2014 – The Great Irish Share Valuation Project (Final – Part X)

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Aer Lingus Group, Dalata Hotel Group, Donegal Investment Group, Escher Group Holdings, Irish Residential Properties REIT, Irish shares, Irish Stock Exchange, Irish value investing, ISEQ, Karelian Diamond Resources, Mainstay Medical International, TGISVP, The Great Irish Share Valuation Project, TVC Holdings, Zamano

Continued from here:

[NB: Worth revisiting Part I if you’re a new reader, or you’d like a refresher on TGISVP & my approach to the whole project.]

OK, it’s the final furlong..! This should be my last TGISVP post – that will make it a grand total of 80 Irish companies, all covered in very random order since February. Except this last post – I deliberately withheld DCP:ID & ZMNO:ID ’til I got around to posting separate write-ups for each, plus I’ve only just added another 3 (recent) Irish IPOs. I also debated including 3 other vaguely ‘Irish’ stocks, but decided (somewhat arbitrarily) against them in the end…

[FYI, my 3 rejections were:

– Kennady Diamonds (KDI:CN):   Dermot Desmond has long been involved here – he currently owns a 17.5% stake & the Chairman Jonathan Comerford’s actually an investment manager with IIU. However, the company has no other Irish connections, and I’ve never noticed any kind of Irish PI/institutional following for the stock.

– Kennedy Wilson Europe Real Estate (KWE:LN):   KWE’s a new fund launched by Kennedy-Wilson Holdings (KW:US), focused on investing primarily in real estate & real estate loans in the UK, Ireland & Spain. While the fund’s already completed a chunky Irish acquisition, one would expect Irish assets will ultimately be the smallest component of the portfolio (considering the relative size of the UK/Spanish economies & property markets).

– Metro Baltic Horizons (MET:LN):  MET’s another of those funds launched back in 2006 – focused on property development in the Baltic States & St. Petersburg, and targeting a minimum 25% IRR. Aaah, those were the days, eh..?! Garrett Kelleher & Dermot Desmond/IIU (again!) originally backed the company (with a 27% stake between them), and after some farcical/fraudulent events along the way, the board’s now comprised of a senior IIU executive & two other Irish directors. MET has become a cash/litigation shell & a suspension of its listing’s now imminent – but we should hopefully see some new proposals (inc. a continuation of MET’s listing) from the board shortly.]

So, without any further ado – let’s dive right in & finish up:

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Zoom, Zoom…Zamano!

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activist investor, Irish shares, Irish value investing, mobile content, mobile marketing, mobile payment, Pageant Holdings, Ross Conlon, Zamano, ZMNO

Zamano plc (ZMNO:ID, ZMNO:LN) is a leading Irish/UK provider of games, videos, music, apps & other digital content to mobile users (D2C, Direct-To-Consumer), and mobile messaging/marketing solutions for businesses (B2B, Business-To-Business). It’s also terribly misunderstood & neglected – the share price is down 25% in the past six months (vs. the ISEQ up 4%). So, loath as I am, we should first tackle some:

Risks & Misconceptions

i) ‘They just sell ringtones?!’:   No, they sell all kinds of digital content. Especially to Millennials, whose attention span’s as fleeting as Lee Evans between twitches – which means they’re a perfect target for the cheap impulse buys Zamano offers.

ii) ‘Oh, and porn!’:   No. No. No, they bloody well don’t…

iii) ‘What about smartphones?’:   Zamano primarily interacts with users via SMS (plus MMS, WAP, etc.), so smartphones must be killing them, right? Er no, as Portio Research points out: ‘SMS is not dead. SMS is still the king…’. For Zamano, smartphones represent more opportunity than threat:

– The SMS share of the pie may shrink, but the pie keeps growing. More & more people are forgetting their laptops & and are now living online 24/7 via phones (& tablets) – they’re all a potential target market for Zamano. And smartphones have allowed the company to upgrade & customize its D2C content, and to migrate its advertising online, thereby enabling more effective customer acquisition. Like so many tech companies, ZMNO’s really a sales & marketing company – so management’s ultimately agnostic, they’ll embrace whatever technology(s) deliver the best revenue/profit opportunities.

– If that’s via apps, that’s OK too… Because people have to get paid eventually, free/dollar apps won’t hack it, especially when it comes to regularly updated content. Maybe in-game/app purchases & advertising become the norm, but I suspect we’ll see an inevitable migration (back) to a subscription model – a far more stable/valuable revenue stream for companies. Just look at the evolution of online music: Downloading’s dead now, streaming’s where it’s at…maybe even Apple’s finally got the message!

