Xlmedia Share Discussion Threads

[km85] 08/3/2019 12:00

Hi bor491, yes that is right I meant to say Swedish instead of Spanish, But I think you get the idea of how ranking and SEO keywords work on google and others.


I do not know all of XLM’s sites, but I think I know the most important sites,

Like, excluding the finance sites and the sites I already mentioned previously, they own 101greatgoals.com, which it has a huge quality traffic volume with super informational and contents site. 3.5m visitors per month and most of the traffic come from the UK, USA, and western countries. The social media accounts link to this site is huge as well. They also have/run Ad choices ads on the site, which means free money from different source. They also charge CPM on their mobile site, website and their mobile app. And they obviously charge CPA and revenue share from operators and charge promotion content fees to publish on their site. I think because this site is already having a huge, mainly organic and social, traffic it can bring very good amount of incremental sales from the US market when more states regulate the online sport betting. All they have to do is to make a subdomain for the US related sport news, videos and contents.



That is good to have the same business niche.

Thanks again

[tomstone12] 08/3/2019 11:56

casino.se ranks on google.se (sweden) use VPN and check
they own many other sites and have disclosed them in their various investor presentations hxxps://www.xlmedia.com/investor-relations/presentations-reports-documents/

[bor491] 08/3/2019 10:28

KM85

'In google they still appear in the top page, if we search the free bets or bet free or free bet we will see freebets.com and freebets.co.uk and freebets.uk in the Top page and the three domains owned by XLM and if we switch our google from UK google to Spanish google version we will also see casino.se is ranking nicely, the same in other brands. Regarding the higher paying price for acquisitions, I think they also acquire the net working capital otherwise it will be crazy to pay 15m for 1m operation profit.
'

casino.se is not a spanish site - but i think swedish so would be strange to rank on google spain

do you have a list of sites which XLM own? It is all very mysterious.

btw I operate in the same niche and would like to share perspectives.

[km85] 06/3/2019 12:27

Paddy Power Betfair has seen its 2018 revenue grow as a result of the acquisition of FanDuel and an improved performance by the Paddy Power brand in the UK market, though the US investment has also hit full-year profits.
Paddy Power Betfair, which has announced plans to change the name of the business to Flutter Entertainment, reported a 7% year-on-year increase in group revenue to £1.9bn (€2.2bn/$2.5bn)
This was driven by a 6% increase in sports revenue to £1.5bn, despite the vertical being hit by unfavourable sporting results over the year. Gaming revenue, meanwhile, grew 11% to £399m.
"I'm really pleased with the way that the Group performed in 2018 in what was a challenging year for the sector with regulatory and tax changes,” Paddy Power Betfair chief executive Peter Jackson said. “Our collection of challenger brands are well positioned in their local markets.
“Paddy Power has regained its mojo, taking share following product improvements and some of our ‘classic’; marketing. Betfair, our unique combination of product that appeals to customers around the world, will be improved by our ongoing investments in languages and localisation,” he continued. “In Australia recent tax changes favour the largest operators and we are determined to maintain our leadership position amongst the online bookies, using Sportsbet's leading customer proposition and generosity to continue to take market share.”
The online division saw revenue grow 5% to £948m, thanks in part to an improved performance from the Paddy Power brand. For all markets excluding Italy, where the brand was withdrawn in Q4 2017, revenue was up 11%. This, the operator said, was due to a significant turnaround for the brand, with an improved customer offering and improved marketing execution helping Paddy Power grow revenue in the UK market.

The opening of the US online sports betting market has the potential to be the most significant development to occur within the sector since the advent of online betting,” Jackson said. “Rather than announcing our plans, we have moved quickly to give ourselves the best chance to win in that market. We are confident that FanDuel's nationally recognised sports brand, 8 million customers, our group betting expertise, and our market access partnerships position us very well.
“Our success to date supports this view, with FanDuel achieving a 35% online market share in New Jersey in its first 5 months of operation, and Meadowlands becoming a marquee venue for sports betting.”
The operator’s retail division, comprising 362 UK shops and 264 outlets in Ireland, saw revenue decline 1% to £331m, with a 1% increase in UK revenue offset by a 4% local currency decline across the Irish Sea.

