Tag: LoopUp

What To Do Before You Die, and Avoiding Doing So

Many of the readers of this blog will not be in the springtime of their lives. They therefore might be susceptible to the coronavirus. I thought it was worthwhile therefore to cover how you can prepare for that eventuality. This is not a “bucket list” of things to do before you die but how to ensure your family and executors are prepared for the eventuality. As someone who has had a serious medical condition for many years, this is a subject I have spent some time on so probably have some expertise in the matter.

First make sure you have drawn up a will, and that it has been updated since there have been any changes in your life – for example new partners or offspring. Also check the appointed executors are still able and willing to act. It’s very worthwhile using a solicitor to help you draw up a will or revise one rather than trying to do it yourself. It’s one of the few bits of legal work that are usually low cost.

But there are several other additional documents you need to prepare. A “Letter of Wishes” for how you wish your personal chattels to be disposed of will be helpful to your executors. This can help to ensure that items of particular interest to your partner or children go to the right home. It can also be useful to cover what happens to cash in joint bank or deposit accounts to avoid any doubt.

One problem that is relatively new is what happens to “digital assets” such as internet accounts and associated log-ins. So it’s also helpful to provide a “Letter of Wishes – Digital Assets” that says something like this: “I hereby grant my executors under my will the right to access such digital asset accounts by using the log-ins and passwords mentioned and assigning the rights to use those assets to any person they see fit, or in the case where the accounts contain assets of value they are to be bequeathed under the terms of my will”. Obviously you also need to tell your executors where they can find all the account details and passwords.

A common problem for executors is actually locating all the assets of a deceased. You should therefore also provide a document that covers “What to do when I die” that spells out where they are. For example which brokers/platforms or banks hold the shares and cash or where the share certificates are held. This should also indicate what immediate cash can be accessed if your partner will need that in the short term, and perhaps what should be done with any share holdings, i.e. whether they should be liquidated or who will manage them going forward. In addition it should tell your executors where your will can be found.

The above covers the really bad news, but there are other things you should consider putting in place in case you don’t actually die but are incapacitated for some period of time. A “Lasting Power of Attorney for “Property and Financial Affairs” and for “Health and Welfare” are worth putting in place. These enable a partner or anyone else you appoint to financially administer your affairs and make decisions about personal care if you are unable to do so.

It is also worthwhile putting in place an Advance Medical Directive (Living Will) covering medical treatment. For example it can ensure that where there is little chance of survival or you may end up mentally incapacitated that medical treatment is halted rather than pursued. Tell your partner or offspring where the aforementioned documents can be found. In reality the chance of a Living Will being needed to be considered is relatively low and with the current state of the NHS they may not want to spend a lot of effort on keeping you alive, but you never know.  There are template Advance Medical Directives available on the internet.

Of course, one essential thing to do is to avoid catching coronavirus if you possibly can by self-isolating and avoiding contact with any other humans. One way to avoid meetings is to use conference calling facilities. I attended a discussion group meeting of investors last night using Zoom and it worked quite well. The group were generally rather pessimistic for the economy but they are often are. They had few new investment ideas with a number moving into cash. The difficulty is that it is not at all clear how long the epidemic will last and many businesses have closed down for the duration. The economic impact could be enormous and Government money creation and debt raising is of major concern. It could take some years for the economy to recover, with possibly higher taxes required.

US listed Zoom is just one of many video or telephone conference services, but according to one tweet I saw this morning, its stock market valuation is now 50% more than all listed US airlines! With EasyJet (EZJ) grounding its entire aircraft fleet today, you could probably include UK airlines in that calculation also. A UK competitor for Zoom is LoopUp (LOOP) in which I hold a very few shares. I have not done a detailed technical comparison of the respective products. Zoom certainly seems to be popular and has been growing rapidly as businesses move to video conferencing from telephone conference calls. These are relatively low-cost products but there is also Skype which is free. That works relatively well for one-to-one or small groups but I often find it not easy to use. It has a confusing user interface and is technically unreliable.

In summary, try to stay alive!

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )

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Stock Market Turmoil – Don’t Sit There Awaiting a Rebound

The virus epidemic is causing major disruption to businesses and our personal lives. Thank god that we have the internet so we can conduct business and do our shopping without leaving home. But the UK is seen as one of the victims in the world so the pound is falling to parity with the dollar for the first time for many, many years. Meanwhile the Governor of the Bank of England is saying that he will print as much money as needed – unlimited “helicopter” money to lend to businesses to keep them afloat. Will that stop a recession? I doubt it. But to look on the bright side, it may be a short one.

