Company Profile

YooMedia plc is one of the fastest growing interactive entertainment companies in the UK.
Since 1997 we have been developing and launching leading B2C consumer brands in the gaming and community sectors. We also work in a B2B capacity with leading brand owners, agencies, content developers and broadcasters to design and develop their interactive content strategies.

Led by Executive Chairman Dr. Michael Sinclair and Group Managing Director Neil MacDonald, YooMedia has assembled a highly experienced management team that possesses a unique blend of skills and experience in the areas of Digital TV, Internet and mobile phone services and technology.

With main office locations in London, Exeter and Maidstone, YooMedia manages core assets including:

Over 30 office locations throughout the UK alone

State-of-the-art studio, production and post-production facilities at our Wapping location.

UK broadcast return path & bandwidth owner

Fully fledged UK Bookmaker License

Database with over 350K UK singles

SMS Engine access with international reach

Fully staffed 50 seat Customer Contact Centre in Maidstone, Kent

YooMedia Dating & Chat - Our dating subsidiary company manages the oldest and largest UK-owned dating brands including Dateline, Club Sirius and Avenues. YooMedia Dating has over 20 office locations throughout the UK and also manages YooChat, our world-leading interactive chat service found on UK digital cable on the Telewest platform (platform extensions planned for 2005).

YooMedia Gambling & Games - Combining the brands of Avago and Channel 425 (in partnership with William Hill) YooMedia is on the leading-edge of interactive fixed odds, casino and poker gambling services for digital TV, the web and 3G mobile phones. Our gaming business also manages YooPlay, the only interactive just for fun games channel found on all four Digital TV platforms in the United Kingdom.

YooMedia Enhanced Solutions (YES) - YES works with brand owners, agencies, content owners and broadcasters to clarify the options, define the strategies and deliver the interactive content that enhances consumer and audience experiences. YES customers include the BBC, Nestle, Celador, William Hill, Channel 4, ZipTV, The Cartoon Network and HR Owen.

Couldnt agree more EW , This thread has firmed up my belief in some shares and made my mind up on others.(YOO in particular) the short list we have drawn up could be quite sensational! Hers's hoping

I wonder if the 'Fancy A Flutter' online gambling site, due to be launched any time now, will develop into a pure online boookmaker. Bets can be taken on sporting events and other activies.

One independant research group, Screendigest, forecasts gross online gambling receipts in the U.K. will rocket from 260m last year to 1.8billion in 2007. The deregulation of the gambling industry is key here. The general public will become increasingly addicted to all forms of gambling, as the opportunitys for this activity will increase.

This is only one of the many reasons why Yoomedia are 'dirt cheap'. In August, 'Fancy a Flutter' aquired an independant bookmakers license. The business plan is clear for all to see. Mr Sinclair has stated our gambling services will launch on mobile phones, allowing consumers to gamble with 'YOO' on SKY, Cable, Online and soon on their mobiles.

Well all we need now is a mention in Investors Chronicle hopefully.

Another nice price rise today, a spot of profit taking going on but holding steady. I have got a feeling that something big is on the cards in the not to distant future.

IC article today was positive, although 'good value' rather than outright buy. Again, concentrated on the MMTV deal and EVO figures. Hopefully this will support the price this time round rather than another subsidence (I have my full quota!)

Have a look at the ASC where I have posted the first evaluation of the nominated portfolio (shares to double as quick as ASC) and YOO leads the way - good time to start! Room for one more nomination this weekend. (see also willfagg in 87 which refers to the ASC bb).

Finally, a big thank you to mactavish for 'running' a very informative bb and spotting the news breaks.

Eric

Interesting article on the NHS IT budget, on Ceefax this morning. Talks of the eventual cost of modernising the computer network, to be up to 5 times the original estimate.

Also mentions the ongoing project to deliver to every citizen, an electronic patient record. This represents a golden opportunity to Yoomedia, to provide access to one's health records via digital television.

Now is there a natural progression for our existing NHS work? Next year booking GP appointments has already been mentioed by the CEO as likely. Perhaps Yoomedia intend to use the credibilty gained from running the existing NHS contract to successfully bid for the patient records contract, when the opportunity comes along.