[talygarn tom] 04/3/2019 20:39

KM85 - thanks for your comments. They are some of the most informed and useful contributions I have seen on XLMedia. As you say we need to understand exactly what is happening in the market and in the XLM business and to better understand what the earning potential is for business going forwards.

[superadams] 04/3/2019 20:30

I only invested here because I thought a British Chairman with major PLC experience would keep a steady ship.

[bc4] 04/3/2019 10:15

I wonder why Saun has not posted he only went to Cyprus just before the profit warning, Do they not have internet there?

[km85] 04/3/2019 09:44

The issue with xlm is they focused on the media rather than the publishing sites. The affiliate business for gambling and sport is growing as more people shift to online casinos and online sports and therefore google charges higher PPC than ever but that also means affiliate companies worth now more than few years ago. I drive traffic to online regulated brokers in the uk and worldwide, few years ago we used to charge 500dollar CPA and now it is between 800 to 1200 per CPA, depends on the market. Xlm still makes good money from their publishing sites because of the revenue share deals they have got but they need to start bringing or referring more players to operators or they will lose the market and I think that is what they have finally decided. In this kind business I can tell you that competition is very good and healthy thing to have because the big will buy the small and more potential operators will start business due to ready traffic in the market. Regulation markets also good thing because you can advertise and target more potential clients in a regulated market, not surprise all affiliates talking about the Swedish and New Jersey markets. Regarding their keywords In google they still appear in the top page, if we search the free bets or bet free or free bet we will see freebets.com and freebets.co.uk and freebets.uk in the Top page and the three domains owned by XLM and if we switch our google from UK google to Spanish google version we will also see casino.se is ranking nicely, the same in other brands. Regarding the higher paying price for acquisitions, I think they also acquire the net working capital otherwise it will be crazy to pay 15m for 1m operation profit. Catena Media started in 2012 and They manage to sell 115m last year only 10m in sales came from their financial service vertical and the rest through gambling and sport betting sites. They were acquiring other companies in a very fast way and they managed to integrate them smoothly, it does tell that the aff business is still very super cash flow machine, while XLM were focusing on media silly business better collective was growing strongly in their publishing sites and they manage to bring about 50m in sales from their sites. Xlm should act.

[elsa7878] 04/3/2019 07:25

Yump agreed. If that was now true then XLM sites would top google searches for key words, but their sites don't or not the ones that they have paid big bucks for (and therefore we know about)....It is crazily competitive hence their diversification into finance. I really wonder how much firepower they will get out of their cash pile. They spend $45 million last year and it has hardly helped their bottom line....

[yump] 03/3/2019 23:45

Berenberg's comments were true 5+ years ago, much of it is tosh now.

I judge that from this generic comment which shows they do not understand the business model:

"cleverly driving traffic from its 2000-plus websites to regulated gaming platforms and earning either a fixed fee or a share of the revenue in the process."

That is so clever that I have met several affiliates who have retired on that model, except that they retired 5+ years ago, after finding it very easy to top Google's search and get very cheap PPC and very high ROI on that, from around 2001-2010.

Now there are a host of headwinds, including less ad. space (higher costs, lower ROI), more competitors, privacy blocking cookie and tracking controls (Apple auto controls soon), higher results for the merchants you used to sell leads to, because they've got their SEO act together, retargeting by those merchants etc. etc.

[hatfullofsky] 03/3/2019 21:18

Thank you for a great post. With all investments we should consider the negatives, which are absent. We have the media write downs, the 3 year investment programme, the regulatory and more concerning, the operational headwinds. The focus on a new and exciting but yet unproven and unregulated US market. On balance and my risk appetite makes a Hold and add on weakness, which is exactly what I have done.Each to their own (research and opinion)

[km85] 03/3/2019 12:23

I totally agreed with you regarding thier profitable business models, as I mentioned on my previous comments. I think we need to focus our comments here on the business itself rather than the stock price. The stock price can swing nuts with fear and greedy. Look at the price at XLM has declined about 80% from top up to down level, though does the business decline the same level? I doubt it and in reality I personally think they have found the winning strategies in their publishing sites with higher margin and less costs moving forwad. If we all here trying to analyse the business rather than the stock movements then we all can gain some knowledges and we can act rationally because of that.

[km85] 02/3/2019 17:31

No problem,

I just analyse their business models because of the background I have got. No advice or whatsoever here.