China seems to have stopped the virus from spreading with no new domestic cases and movement restrictions being lifted. There are also some technical developments that might assist particularly in testing for the virus. But the UK is gearing up for a major epidemic and major stress on the NHS.

I am in isolation trying to avoid catching the disease as I certainly don’t wish to have another spell in intensive care as I had a few years ago. I ended up with “intensive care neuropathy” where all your nerves weaken. Had to learn to walk again, rather like Kenneth More playing Douglas Bader in Reach for the Sky. I recovered but it can be a very dangerous syndrome.

The news from my stock market portfolio is mixed based on the latest announcements which every company is now issuing. LoopUp (LOOP) who provide tele-conferencing is up over 40% today after a very long decline, and there are few other rises today, but overall my portfolio is still slightly down. It was not helped by 4Imprint (FOUR) reporting today that sales have declined by 40% over the last 3 days as against the prior year. They sell promotional merchandise and this an example surely of companies cutting back on non-essential marketing spend and events.

The commercial property market is interesting in that yet again a number of open-funded property funds have suspended redemptions. It is interesting to look back at the share price of TR Property Investment Trust (TRY) which I have held for many years. Such trusts have been badly affected by the gloom in the property sector even if the property companies they invest in may hold long leases and not much exposure to retail or other virus sensitive areas. But the share price of TRY is now back to the level it was in 2013. That’s down over 50% from its peak in February. If the recession is short, that will surely be seen as an anomaly.

It’s also worth remembering that valuing companies on short-term results or trading statements gives you a very poor estimate of what a company is really worth. What matters is the discounted future profits over many years. One bad year has relatively little impact. But when investors are panicking and simply reducing their exposure to the market by moving into cash, then valuations can become both unrealistic and extreme.

The Government’s response is probably a sound one. They are betting that the recession will be short and that keeping companies afloat by short-term loans is better than letting them go bust which would create a snowball effect on suppliers and staff employment.

But some sectors are clearly going to be dire in the short-term. Hospitality is one. Accesso (ACSO) who provide technology to visitor attractions published results yesterday. They might benefit from a low pound but their sales relate directly to visitor numbers to their customers’ sites. I cannot imagine US theme parks being very busy this year and solving queuing problems might be seen as irrelevant. They also declared a write off of $53.6 million on past capitalised software costs. With a new CEO this was hardly surprising to me given the shape of the business and the failure to find a buyer for it recently. Investors will need to be in for the long-haul if they wish to stay on board, but many clearly do not given the share price performance of late. The risk is that some buyer will come along and pick up the useful technology and customer contracts at a bargain price.

One aspect of the virus epidemic I am particularly unhappy with is that the market turmoil and declines have generated a lot more work on my portfolio than usual. Unlike some people, I do not simply sit there expecting shares to bounce back up in due course. Some may but others will not. Some companies may go bust or become a shadow of their former selves while other new opportunities arise. The trend to internet shopping and services will be accelerated. For example one of my eighty-year old neighbours has just opened a supermarket web shopping account for the first time. Ocado (OCDO) has had difficulty keeping up with demand and even had to close their App service temporarily. But once people get into the habit of shopping on-line they won’t revert to old ways. The future for the High Street looks ever bleaker.

There is one other aspect to consider. Will a short, sharp recession be quickly forgotten about or will it prompt the definite end of the bull market? Will share investment go out of fashion after many investors realise they have lost a pile of money from this incident? The general economy may quickly recover but the stock market might not. I don’t know the answer to that question but as always I won’t be guessing at it – just following the trend.

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )

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ShareSoc Seminar – Ideagen, Zegona, LoopUp and Anexo

Some brief notes on the ShareSoc Seminar I attended yesterday (10/7/2019). There were four companies presenting:

Ideagen (IDEA): This company has presented many times before to ShareSoc members and those who invested after the first such event will have done very well indeed (I hold the stock). This time we had CEO Ben Dorks presenting rather than Exec Chairman David Hornsby and Ben did a good job explaining their buy and build strategy for this software company. They now have 4,700 customers including many big names and 7 out of 10 UK audit firms – not that this seems to have solved most of the poor audit quality I commented on in a previous blog post probably because box ticking does not help when “judgmental” issues and failing to challenge management seem to be the big problems there.

