMeeting to start in 2 minutes

[cordwainer] 11/11/2020 13:37

Not comparable with OCT imho - a financial services company with a few years of flattish profits and plateauing revenue behind it vs. WEY a school learning substitute only becoming profitable this year but with strong revenue growth. i.e. value / dividend income stock vs growth stock.
Interesting plug tho.
I do have a mixture of both types of stocks in my portfolio.

[dave4545] 11/11/2020 10:59

Knew this would drop on results.

It was worth nearly 40 million for 500k of profit.

Look at Oct today, they will make £4 million of profits and only worth £11 million.

And they have no debt and same cash as Wey £6.5 million

Markets are stupid.

[hamidahamida] 11/11/2020 09:00

Investormeetcompany.comRegister here to hear or ask questions

[cordwainer] 11/11/2020 08:38

While profits may not be as geared and scalable as many other platforms, it would seem the KPF must be reputation and superlative-ness of outcomes for customers, beating and supplementing schools at their own game outside of the classroom experience requires great skill and planning, I would expect. I imagine that directly collaborating and incorporating into schools approach offers the biggest opportunity.
I initiated a modest position here on 13 Oct @ 29p. I would welcome any other insights into the efficacy (or not) of the business model.

[bigboyblue] 11/11/2020 06:11

Is anyone willing to post a summary of this afternoon's presentation? I have a commitment I can't avoid at that time.

[boadicea] 10/11/2020 20:29

I have been in this for some time and have been marginally disappointed by the apparent rate of progress - along the lines of the missed opportunities comments above.
However, I have come to the conclusion that it's in the nature of the beast.

What have WEY to offer?
It's not the technology - that is widely available and used.
To some extent it may be the way that it is used, but again, that is technique and can be learnt or copied. So there are no real tecnical barriers to entry.

We are left with one basic factor, REPUTATION, which has to be built on quality. No business is judged more strongly on results than education.

Headlong expansion can be a dangerous path if done for its own sake. We are not producing a commodity where production can be ramped up; not even licensing an intellectual property and cashing in the licence fees. Each pupil is a separate intellectual property!

Ensuring quality standards are upheld in a 'people' business can require a relatively slow and measured path. Reputations build slowly but can be destroyed in a flash (ask Gerald Ratner!)

Conclusion: I am prepared to accept that WEY may not be a go-go stock. As long as it is managed to produce a steady and expanding business with expanding reputation to match I will be reasonably happy. At the same time I will look elsewhere for more instantly scalable enterprises.

[abergele] 10/11/2020 18:56

Well said bbblue and wigancasino.
Certainly my case and thoughts, had a small top up at 23p, ish.
Gla lth's

[wigancasino] 10/11/2020 18:02

Never saw that coming but since May we have had sharp rises and sharp falls. The game plan has not changed, we are still heading in the right direction despite today’s drop. No doubt some who bought in the last few days and have to sell will pay the penalty for those in for the longterm it’s of no consequence.

It’s only a loss if you have to sell but there are a lot of us still in profit and prepared to wait.

[bigboyblue] 10/11/2020 17:59

Disappointing overall in my view. Not the actual results, which were as expected (I'm not quibbling about the odd £2K), but it's the other information, or lack of it. 'Over 3000 students' is hardly sensational; that figure has been mentioned months ago. I wonder how they expect to ramp up to tens of thousands which is supposedly the aim.

I expected some clue as to recent trading, ie Sept and Oct, compared to last year, perhaps with a cautionary note to say that any percentage increase can't necessarily be assumed to continue throughout the whole year. Perhaps further light will be shed tomorrow, we'll see. I haven't sold any. I still feel that the prospects for the company are good in the long term, but it does seem that we can expect progress to be steady rather than rapid.

[wanttowin] 10/11/2020 15:52

took a few more today, fall seems overdone.

