Why are we again at 10.5p bid?

It doesn't add up...

Good Results + Strong buying pre results + Christmas online buying soon = Price drop

Then again some companies that have debt for equity hanging in the balance, poor results and bankruptcy around the corner and they go up!

Why sell now at a loss?

Wont that be a kick in the teeth when we see 13.5p 14p again!

Best of luck all.

Fantastic news + AGM = drop in price, this stock just continues to confuse me, hopefully the above points from the AGM will have an effect on the stock next week and for the weeks to come. The Institution will have to be named if they are buying large chucks, and the one we all have wished for better P.R. to stablise the share price.

?????????????? ther's nowt like good news for driving the share price down??????????????

:o(((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((

More stuff courtesy rival boards re the AGM

There were questions asked about the long term incentive plan (LTIP), in her reply Jane Tozer mentioned that the bonuses were capped and that they were less dilutive to shareholders than option schemes.
CC expected growth from the fuel card business for a number of years. This was very re-assuring as this division is and is likely to remain the main profit maker for the next few years.
No pension liabilities as the pension schemes are money purchase, so the company will not need to make adjustments for the pension accounting standard.
Continued focus on cutting costs. I forgot to ask which areas were being looked at.
APACS revenue expected to be around 1.4m this year and the contract is likely to continue into 2005. I was concerned that there might be significant closure costs, when this business does reach its end date but was re-assured that there would be actually be some savings.
I was puzzled by the resolution to grant the company the authority to buy back shares, when they had the same authority in 2003 and didn't use it when the share price was much lower. The answer to this was that it had been discussed but there were other uses for the money at the time. In hindsight to me it looks like a lost opportunity but never mind. Unless there is a collapse in the stock market, I see little chance of the company buying back shares this year.
No plans for a dividend in the immediate future.
EPS this year will be held back by a rising tax charge, this is why Daniel Stewart are only estimating earnings of 1.4p despite higher profits. The company were able to make use of losses last year to reduce tax payable but would have to revert to a more normal tax rate this year. Richard Amos though did say that one of his jobs was to look at better utilising existing losses. I would like to think that the company is playing down expectations, so that they can beat their forecast and would hope for some increase in EPS but will have to wait till the interims to find out.
During the presentation there was a slide about attempted fraud, in which cards were held by people who shared the same address and people having the same telephone number but living at a different address etc. This illustrated the benefits of pooling knowledge of fraud attempts, so that a rejection at company A, could also help prevent a fraud at company B. It also underlined the importance of building up a critical mass of customers ('footprint'), to offer an improved level of service, which is exactly what RTD have done. I think in future this will serve as a barrier to entry of competitors.
Verified by Visa had signed up very few retailers. Carl thought this was because retailers were aiming at one click purchasing and VBV requires customers to enter further details.
The company provided the proxy votes for the proposed resolutions. All motions had 20m or 7% of the total No of shares in favour. This proves to me that most shares are held by private shareholders, who I think in the most part don't bother
to vote.

I came away thinking that as small shares go, this was a safe hold with a low risk of unexpected surprises:-

Impressive cash generation
Market leading fuel card business in oz, expected to grow
CNP growing quickly and also in a good position according to the financial insight article quoted in the Daniel Stewart note
Good forward visibility of revenues because of the transaction based business model
Potential to make earnings enhancing acquisitions with the accumulating cash


And elsewhere

UK's Retail Decisions encouraged by Q1 trade
LONDON, April 30 (Reuters) - Britain's Retail Decisions Plc (LSE: RTD.L - news) expects to meet full-year market forecasts after an encouraging start to the year, the credit-card fraud-prevention firm said on Friday.

"Trading in the first quarter has been encouraging across each of our geographies, and fully consistent with achieving the full-year external consensus profit expectations," Chairman Nigel Whittaker will tell shareholders at the company's annual general meeting later today.

Analysts expect a pre-tax profit of 6.0 million pounds ($10.6 million) for the 2004 calendar year, according to Reuters Research.

Trading in the first three months was boosted by the renewal of a fraud-prevention contract with a major U.S. telecoms company and a new contract to process payment transactions for a leading Internet travel agency, Whittaker said.

The shares were trading at 20-1/4 pence at 0913 GMT, flat from Wednesday close and valuing the firm at 59 million pounds.