Organic growth might be slightly reduced this year due to transition to an SAAS model but they plan to add £30 million in revenue from acquisitions. There were some interesting comments on how they integrate acquisitions – they “ideagenise” the companies, the people and the products!

A question arose concerning the apparent low return on capital of this company (as reported by Stockopedia et al). I have looked at this in the past and the key is to look at the cash flows and return on cash invested, as David Hornsby suggested.

Zegona (ZEG). This is an investment company that is investing in European telecoms operators where they think there are opportunities for consolidation. In essence a “buy, fix and sell” strategy. Their main investment at present is in Spanish company Euskaltel.

The financial ratios may look attractive but I doubt I can keep track of European telecoms operators and their regulatory environment so this looks like a “special situation” to me that is for the experts in this area only.

LoopUp (LOOP). This company provides teleconferencing services. I hold a very few shares in this company whose value has halved after a recent profit warning related to forecast sales revenue falling. It was therefore particularly disappointing that the Co-CEO who was due to present did not appear due to sickness. Instead we have Gareth Evans from Progressive Digital Media who provide research reports on the company. He covered the business well and he mentioned they use LoopUp themselves.

Recent problems allegedly relate to the slow build-up of new “pods” (sales teams), diversion of experienced sales staff into training and “general economic factors”. But I thought the general economy was doing well so I doubt that the latter is a good explanation.

One thing not mentioned in this presentation was the announcement on the same day that SFM UK Management (a subsidiary of Soros Fund Management) had acquired over 8% of the company so someone still has faith in it.

Progressive did supply their latest analysis of the company that shows forecast adjusted eps of 6.2p for this year and 8.5p next year which makes them not expensive on a p/e basis. I think this is one to monitor to see if there is no more bad news in which case it may be an opportunity to acquire a business with many positive characteristics.

But the share price fell again this morning. But that’s just following the trend in small cap technology stocks over the last few days – Ideagen included. That’s after a good positive run in such companies in the last few weeks. Small cap stocks are suddenly out of favour it seems and that’s nothing to do with Brexit as companies such as LoopUp and Ideagen will not be affected in any way and actually might benefit from the falling pound that has resulted from nervousness over Brexit.

Anexo (ANX). This is an interesting company that I had not come across before. It provides litigation and courtesy cars to impecunious drivers who have no-fault accidents. The company maintains a stock of vehicles to provide as courtesy cars but that includes a large number of Mercedes cars so not all their customers can be impecunious.

They mainly get their business from introductions from small vehicle repair shops, and claim a success rate of 98.5% in recovering from insurers. The latter consistently ignore claims until they are taken to court and just before a court hearing.

The management spoke well in their presentation and clearly have ambitions to grow the business substantially – they claim only 2% market share at present. But they do have to fund the cost of vehicle provision and legal costs before a claim is settled.

The business may be at risk of changes to the law on what can be recouped from third parties but it certainly deserves closer examination.

Just one general comment on the event. It is disappointing that several of the powerpoint presentations were poor. Too many words on them in too small a font and with not enough graphics to make the points they are trying to get across. This seems to be a common failing in small cap company presentations. The slides should support what the speaker is saying with a few key messages, not distract from the spoken words.

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )

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LoopUp Profit Warning and Brexit Party Policy

Conference calling AIM company LoopUp (LOOP) issued a trading statement this morning which contained a profit warning. At the time of writing the share price is down 47% on the day but it has been falling sharply in recent days which suggests the bad news had already leaked out.

This is an example of what happens when lofty growth expectations are revised downwards. Revenue is now expected to be down 7% on the previous market consensus and EBITDA down 20%. The company blames the shortfall on “subdued revenue across its long-term customer base” driven by macro-economic factors and diversion of sales staff into training new ones.

LoopUp is presenting at the ShareSoc seminar event on the 10th July so it will be interesting to hear what they have to say about this – see https://www.sharesoc.org/events/sharesoc-growth-company-seminar-in-london-10-july-2019/ . This news comes only a month after LoopUp held a Capital Markets Day when there was no hint of these problems. I did a report on that here: https://roliscon.blog/2019/06/07/broker-charges-proven-vct-performance-fee-and-loopup-seminar/

I do hold a few shares in LoopUp but thankfully not many.