Perhaps the directors had this in mind when buying MMTV! Either way, Yoomedia now have a greater chance of winning the NHS patient record contract, as they already have the existing 3 year deal.

http://www.whooshgroup.com/home.html


Visit the above link and read the scrolling text below, to get the some of the latest news from Whoosh.

"The BBC has asked Whoosh to take the massively popular celebrity shares game Celebdaq onto the mobile channel, allowing shares in Rebecca Loos to be bought on the move as well as at www.bbc.co.uk"

"Over 450k Who Wants To Be A Millionaire viewers have now tried to get on the show via sms since November 03 driving overall participation up by 70%"

"Look out for both Test the Nation and Personality Test on BBC1 over the next few weeks and try to beat the studio audience by playing on your mobile"


The mobile element means multiple participation is possible, by a group of people, perhaps a family group or friends enjoying a night in. This is one of the features of TriggerTV, Whoosh, in that everyone can play, with no disputes over the remote control or computer.

Yoomedia enjoy an excellent relationship with the BBC, helped tremendously by Mr Docherty's time at the corporation, as Deputy Director of Television and Director of New Media. Whoosh's hard work in integrating their mobile technology, into the BBC mix, is equally as important. Mr Bainbridge was the Deputy Marketing Director at Channel 5, increasing it's market share from 5.8% to 6.4%, driving turnover past 200m.

It's not just Wooshfull thinking!

http://www.kerching.tv

mac

I think my only doubts about the patients record contract potential is the security issue. The problem would be that the ability to deliver the health record on a TV set is hardly keeping it private between the patient and his doctor. With computer technology, security is offered through various techniques to confidential information such as banking records. I am not aware that any of YOO's current areas of interest have a security angle. Even the NHS project, I expect, only deals with public domain information.

I agree a really key advantage held by YOO are the connections of their key people. In addition to the BBC, the public sector contacts and clout brought by Baroness McDonagh and Lord Alli must be very considerable, not to mention their credibility.

Volume seems to be slowing to a trickle although there are clearly buyers at the present price. The question is: when will the next positive news be to drive the share further forward. One possibility is a revision from EVO to take account of MMTV. Based on last year, a trading update should be provided January giving a view on the annual results. There have been seven major news items on contracts or acquisitions since December which suggests one or two more this year. The Shares play of the week brought the share back to the current position. I've reduced my position somewhat, fairly neutral re price, to build a position in the 'ASC Challenge Portfolio' but YOO is still at about 1/6th of my own portfolio. But I am an impatient type!

Eric

The SP is starting to behave in the same manner as last autumn. Moves up on thin volume with a good spread. Then an RNS hits and the SP spikes up, before more consolodation, then another RNS............

Sooner or later, Whoosh's patented technology, enabling 1.8 million text messages to be processed and time stamped each hour, will be intergrated into main stream quiz shows. Assume a charge of 10p per text for the player, although it may be 20p, with players sending at least 10 text messages per show, with each message time stamped.

Get the calculator out and project some revenue figures based on your own assumptions, ie: number of players, how many shows.

The market value of Yoomedia can easily be justified by this divison of the company alone. Last week, shares magazine described the SP as 'dirt cheap'. I can only reiterate thier analysis.

You can buy only 35k but sell 75k..... so things are pretty tight in terms of stock supply with the mm's any decent buying volume and we will have lift off...... bring on the news.

Just ticked up again 28p to buy, stll cheap imho.

30k buy just went through at full offer price 28p looking good.

http://www.yoomedia.com

Website updated again.

Presentation much improved, slicker with information on Yoomedia's divisions, products, expertly presented on front page.

Another nice price rise this morning, people are still buying at the full offer price of 29p. I have a feeling that a big buyer is on the scene that's why they keep raising the price. The MM's want your shares as they are short of stock, well they won't be getting mine. There again there could be some good News just around the corner.

YooMedia plc is a UK based interactive entertainment group that manages dating, gaming, games and chat businesses across the core interactive technologies of digital TV, the internet and mobile phone.

Our brands include Dateline, which along with sister brands Club Sirius and Avenues form the UKs largest and most established dating business; FancyaFlutter, one of the leading fixed odds gaming portals on the web and Sky Interactive; YooPlay, the only games channel available on all four UK digital TV platforms; and YooChat, the only interactive TV chat service in the UK.