[bdh1] 10/11/2020 12:22

I’m not going to make any excuses for lack of forward guidance and so on. BUT the thing to realise is that there’s a new marketing team in place and to attract new customers will necessitate marketing spend. It’s no coincidence the profit number is precisely as forecast despite increased revenues. Clearly, the senior team invested in additional marketing to the extent they maximise pupil numbers for next year but still deliver this years profit number. It’s obvious!

[seabornlegend] 10/11/2020 12:03

They never seem to miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity - sums it up quite well.

[zulu_principle] 10/11/2020 11:05

I was hoping for some forward guidance too but noted they've scheduled an investors' presentation for tomorrow afternoon. I've made the assumption that any forward guidance, details of current pupil numbers, etc will be given then.

I've never agreed with the more fanciful valuations put forward on this thread and I share some posters' lack of enthusiasm for the management team, their regular inexplicable actions and consistent failure to successfully "sell the vision" (they never seem to miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity).

However I still believe the compamy is well positioned at a time a significant social and technological change and 30p represents good long term value. My belief is that they'll be bought by a larger company with pockets deep enough to invest for the long term. The on-line education market (for all ages) is going to be huge.

As always, just my opinion. DYOR and all that.

[netcurtains] 10/11/2020 10:26

JS23: There can be no real guidance until the globe returns to normalcy. Everyone has to guess.

I've guessed: (a) quick bucks to be made elsewhere and (b) but long term Internet Education is the future.


I might buy some more WEY once other stuff stopped rising and WEY stopped falling.
Those are the two parameters everyone is looking at.

[jamessmith23] 10/11/2020 10:23

But why would the company choose not to issue guidance? All that is going to do is hurt the share price and cause volatility.I didn't see anything on how the current year is going and for me that is really a poor response from management, you should be issuing some guidance at this point when the company is on such a high PE and that is based on future growth.Can see this slowly dropping into teens based on lack of guidance and fears of lack of demand due to vaccine, although I don't think the latter should have a material impact really. As others have said, it is a shame when this has been a once in a lifetime opportunity for this business.

[shoee62] 10/11/2020 10:01

WEY has delivered an impressive set of results this morning, significantly ahead YoY, meaningfully outpacing our expectations on the revenue, profit and EPS lines. With strong revenue growth of 38% feeding through to 103% EBITDA growth and adj. EPS up 100%, the inherent efficiency of the model, supported by rising student numbers, is manifest. Educating ‘3,000’ students, WEY is larger than any UK secondary school. Moreover, while providing a collegiate, online education, WEY is a clear beneficiary both of long-running and fundamental drivers, and of the current Covid-focused environment. With the benefits of past investment effectively displayed in today’s results, the company continues to do more to grow its platform, present and future, and has highlighted an ongoing commitment to investing in the business to provide further support for future profit acceleration. Our Fair Value assessment is 34p per
))hare (WH Ireland

[seabornlegend] 10/11/2020 09:56

I'm out. It's a management issue for me.

[rjhar] 10/11/2020 09:49

@1jbriskyOf course the PE, turnover per employee etc is going to look bad when looking at the last financial year. This is normal for a company that has clearly expanded massively within the past year. What is important is how the next year looks, and everything is pointing towards more substantial growth with increasing profits and revenues. WEY are well known to not issue guidance in a timely manner, but so long as the fundamentals are looking good, there is no reason why this is not a great long term hold.Perhaps the share price will suffer in the short term with CV vaccine but long term outlook for this company is excellent.

[pawdaw] 10/11/2020 09:43

These results really seem to be about addressing the size of the peanut. Tiny recruitment figures for a lot of staff. You can achieve better economies of scale in a physical classroom setting. So, I’m afraid that’s it for me - I’m out.

[seabornlegend] 10/11/2020 09:31

Trading update in July said Group Profit Before Tax (after adjusting for share based payments and amortisation of acquired intangibles) is expected to exceed market expectations of GBP0.5m Adjusted profit was £498,000 so it didn't exceed.