This is a BUY tip from Tom Winnifrith...

Sorry if this is rather boring as the market cap is now c 350 million but at 470p Avanti Communications (AVN) - a stock held in the SF t1ps Growth Fund - is really very cheap whichever way you look at it. It is now funded to launch 3 satellites into space ( and fully insured if the worst happens which will only delay the programme by 6 months anyway). You value Avanti by discounting back the net cashflows these satellites will generate. That depends on how much capacity is sold and at what price. Use a model based on very conservative assumptions and this stock is worth 13 ( the lowest valuation in the market). But that model uses assumptions about sales prices which are already being beaten by forward sales Avanti is booking today. Use those prices and you head up to the 22.50 value of house broker Cenkos. My own view is that Avanti will do better still and this stock could therefore be worth 25. Exc itement will mount as the first satellite is launched later this year. Remember those valuations are the Net Present Value of future cashflows ( i.e. what they are worth today). If you can buy at under 600p ( as you can now) you should do so and sit back and wait. I suspect after HYLAS 1 is launched you will never again be able to buy at less than 600p.

I do hope this problem has been designed to pull the cork from the well...and leave him empty...wishful thinking...

They are giving EK a serious fight...

RNS Number : 8936B
Avanti Communications Group Plc
25 February 2011




Avanti Communications Group plc

("the Company")



Directors Shareholdings





Avanti Communications Group plc (AIM: AVN), the broadband satellite operator, was today notified by David Bestwick, Director, that he had purchased 30,000 ordinary shares in the Company at a price of 504 pence per ordinary share. David Bestwick now holds a total direct and indirect voting right interest in 1,201,648 ordinary shares in the Company, being approximately 1.5% of the issued ordinary share capital of the Company. Mr Bestwick has a further revocable and indirect interest in 430,202 shares under the Company's Long Term Incentive Plan which are subject to certain criteria.



The Company was also notified today by David Williams, Chief Executive, that he had purchased 20,000 ordinary shares in the Company at a price of 504 pence per ordinary share. David Williams now holds a total direct and indirect voting right interest in 1,525,072 ordinary shares in the Company, being approximately 1.9% of the issued ordinary share capital of the Company. Mr Williams has a further revocable and indirect interest in 522,233 ordinary shares under the Company's Long Term Incentive Plan which are subject to certain criteria

More directors buying I make that over ml last week thats a serious amount of confidence with there own cashcould prove to be very good value at these levelI sold half my holdingcould buy back today without a lose..hmmmm?

RNS Number : 9467B
Avanti Communications Group Plc
28 February 2011
Avanti Communications Group plc
("the Company")
Directors Shareholdings
Avanti Communications Group plc (AIM: AVN), the broadband satellite operator, was notified on Friday 25(th) February by Alan Foster, Director, that he had purchased on that day 10,610 ordinary shares in the Company at a price of 500 pence per ordinary share. Alan Foster now holds a total direct and indirect voting right interest in 370,249 ordinary shares in the Company, being approximately 0.46% of the issued ordinary share capital of the Company.
---ENDS---

Follow EK and you dont always have it off!

Simon Cawkwell - 25 Feb'11 - 16:15 - 3678 of 3779

Gentlemen,

I am sorry not to have submitted copy today but I am in the West Indies for a short break and about to go out to lunch. My view of AVN has not changed.

Simon Cawkwell - 07966 426 795

PS: I forgot to add that I have bet 20,000 at 11/10 on Newcastle in tomorrow'a match. Those who have lost on AVN (and will lose more if still invested) are advised to do the same.

Aw, shame! :o)

Have spoken to The Count on a couple of occassions tabby , probably at least five years ago being the last time ... he rang to tell me how wrong I was about MDX. We agreed to differ and that was that , nice guy.

Can't understand why avn still haven't announced a move to the main market.

What a guy!

Simon Cawkwell - 2 Mar'11 - 08:11 - 3959 of 3965

Hello everybody,

I just got back from Barbados half an hour ago only to see that another director seeks to do his dough. Gluttons for punishment, the lot of them.

It is true that whilst away I sploshed 60,000 on footie BUT I made more than that shorting AVN.

So it's not all bad.

Simon Cawkwell

and i'm very glad that i swallowed a very bitter pill this morning

Not many take him on and winbut it would take just one carefully planned operation to skin him!
Hopefully those parties can get together.

Simon Cawkwell - 2 Mar'11 - 09:13 - 3968 of 3972

One Giant Leap (of Faith Required)

Our (i.e. Investec dated 24th February 2011) view

With one satellite in the sky, no active commercial service (pre-revenue), much
bigger competitors attacking the same markets (and more competition to
come), we are not convinced Avanti is yet deserving of its 0.5bn market cap.
Management's decision not to answer our key questions and concerns on the
investment case does not inspire confidence. A 15-year leap of faith is
required to create a value story here. We model peer-level mature profitability,
and risk to its achievement, to derive a DCF-based 488p TP. SELL.