YooMedia has also pioneered the use of mobile phones for real time audience interaction with TV and radio programmes. Our TriggerTV and Whoosh technologies, which are exclusive to YooMedia and protected by international patents, have been responsible for powering the audience mobile phone component for some of the highest rated programmes on the BBC, ITV, Five, Fox Entertainment and the Cartoon Network.

Our public sector arm, iPublic, has been selected by the government as the only dedicated interactive TV company for the E-voting Framework.

YooMedias partners include Sony Digital, which has a substantial shareholding in the group and a representative on the board.

http://www.whooshgroup.com/rtms/rtms.html

Whoosh have significantly invested in the development of the only high volume cellular messaging and processing platform available in the UK - The RTMS Platform.

With international patents pending, the RTMS Platform is at the core of our offering. It is the first UK cellular infrastructure to allow 1.8 million mobile messages to be processed in any given hour across all national networks.

This massively outstrips the current capacity and overcomes the creative and promotional shackles inherent with such restrictive through-put.

Critically, the RTMS Platform also provides sufficient capacity for huge numbers of alternate data message types such as MMS as well as SMS.

This unique volume proposition allows both brand and media owners to look at the opportunities afforded by mobile messaging in an entirely new way.

This is not new news This is an article penned in the Guardian by the Yoomedia CEO David Docherty from earlier this year.

It gives an excellent vision of the possible future scenarios for iTV in the public sector and also gives a glimpse behind the scenes at the real opportunities in this arena for Yoomedia.

Remember that this was printed before the fundraising, the appointment of Lord Alli and Margaret McDonagh and the acquisition of MMTV. It makes essential reading for anyone serious about investing in YOO who should now consider the implications of David Dochertys vision in the light of the recent acquisition and the NHS contract.

If you were ever in any doubt on how big a part iTV will play in the public sector and how seriously YOO will feature in this future this should help you make up your own mind.


http://media.guardian.co.uk/mediaguardian/story/0,,1164165,00.html
What it takes to be a government e-tsar

David Docherty
Monday March 8, 2004
The Guardian

While the race for the next director general of the BBC has been widely covered, the creation of an equally important role in the development of public sector media has gone largely unrecognised. Last week the headhunters Whitehead Mann - who found Mark Thompson for Channel 4, which was helpful given that he wasn't lost - began the task of finding a head of e-government. What's that got to do with public service broadcasting, I hear you yawn? Well, it could change its very face by setting up a rival to the BBC and Channel 4 in their core areas of information and education. And, although they might not realise it, whoever becomes head of e-government has the potential to wield as much media power as the DG.
As we saw from the Elstein report about breaking up the BBC and the manoeuvrings of Channel 4 and Five to create Foive!, the tectonic plates of our broadcasting world are crunching together and creating all sorts of fissures and eruptions. No one is clear what the future holds, but we do know that the internet and interactive TV have challenged the very concept of what good government is, and that governments around the world are pouring hundreds of billions of euros, pounds, dollars and zlotys into responding to their citizens in new ways.
In this country, there have been some visionaries and pioneers in government who have pushed the interactive agenda through the daftness of the hype and the gloom of the despond. Furthermore, the Office of the E-envoy was established to evangelise and coordinate different approaches to the problem. But e-government has had a faltering start, with 2,500 sites scattered and disorganised across the web, and the relatively little-used UK Online on Sky. As the outgoing e-envoy admitted recently, "We are really trying hard to be customer-focused. It's something that government has not done very well in the past."
But there are good signs. Realising the lack of coordination, UK Online is to be replaced by the DirectGov portal (ukonline.direct.gov.uk/homepage) that brings a thematic look to government services and is considerably more audience-focused than its predecessor. And the appointment of the head of e-government, based in the Cabinet Office, could have a profound impact. The problem is that the job is fundamentally focused on IT rather than media, and yet whoever gets it will be commissioning content and services for interactive television.
The role seems aimed at someone at senior partner level at a consultancy such as Accenture or PWC. There is a good precedent for this in the shape of Richard Granger at the Department of Health, who came from Deloitte Consulting, and in little over a year has driven through a 2.3bn tendering process for electronic patient records systems, e-booking and the NHS broadband network. The head of e-government will similarly be asked to drive out costs, free up frontline delivery and automate and integrate back office across the whole of the public services. But, crucially, he or she will be asked to "build services around customers" and develop ways to run interactive e-services on digital TV.
When you put those two thoughts together you realise one of the real problems facing this large-brained individual is how to get the best out of the media. People from big project-focused consultancy companies probably don't watch much TV, and they know as much about running a TV channel as a junior scheduler on QVC. It does not take a genius to run a television service, but it does take a mindset. Doing it well is incredibly hard and requires experience, flair, a total dedication to audiences and creativity. Audiences on digital television are there to watch television. They will only use interactive television if it's (a) fun and entertaining, (b) useful (c) better than an audiovisual alternative.
But success can be achieved. I've launched a lot of TV channels and internet services, but the most successful in terms of audience performance was Telewest's Living Health, an NHS trial in Birmingham, where we managed to get over 40% of the triallists to use the service.
So, getting big audiences to public services can be done, but such services should be commissioned by people who understand media. The government needs something like Sky News's eight-screen interactive channels, instead of isolated experiments with cut-down digital TV information sites. It needs a big, clouty approach to the platforms with a multiplatform, genuinely televisual version of Directgov. Directgov TV should do what television and interactive television do well - namely, provide high quality information, entertainment and learning, with strong interactive hooks and links out to a deep government portal modelled on SkyActive or BBCi.
The government needs a media visionary as well as technology guru if e-government is to fulfil its potential.
David Docherty is chief executive, YooMedia