Last month, Retail Decisions said the increase in Internet shoppers was lifting demand for its card-not-present anti-fraud system. It posted a pre-tax profit of 2.9 million pounds for 2003, up from a 9.4 million pounds loss the previous year.

what the hell is happening, what happened to RTD stabilizing this stock price?

Tokyo

What is happening is a buying opportunity in a profitable company.

Hope this will encourage them further

---------------------------------------------

Retail Decisions PLC
04 May 2004

Notification of Directors' interest


Following the passing of all resolutions at the AGM held on April 30th 2004 to
approve the Retail Decisions PLC Long Term Incentive Plan ('LTIP'), the
Non-Executive Directors of the Board approved the following awards to Directors
under the Plan:


Employee Face value of the award No. of shares
subject to LTIP

Carl Clump, Chief Executive 165,000 award 814,814
Richard Amos, Finance Director 97,500 award 481,481



Full details of the plan are included in the Circular to Shareholders dated 19th
March 2004. The date of grant of the awards is April 30th 2004 and the closing
price of the Company's ordinary shares prior to the date of grant was 20.25
pence.

I do wish they'd stop posting 'GOOD NEWS' it's proving very expensive!!! ;-((((

apple & All RTD Holders - I can see it's a great buying oppotunity, but I already hold enough in this stock, the drop in the past couple of trading days has lost me over 3,000 pounds. The company is performing well, the figures posted for expected profit, very conservative, which would all bring about an expected share price target of 31 pence. looks like I shall be holding these until after September, just disheartens me to keep seeing this stock being played with and drops that just don't make sense.

The one thing I shall nt be doing is selling out now for a loss, as I believe the fundamentals are still very strong with this company, although the ups and downs of this company's stock price is just not for the faint hearted.

Good luck to all holders

;~{..

In my opinion the message from the AGM was "steady as she goes". A lot of small investors like Tokyo had bought on the hope of some "unexpected" good news but although the news was good, it was not any better than expected. Even RTDs tame brokers could not find anything to cause them to raise their price target.

As a result of this, the price has dropped as some of these hopeful investors bail out. Exactly the same thing happened when the results were released. The price rose on hope to a level that proved unsustainable.

I agree with FerdFord. A nice steady rise. Look at last year. There was the same concerns raised then as raised today. However from last March to now it has been great. I do not think we can expect such an increase this year.

..... ;o{{

Will be keeping my eye on this one, but seems as if all the excitment has gone for now(didn't even get the regular blue friday), don't think we shall be seeing 25 pence (my target price)until September time (next set of results.) Will be holding until then, there is no way I'm selling out at a loss, when all that is needed with this share is time.

Quite a strong presence of chip and pin adverts on the radio just recently, wonder if this could help RTD develop new business??

I got that horible sinking feeling again :~{{...

it does look like that forcast 25p/30p not going to happen long time yet, anyone able to tell me this wrong?

I don't understand the figures. the total count of buys appears to be more than sells on the Watchlist and trades but the the sums of buys and sells don't reflect this. Why???

i have about 40 companies on my watchlist and so far today everything is down, i have no blue on my screen at all, i`m sure this downtrend for RTD is just a reflection on the market in general.

From Fundamentalist post 1128 , Am I right to think that the strengtening of the US dollar will be good for RTD. So the rise of US interst rates will not be a disadvantage after all....

RTD have earnings in US and more importantly currently in Australia. Hence, the higher the relevant $/ rate is bad for RTD.

ie $10m revenue at 1.8$ to = 5.6m
$10m revenue at 1.7$ to = 5.9m

Hence the lower the rate the better for RTD.

Also worth bearing in mind is the price of oil. A large part of RTDs business is the fuel cards in australia. The higher oil prices go, petrol prices go up, the spend on fuel cards go up and RTDs revenue from them go up. Hence when the interims are announced, I would expect very strong results from the fuel card business.

these are now trading on a future PE (on basic EPS) of 12. Market conditions are bad, all the indices are down with the tech ones hardest hit. IMHO this is now way to low priced, but then what do I know. I am topping up with more for the long term. Good luck all holders!!!!!

Douggie,

A severe hammering for all shares today. It also appears that a bunch of traders have been kicking RTD around like a football again.

As soon as normal service is resumed to the markets in general (could be tomorrow though more likely Wednesday), don't be surprised if there are some large upswings in RTD's price.

It's a roller coaster ride.

OG