Brexit Party Policy

I mentioned in a recent blog post that the Brexit Party is looking for policy suggestions to enable them to develop a platform for any prospective General Election. Here’s what I sent them with respect to financial matters:

  1. The personal taxation system is way too complicated and needs drastically simplifying. At the lower end the tax credit system is wide open to fraud while those on low incomes are taxed when they should not be. The personal tax allowance, both the basic rates, and higher rates, need to be raised to take more people out of tax altogether.
  2. The taxation of capital gains is also now too complicated, while tax is paid on capital gains that simply arise from inflation, which are not real gains at all. They should revert to being indexed as they were some years ago. For almost anyone, calculating your own tax that is payable is now way too difficult and hence requiring the paid services of accountants using specialist software.
  3. Inheritance tax is another over-complex system that wealthy people avoid by taking expert advice while the middle class end up paying it. It certainly needs grossly simplifying, or scrapping altogether as a relatively small amount of tax is actually collected from it.
  4. The taxation of businesses is inequitable with the growth of the internet. Small businesses, particularly retailers, pay a disproportionate level of tax in business rates while their internet competitors often avoid VAT via imports. VAT is now wide open to fraud and other types of abuse such as under-declarations, partly because of the EU VAT arrangements. VAT is in principle a simple tax and the alternative of a sales tax would create anomalies but VAT does need to be reformed and simplified.
  5. All the above tax simplifications would enable HMRC to be reduced in size and the time wasted in form filling by individuals and businesses reduced. Everyone would be a winner, and wasted resources and expenditure reduced.
  6. The taxation of company dividends on shares is now an example of the same profits being taxed twice – once in Corporation Tax on the company, and then again when those profits are distributed to shareholders. This has been enormously damaging to those who receive dividends and the lack of tax credits has also undermined defined benefit pension funds. The taxation of dividends should revert to how it once was.
  7. The regulation of companies and financial institutions needs very substantial reform with much tougher laws against fraud on investors. Not only are the current laws weak but the enforcement of them by the FCA/FRC is too slow and ineffective. Although some reforms have recently been proposed, they do not go far enough. Individual directors and senior managers in companies are not held to account for gross errors or downright fraud, or when they are, they get off too lightly. We need a much more effective system like they have in the USA, and better laws.
  8. Shareholder rights as regards voting and the receipt of information have been undermined by the use of nominee accounts. This has made it difficult for individual shareholders to vote and that is one reason why investors have not been able to control the excesses in director pay recently. The system of shareholding and voting needs reform, with changes to the Companies Act to bring it into the modern electronic world.
  9. The pay of directors and senior managers in companies and other organisations has got wildly out of hand in recent years, thus generating a lot of criticism by the lower paid. This has created social divisions and led partly to the rise of extreme left socialist tendencies. This problem needs tackling.
  10. Governance of companies needs to be reformed to ensure that directors do not set their own pay, as happens at present, but that shareholders and other stakeholders do so. Likewise shareholders and other stakeholders should appoint the directors.
  11. Insolvency law needs reform to outlaw “pre-pack” administrations which have been very damaging to many small businesses. They are an abuse of insolvency law.
  12. All the EU Directives on financial regulation should be scrapped (i.e. there should be no “harmonization” with EU regulations after Brexit). The MIFID regulations have added enormous costs to financial institutions, which have passed on their costs to their customers, with no very obvious benefit to anyone. Likewise the Shareholder Rights Directive might have had good objectives but the implementation has been poor because of the lack of knowledge on how financial markets operate in the UK. Other examples are the UCITS regulations which have not stopped Neil Woodford from effectively bypassing them, or the PRIIPS regulations which have resulted in misleading information being provided to investors.

Let me know if you have other suggestions, and of course the above policies might be good for adoption by other political parties in addition.

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )

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Broker Charges, Proven VCT Performance Fee and LoopUp Seminar

The Share Centre are the latest stockbroker to increase their fees. Monthly fee for an ISA account is going up by 4.2% to £5.00 per month with increases on ordinary share accounts and SIPPs also. This is the latest of a number of fee increases among stockbrokers and retail investor platforms. The Share Centre blame the required investment in technology development and “an increasing burden of financial regulation”. The latter is undoubtedly the result of such regulations as MIFID II imposed by the EU which has proven to be of minimal benefit to investors. As I was explaining to my sister over the weekend, this is one reason why I voted to leave the EU – their financial regulations are often misconceived and often aimed at solving problems we never had in the UK.