– As for Zamano’s B2B business, SMS will be an attractive marketing tool for years to come. I mean, when did you last read your spam email? But we all still love that little dopamine fix when a new text message pings…we can’t help reading it! For companies, SMS is a simple, immediate & compelling medium for reaching out & marketing to customers. Combine it with geolocation and/or mobile payment technologies, and it offers intriguing new opportunities.

iv) ‘Don’t they have a crap reputation?’:   Sure…if you want to believe the trolls. Yes, how dare they charge for that sub. you forgot about? Why don’t you complain about the skinny jeans you bought last week too, or the hangover you spent good money on last night? I blame the chattering classes – they tut-tut over the hoi polloi buying such chavtastic tat. Then we have nanny regulators like Comreg, who act like they’re waging a holy war to atone for the sins of the Irish banking regulator… Yes, Zamano has to compete with some dodgy rivals, but it also has a fiduciary duty to its investors. Shady practices might appear tempting, but when you consider the risks for a listed company…it’s never worth it. And because ZMNO’s listed (& highly visible), the regulator inevitably targets them first. I’m confident we can rely on management to maintain standards & compliance accordingly.

Donegal Investment Group (DCP:ID)

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activist investors, DCP, Donegal Creameries, Donegal Investment Group, Ian Ireland, Irish shares, Irish value investing, Monaghan Middlebrook Mushrooms, Ronnie Wilson, share repurchase, shareholder value

Time flies… I published my Donegal Creameries – Low Fat Diet write-up just over a year ago. Quite obviously, it’s been a successful call 🙂 :

In my original post, I referenced the closing DCP:ID share price (on Fri, May-3rd, 2013) of EUR 3.63. The following Tuesday (the Monday was May Day), the stock rallied 28%, before closing up 18.5% at EUR 4.30. [Another endorsement: My very first suggestion was a name change…which occurred just 2 months later!] A subsequent march higher, at periodic intervals, culminated in the stock doubling after 10 months (i.e. in Mar-2014). Since then, we’ve suffered a 17% retracement – so today’s EUR 6.00 share price seems like a bargain, eh?!

2014 – The Great Irish Share Valuation Project (Part IX)

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Conroy Gold & Natural Resources, Dragon Oil, FBD Holdings, First Derivatives, Greencore Group, Hibernia REIT, Independent News & Media, Irish shares, Irish Stock Exchange, Irish value investing, ISEQ, Norish, TGISVP, The Great Irish Share Valuation Project

Continued from here:

[NB: Worth revisiting Part I if you’re a new reader, or you’d like a refresher on TGISVP & my approach to the whole project.]

Company:   First Derivatives

Prior Post(s):   2012 & 2013

Ticker:  FDP:LN

Price:   GBP 1,070p

It’s been a wild ride for investors in the past year:  A year ago, FDP looked fairly valued to me – and for much of 2013, I wasn’t far wrong, with the shares clocking modest gains. But FDP took off abruptly in November…by January, the shares had almost doubled within 2 months & tripled within 6 months. With profits down in the interim results, I suspect this rally was more of a delayed response to FDP’s Aug-Nov news flow (with new contracts reported with Republic Wireless, the NYSE & ASIC). These all highlighted the capability & flexibility of the company’s Delta products/platform to deal with Big Data, both financial and non-financial. That’s a sexy pitch right now for investors & they responded accordingly… As usual, the mugs were the last to be sucked in – it’s no great surprise to see they’ve lost a third of their investment since January, with no particular reprieve in sight.

Even at these less elevated levels, I suspect the shares remain over-valued. While FDP continues to rack up attractive revenue growth, the rest of its accounts don’t paint such a pretty picture. Operating margins continue to compress (now between 11-12%), earnings growth is non-existent & the outstanding share count is mounting steadily. More troubling is the lack of operating free cash flow (cash generated from operations, less PPE & intangibles). However, this has been offset by residential property sales in the past couple of years – unfortunately, this source of cash should dry up fairly soon. Perhaps more troubling is the continued reliance on consulting (almost 75% of revenue), rather than software sales. This is in response to the industry’s need for further cost-cutting, consolidation & compliance, rather than renewed secular growth. But it’s 5 years now since the end of the financial crisis. Perhaps there’s more of the same work to come, but I worry it’ll dry up & the company will suddenly have a death valley to cross…before we see a genuine return to growth in the finance industry.