Some good news at last from this weeks Shares mag. Tim Freeborn revisits the company and altho no firm details are given about new deals he says they will be announced this quarter. I would think that this could be at the same time as the interim results are announced. I for one will be holding on cos they will fly sooner rather than later! ( 8.30% up today!)

There is no webcast.

I did attend the meeting, as you might expect.
The chairman did warn several times that the company had moved from a 'salvage risk' but was still a 'venture risk', not an 'equity risk.'
That caution did contrast pretty starkly with the message from Rob Cunningham and the rest of the team.
The finance director forecast positive cash flow in the third quarter.
This is later than expected because the company delayed the launching of 13 smaller contracts in order to upgrade capacity. A new version of the software, EP5, will be launched in Q3, which will raise capacity again.
The Chinese contract starts generating cash in July. Already over 800,000 cards have been issued. The Chinese government intends to roll them into southern China. They will include three biometric measures. Earthport is not guaranteed the payments contract in Guangdong but seems very likely to get it. The province has over 40m transient workers who the Chinese are having trouble taxing. ID cards are really tax cards.

In the UK, Earthport is still negotiating four 'blue chip' contracts. They are 95% there, Cunningham said. (We all know about that last 5%.)

In the next two weeks the company will announce the launch of ensurepay in the US, via a partner. This is its answer to Neteller which makes nearly all its money from its instant credit product.
The truth is, cash in and out for betting has been okay but not spectacular. The Neteller product offers something new: ie no delay, lose your money straightaway and pay 7% to Neteller while you do it.
If Neteller can, why not Ensurepay/Earthport?

In July there will be a broker note from Bridgewell, Cunningham said, presumably to coincide with the Hongkong launch.

A City marketing exercise will launch in September.

The US acquisition is held up by banking regulations.

Earthport has issued papers against Baltimore to recover the 5m it paid for a security system that never arrived.
It will sue Egg for 10m as soon as Prudential finds a buyer. The aim is to force the matter to a conclusion as part of Egg's sale.

Cunningham reiterated there will be no rights issues or further fundraisings, though he will use paper for the acquisition.
His relationship with Earthport has been regularised. He acts directly for the company rather than through his rescue/management vehicle.

That's all I recall of substance.

Tim

Cheers tim! Does sound encouraging overall, apart from the betting income bit!!
Jam tomorrow i feel!!

Thanks Tim

Thank you for the information. Seems time to put my holding in the bottom draw and keep taking the pills.

Interesting reading - thanks Tim.

yes,
I still hold 1.2m shares and I think I would not be able to sell without first changing my recommendation on the company.

are you going to be a regular on this thread now , tim?
by the way , enjoy your column in shares and use your tips as a start point.

tim,
was the overall reaction to the shareholders meeting favourable, or was there a general discontent over the presentations?
I've been holding these shares for a good while now with promises of imminent major contract wins and ramping up of vast spare capacity. Will the extra 5% ever be acheived in your opinion?

Thanks Tim for the info and participation. It's very re-assuring to know you're in the same boat as the rest of us!!!!!!!

Tim

Hopefully that means that you wont be changing your recommendation on the company as a result of what you learned at the meeting!!! I still feel that the fun will start soon as an awfull lot of contracts seem to be going live or are about to. Maybe we bought in a year too early!!

topped up this morning. its definately promising and there is little else to buy at the moment with the risk/reward epo gives

SS

Well done, (yours were the early 100000 buys i take it) as i said before definately worth topping up at these levels as they wont be here long. Im currently holding close to 4mil. Anyone else on this board share my faith with a mil+ holding??

I share your faith jdubb, just haven't got your kind of money!! :-)

B

Cheers mate and thx for representing this bb and the ADVFN one at the meeting. IM off to nxt year's one to see how my investment got to such a ridiculously high price (hopefully about 10-15p)!!!!! Now at that price i would be rich!!!

As someone has already said, the anticpated wait for gold has just got longer, so IMHO there will more sellers than buyers unless we see some good news coming from EPO.

People, (and I include me in this) bought into the (greed) short term story written in shares, but also talked up on this board and elsewhere.

There are some buyers who will use this weakness to top up their holdings but a) I don't believe the buyers will outstrip the sellers in the short term and b) those that are prepared to hold, (as I will), will have longer to wait, I.e it will become an investment holding rather than a trading holding.

In short I believe the price will remain weak for a while, (few months maybe. unless a penny stock newsletter puffs the story - now there's a thought!), but over that period I will probably add to my existing holding, (Ok, so not in the Millions of shares bracket, but a considerable stake for me)

looks like a lot of people werent impreesed by what the management had to say judging by todays drop .

The share price often seems to do this & then often recovers, usually with very light trading.

If it drops some more then I may buy some more but I think we may have to wait a while for this share to take off.

Agree with apple, this is definitely an 'invest' share. It may take a little while to get the ball rolling, but this time next year we may well be sitting on a goldmine. Although I feel bad saying it, helping the govt of the worlds most populous country tax its citizens has got to be looking good (for us).
p.s dont hold me to the goldmine quote, it may go into administration, but more than likely we are speculating to accumulate.

Buys today 721k vs sells of 307k so positive in spite of the fall