I received the Annual Report of Proven VCT (PVN) this morning – a Venture Capital Trust. Total return to shareholders was 10.3% last year, but the fund manager did even better. Of the overall profits of the company of £18.6 million, they received £7.7 million in management fees (i.e. they received 41% of the profits this year). That includes £5.6 million in performance fees.

Studying the management fee (base 2.0%) and the performance fee, I find the latter particularly incomprehensible. I will therefore be attending the AGM on the 3rd July to ask some pointed questions and I would encourage other shareholders to do the same. I am likely to vote against all the directors at this company.

I also received an Annual Report for Proven Growth & Income VCT (PGOO) and note that of the 4 directors, 2 have served more than 9 years and one is employed by the fund manager. So that’s three out of four that cannot be considered “independent” so I have voted against them. I would attend their AGM on the same day but the time is 9.30 which is not a good choice and would waste a whole day.

Yesterday I attended the “Capital Markets Day” of LoopUp (LOOP). This is an AIM listed company whose primary product is an audio conference call service. It’s just a “better mousetrap” to quote Ralph Waldo Emerson as 68% of the world are still using simple dial-in services rather than more sophisticated software products such as Zoom and WebEx. There are lots of other competitors in this field including Microsoft’s Skype which I find an appallingly bad product from past experience. Reliability and simplicity of use is key and LoopUp claimed to have solved this with no learning required, no software downloads or other complexities and high-quality calls aimed at the corporate market.

I have seen the company present before and do hold a few shares. This event was again a very professional sales pitch for the company and its product with no financial information provided. Yesterday they also covered the addition of video to their basic conference call service which was announced on the day, plus a new service for managed events/meetings. Video addition is probably an essential competitive advantage that was previously missing. They covered how their service is differentiated from the main competitors which was good to understand.

Last year they acquired a company called MeetingZone which has increased their customer base and revenue substantially and are transitioning the customers to the LoopUp product. Revenue doubled last year and is forecast to rise by about 50% in the current year. Needless to say the company is rated highly on conventional financial metrics and return on capital has been depressed by the cost of the acquisition. But one reason I like this company is that it’s very easy to understand what they do and what the “USP” is that they are promoting, plus their competitive position (many company presentations omit any discussion of competitors).

They also have an exceedingly good sales operation based on groups of people organised in “pods” which was covered in depth in the presentation. These only have team bonuses and the key apparently is to recruit “empathetic” people rather than “individualists”. Perhaps that is one reason 60% of them are female. As I said to their joint CEO, I wish I had seen their presentation some 30 or more years ago when I had some responsibility for a software sales function.

The latter part of this 3-hour event was an explanation of how the software/service is used by major international law firm Clifford Chance with some glowing comments on the company from one of their managers. Customer references always help to sell services.

In conclusion a useful meeting, but lack of financial information was an omission although “Capital Market” days are sometimes like that. But the positive was that they had both institutional investors and private investors whereas some companies deliberately discourage the latter from attending such events which I find most objectionable.

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )

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Tungsten, RedstoneConnect, Proactis, LoopUp, Mello and productivity

Yesterday there was an announcement by Tungsten Corporation (TUNG) that there was press speculation about a possible requisition of a general meeting to remove some of the directors, including the Chairman and CEO, and appoint others. This is likely to come from Odey Asset Management supported by other large investors the company understands. Their combined holdings could give them a good chance of winning any vote, or at least it would be a hard-fought proxy battle.

It would seem that the former CEO Edi Truell is involved in this initiative. It would be most unfortunate in my view if he returns to this business (and I did purchase a very few shares in the company after he departed which I still hold). Richard Hurwitz has done a good job in my view of turning this company from a financial basket case with very substantial annual losses into a sounder one. Revenue has been rising and costs have been cut although profits have been longer to appear than hoped. However the company does report that EBITDA was at breakeven for the first four months of the calendar year. It’s at least heading in the right direction now so I am unlikely to be voting for any such requisition.

I attended the Mello event at Hever yesterday and was hoping to get an update from Mark Braund on RedstoneConnect (REDS) where he was due to present. But his presentation was cancelled. Now we know why because an announcement this morning from the company said he was leaving. Perhaps he wants a new challenge. This was another basket case of a company where Mark turned it around in the two years he has been there. So some investors may not be pleased with his departure and the share price predictably dropped on the news. The new CEO will be Frank Beechinor who is currently the Chairman. He is also Chairman of DotDigital and clearly has experience of running IT companies so it’s probably a good choice. A new non-executive Chairman has been appointed (Guy van Zwanenberg).