I think the management did silly damn thing when they decided to jumb into media network business and that certainly hurt the overall business but at the same token I think it can be fixed and that is what they just realised recently. By focusing on higher margin they can meet their operation profit target regardless the drop in sales. If they can manage to increase the margin by 3 to 5% while they cut their low margin business and reduce the media business costs , which is anyway 5 or something percent then they can easily hits the operating profit with less overall sales. I suppos time will tell.

[rhubarbcrumble] 02/3/2019 16:38

Thanks KM85.

I had lost confidence in XLM and disposed of some for a considerable loss, but from your comments, I am reassured somewhat.

[km85] 02/3/2019 14:49

Hi, it is my first post here, though I have been reading most of the comments for a while.

I have been working in the online affiliate business for very long time and I know the media business very well.


I agreed with RYsk100 in some points and disagreed with other points.


XLM has two kinds of business, as we all may know, one super profitable business with almost no capital to run or to reinvest, unless buy more assets and domains. This business is the search publishing segments. They have several verticals in that sector, I gaming, finance, and others. The I gaming one is the most profitable one because of revenue share and high CPA, then the finance one in term of profitability, less than the gambling one due to different term of revenue, however it is a stable business and can be growing nicely especially in the US( US people love to borrow. Some of US banks and Insurances and car insurance pay 50 dollar per click on google so I assume xlM charges more on each deal due to performance based bduinsss, though less volume due to only getting paid when clients qualify for a credit card or a loan or insurance purchase. The finance verticals require very little capital to maintain and very little cost to run.

If you go to Alexa.com and see their finance websites ranking you will get what I mean. Millions of visitors every months and almost 90% of them come through search.

Now the media business has also several ways of running as RYsk100 mentioned some with self funded and some through network. The first one can be done through paid ppc, native ads, socials ads and others. The second one through network of publishing and aderstining. The second one has very very little margin and requires some amount of investments. It also requires full of sources and energies to be fully active or you lose the market.

Based on the recent update it is clearly mentioned that they are going to stop the majority of Thier media activities which had nothing to do with the publishing segments. What they mean here is that they will still buy media for their gambling and sport betting activities( publishing)through PPC and other channels, and they will stop the other kind of media business, like the app install and e-commerce activities. I personally think this is the best strategy to move forward.

Now regarding their publishing sites I think they have not ignored it for years but they had focused more on a dead business, network media, their sites still perform very well but they need to bring more players because new players add value in the short term, CPA deals and medium to long term, revenue shares model. I also see them do advertising media in google, you can not see it as xlm or Webpalse because it will not appear as a company name but as domain and a brand name like free bets. They also doing some social buying and PPC in their Scandinavians brands.

I think they have to act on this strategy because it is a super profitable business model with little capital to maintain.


Now the new investment of 7m they mentioned, I think it is a new system to maintain the sites of integrations and focusing on assets in the US. The US markets expects to pass the Eu markets in 5 to 10 years as more states regulate online gambling and online sport betting. the player value is much higher than the EU player and because of higher CPA, almost double.


In term of investing in the stock, I do own shares in XLM, better collective and Catania. And I personally think XLM is much cheaper than both of them. I mean look at Catena Business they have got lots of debts and more balance sheet than XLM and they have more or less the same profit but Catena market cap is like 3x XLMedia. Better collective has half of XLM profit but their market cap is 2x of xlm.

If Xlm media acts correctly on their new plan then we can see huge value in the future, including the opening US market opportunity.

Hope you guys all well.

[elsa7878] 02/3/2019 10:51

So what you are saying in a very informed way is to avoid XLM shares as the company is a busted flush. Correct?

[owenski] 02/3/2019 10:24

Great post Rysk

[albert zog] 02/3/2019 02:26

Do the Media assets have no sale value here ? XLM just closes out, no attempt to crystallise any value

[alphapig] 28/2/2019 12:22

Looks like another

[yump] 27/2/2019 16:15

I'm not at all sure whether a director who is good at running a business successfully is necessarily a good decision maker when it comes to investing. Primarily because a director cannot possibly be objective in the decision to buy shares in their own business. Pi's aren't even in the business and its difficult for them to be objective; PR 'roadshows' make that even more difficult.

The most successful directors' investments are those bought at 5p near startup when the business floats at 50p a few years later and they shed a load over the next few years. That doesn't require shrewd investment decisions, other than having a few bob to throw at shares.