mac

Many thanks for the recent posts. They succeed in putting some flesh on the bones of the raw announcements from the company and analysts. I'm not sure how many are following the column - YOO retains second spot in the ASOS Challenge Portfolio so there should be readers from there. Any comments anyone?!

In my perspective the share is establishing a new base and may be on a continued up-trend. The first two sharp price rises on positive news in September forced out some volume selling and the share receded. The price rise in early October was presumably 'triggered' by the Shares Play of the Week article. Since then the volume has been low and the price has gradually edged up on low volumes but with buyers outnumbering sellers. The suggested conclusions are: (1) current holders are either long-term or looking for significant gains; (2) there is a trickle of new buyers resulting from recent positive news and/or steady building of positions. The coming week will be interesting. I think a fall is unlikey on this analysis. The share should either settle to a new equilibrium or continue a steady rise. Either option should form a taking-off point for the next really positive news, which, on the basis of recent form, should come in the next month or two and could produce a quite dramatic rise as last December. Then, the announcements were exciting but there was no financial performance basis to carry them through. This year we have the EVO projections which suggest strongly that the share is very much undervalued. A chartist view on these comments would be helpful.

Eric

Eric: Re your request for a view of the YOO chart from a charting perspective. First off it looks bullish. With these small cap shares I always look for end of week closing levels, plus 2 day confirmations of new levels being achieved. YOO has achieved that over the last two weeks, helped by supporting comments in Shares Magazine, and IC although the latter can be the kiss of death! The MACD crossover is +ve as is the rising RSI with no suggestion of being overbought. A possible next resistance point would be around the 30p figure played with last November, once it clears that level it will have 'blue sky' above it!! No Bollinger Band issues in case you are wondering, again all positive. If YOO can continue with some good news flow, and the overall market stays reasonably upbeat, this share could really mark it's place in the ASC Challenge. It seems to me this is a good share with lots of upside. The real question now is the timeframe needed to achive the chosen target! Again difficult to say, but worth a place in anyones portfolio. John

johngtudor

Many thanks for taking the trouble to respond to the request. Many thanks too for the positive reading although I know you well enough by now that you don't pull punches. Agree timetable depends on news flow. Hopefully we won't have to await full year results before the evolution projections are confirmed. I would be surprised if there wasn't good coverage linked to the inevitable striking news of the accelerating digital TV takeover over the Christmas period.
Also worth referring back to the opening post of mactavish - the significance of a sizeable buying volume without news; it does seem that this happenms with some stocks perhaps because of trading relationships. So watch the volume as well as the price.

Eric