The Mello event, organised by David Stredder of course, was held near Hever Castle in deepest Kent. I know some of the roads in the area as I live nearby but even so managed to get lost. Not the ideal location. But it was a useful event otherwise. I did an interview for Peter of Conkers Corner and sat on the panel covering the Beaufort case. Videos of both are likely to be available soon, and I will tweet links to them when they appear.

A company that did present at Mello was Proactis (PHD) with CEO Hamp Wall doing the talking. I was unsure of the potential future growth for the company as I thought the market for procurement software might be quite mature (i.e. most likely users had such a product/service). But not so it seems, particularly in the USA and their target vertical segments. Hamp spoke clearly and answered questions well. He is clearly an experienced IT sales/marketing manager. He said he was surprised though that the share price fell over 40% recently when they announced the loss of two of their largest customers. He thought it might fall 15%. I agreed with him that it seemed excessive. But the market does not like surprises.

Today I attended the AGM of LoopUp Group (LOOP) who sell conferencing software. They recently merged with a competitor named MeetingZone and it looks likely to double revenue and more than double profits if things go according to plan. The joint CEOs made positive noises about progress. The company is chaired by heavyweight Chairperson Lady Barbara Judge CBE which is somewhat unusual for this kind of company – at least heavyweight in terms of past appointments if not lightweight in person.

Tim Grattan was the only other ordinary shareholder present and may do a fuller report for ShareSoc. A disappointing turnout for a very informative meeting as both I and Tim asked lots of questions.

Tim advised me after I mentioned the Foresight 4 VCT fund raising that it was odd that no mention was made in the prospectus of the alleged illegal payment of a dividend. Is this not a “risk factor” that should have been declared he asked? That company and its manager seem to be turning a blind eye to that problem.

There was an interesting letter from Peter Ferguson in the Financial Times today. It covered the issue of a declining productivity growth in the UK and other countries aired in a previous article by Martin Wolf. This is certainly of concern to the Government and should be to all investors because only by increasing productivity can we get richer. Mr Ferguson suggested one cause was the negative impact of increasing regulation. He suggested it has three impacts: 1) more unproductive people appointed to monitor and enforce the regulations, 2) more compliance officers, and 3) less productivity as a result in companies due to sub-optimal practices. Perhaps fortuitously I am invested in a company that sells risk and compliance solutions. It’s certainly a growth area and there may be some truth in this argument. Has MIFID II reduced productivity in the financial sector with few benefits to show for it? I think it has.

But Rolls-Royce are going to improve the productivity in their business at a stroke. They just announced they are going to fire 4,600 staff. But are any of them risk and compliance staff?

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )

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LoopUp, Audioboom, Social Media Abuse and a VCT AGM

LoopUp (LOOP), a small AIM listed company that provides audio conferencing and in which I have a small holding, have announced a proposed acquisition of a company in the same business – MeetingZone Group. This will more than double the size of LoopUp so it constitutes a reverse takeover. As they are paying cash for MeetingZone it will be financed by a term loan and a large placing. The placing will be at 400p per share, when the share price last night was 435p so it’s only a small discount. The share price normally falls to the placing price in such circumstances but it actually rose today which suggests investors like the deal.

MeetingZone is profitable and is being acquired at 12 times EBITDA. The plan is to deliver a “timely transition of the MeetingZone Groups audio conferencing business to the LoopUp platform” as the announcement says. This is clearly potentially a significant step up in the size and profitability of the merged entity, but my slight concern is the risks involved in this transition as it means the customers will need to learn a new system. Such transitions are never easy.

Another small AIM company is Audioboom Group (BOOM) whose shares have been suspended for some time after they announced a proposed acquisition, with a fund raising to finance it. Yesterday they announced it had been impossible to complete the placing to fund the deal and the company now needs to raise some money just to cover its working capital needs. Audioboom is primarily a podcast hosting platform and revenue has been increasing but for the year to November 2017 it was still less than £5 million and the loss was expected to be a similar figure! Accounts have yet to be published though. Needless to say perhaps, I have never held shares in this company because I considered it to have an unproven business model. Such early stage companies are surely best financed via private equity who can accept the risks rather than public market investors. I wish them the best of luck in raising more funds.

But I did have some contact with the company after a certain person posted a podcast which contained abusive comments about me. So my lawyer asked politely that it be removed which the company did simply because it did not comply with their policies. The result was a torrent of abuse about Audioboom by the same aforementioned person which was totally uncalled for. But now the same person has been on the receiving end of an attack from someone else where he has even had to call in the police for assistance.

Postscript: Let me make it clear that I do not condone racist or other illegal communications of any kind. They can never be justified. I have only recently been informed of the content and likely reasons for it which has resulted in the aforementioned communication being referred to the police.

This is a typical example of the problems of social media and blogging sites which have been getting a lot of media coverage in the last few days. Facebook have reported that 2.5 million posts alone that included “hate speech” were removed in the last 3 months of 2017, and there were many more violent, terrorist or pornographic posts they also removed. However, they cannot easily identify lies, fake news, fraudulent advertisements and common abuse. In other words, the social norms about what should be “published” in a public forum are completely breaking down. Nobody can, nor does, police the internet.

This is now proving to be a major problem for anyone in public life such as politicians. Free speech is a good concept in essence, but when it degenerates to allowing irrational and unconsidered abuse and false allegations to be propagated then surely something needs to be done about it. The laws against “hate speech” and libel law hardly provide effective remedies to stop the kind of behaviour that is now becoming so prevalent. I suggest that the Government needs to undertake a full blown public inquiry into this problem.

It is particularly serious in the financial world where bad behaviour can affect the business of a company and its share price, effectively leading to “market abuse”.

Yesterday I attended the Annual General Meeting of Maven Income and Growth VCT 4 Plc (MAV4). There were only about half a dozen shareholders in attendance in the City of London.

I raised a number of issues and posed questions. Subjects covered were:

  1. The poor performance of the company last year, which I calculated to be a total return of 1.72% (i.e. less than inflation). Total return includes asset growth and dividends of course, and although the company paid out dividends of 12.45p last year representing a yield of 16.5% on the share price at the end of the year (tax free of course), it’s the total return that really matters. Otherwise shareholders are just getting their assets returned to them.
  2. Inadequate explanation for the poor performance in the Annual Report. It does mention that “one of the larger portfolio companies suffered a write down in value which diluted the overall performance in the financial year, but more explanation would have been preferable.
  3. The length of service of the board directors. Apart from director Bill Nixon, who represents the fund manager and which I do not accept should be a director simply for that reason, the other three directors including the Chairman have all served since 2004. So this is one of the few companies where I voted against the reappointment of all of them. I made it clear that the board should look at succession and they indicated they may do so.
  4. The high overhead costs in this VCT – total administration and management expenses I calculated to be 4.0% of net assets at year end, although Bill Nixon disputed this figure.
  5. There was a suggestion made that with high returns of cash to shareholders last year, and a new fund raising, there might have been some “cash drag” in the performance data.
  6. I questioned the impact of the new VCT regulations, and Bill Nixon said the market was getting “frothy” with valuations difficult to sustain. The inability to write debentures on investments limits the amount of control they will have in future. The manager has reshaped the investment team to adjust to the new focus – they now have 4 PHDs. They rarely back start-ups and prefer to back teams with successful track records – they don’t “want them to be learning on our money”.
  7. Advanced approval from HMRC on new investments is getting better (this has been a major concern for many VCTs of late as it delays closing deals). Now closer to 30 to 40 days. There is also a proposal for a “self-certification” scheme where a qualified independent person gives a positive opinion. This might be of assistance but there are still potential problems if a business is subsequently found not to qualify.
  8. The company is looking at using the funds raised to make 10 to 12 investments in the current year, so the new rules about what kinds of businesses can be invested in are apparently not proving to be a major problem. But Bill said the result is they are moving from investing in “old” economy companies to “new” economy runs. This is likely to mean that portfolio volatility will increase so overall returns (and hence dividends) may fluctuate more from year to year.
  9. Bill thought VCTs will raise less money this year so new offerings may be in high demand.

Votes were taken on a show of hands and the proxy counts circulated after the meeting. Only about 10% of shareholders voted which is the typical pathetic turnout these days from private shareholders in such companies. There were substantial votes against one resolution on share buy-backs but apparently this was mainly from one family who may not understand the issues.

In summary this was a useful meeting and worth attending. I am only holding this VCT for historic reasons after Maven took over management of previously problematic VCTs I invested in years ago. Performance has improved as a result but is still not great and high overhead costs would put me off investing more money in it. I am always surprised that such VCTs are able to raise more funds with such apparent ease.

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )

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