Key points

The current share price reflects a belief by the market in the full achievement of
peer-beating profits and cash flows. The market expects sales to reach full
capacity within 3 years on HYLAS 1, and 5 years for HYLAS 2 & 3 post launch.
Execution to this plan is now crucial to merely justify the current valuation.
n Any potential value story for Avanti, however, remains one of long-term
performance, and here we have some concerns. At the interims announcement
we moved our recommendation from Sell to Under Review to reflect an apparent
strength in the headline order book and pipeline of business, and in order to
pursue answers to several material questions with management which might help
us revisit the investment case.
n With a major "option" in the order book and few recent contract announcements
the future may not be as rosy as the market believes.
n Avanti's decision not to answer our questions doesn't help. We highlight our
questions herein, and with the risks and uncertainties still lingering we reinstate
our Sell recommendation and our new DCF-based 488p price target.

24 February 2011
Avanti Communications
Mobile Telecommunications
Analyst(s) Morten Singleton
+44 (0) 20 7597 4254
morten.singleton@investec.co.uk
James Goodman
+44 (0) 20 7597 4529
james.goodman@investec.co.uk
Sell (No Change) 597p
Target Price (Prev. 533p) 488p
Forecast Total Return (18.2)%
Impact on estimates
0.0
-50.0
-100.0
-150.0
-200.0
-250.0
2011 2012 2013
Change in EPS (norm, cont) - FD (%)
EPS (norm, cont) - FD (p) 2011E 2012E 2013E
Old (9.3) (13.5) (3.2)
New (15.6) (35.9) (10.3)
Source: Investec Securities estimates
Market Cap 507m
Enterprise value 602m
Average daily volume (000s) 318
Index FTSE AIM
RIC / Bloomberg AVN.L / AVN LN
Share price performance
Feb-10 May-10 Aug-10 Nov-10 Feb-11
800
700
600
500
400
300
1m 3m 12m
Price (6.80) (9.62) 24.27
Rel. FTSE All
Share
(7.14) (14.71) 7.37
Source: FactSet
Readers in all geographies please refer to important disclosures and disclaimers starting on page 19
In the United Kingdom this document is a MARKETING COMMUNICATION. It has not been prepared in
accordance with the rules in the FSA Conduct of Business Sourcebook designed to promote the independence of
research and is also not subject to any prohibition on dealing ahead of the dissemination of research.


Questions for investors to ask management

In the course of our research into the investment case for Avanti we posed
several questions to management which we believe are crucial to valuing the
company. Avanti management has declined to answer these questions.

We would prefer to be in a position of possessing all the material facts, but we
are not, and we believe there are many risks and uncertainties regarding this
investment that deserve closer attention. We are not dismissive of the
potential value story that Avanti could represent, if all goes to plan but many
others have posited this story and we believe the risks have not achieved a
suitable airing. We are therefore publishing this note to highlight the
questions we think investors should ask when considering any current, or
future, holding.

Exactly what is Avantis definition of backlog?

At the recent interims, Avanti moved from a publication of the proportion of next 12
months of capacity sold on its satellites, to a reflection of the contract order book, or
backlog. We were surprised at the scale of the backlog in the interims and thus
undertook a full and detailed analysis of all the contract announcements made by
Avanti since April 2007. This is illustrated in Table 1.
It is difficult to simply add up the backlog due to a number of factors: the lack of
complete information; the fact that several contracts span both HYLAS 1 and 2;
many contracts span several years, some of which are coming to the end of their
original contract length (with no sign yet of renewal); and the fact that some of these
contracts relate to projects, rather than satellite capacity.
Is not almost half the contract backlog merely an option?
It is notable, however, that the largest item in the backlog to date - a 113.4m threeyear
deal with a Western European Government for the 900MHz steerable beam on
HYLAS 2 - constitutes nearly half this backlog, and yet is no more than a Call option.
This is not therefore an irrevocable commitment to take up Avantis service. We do
not believe this should be presented as part of the backlog, but rather it should be
mentioned as a potential additional element, conditional upon the customer taking
up the option. Are there any other options in the contract backlog, and if so, how
much?
What happened to the pre-sold capacity metric?
It is also unclear exactly what progress has been made on sales more recently. We
understand that Avanti had effectively pre-sold 25% of its HYLAS 1 capacity since
the start of last summer (we assume this metric is measured by Avanti on a 12-
month prospective basis, rather than for the satellite life). Where is this metric now?
We suspect it may not have budged much, if at all. The initial flurry of contract
announcements immediately post the HYLAS 1 launch looks to us more like
confirmations of previously uncommitted pre-sold capacity rather than any new
deals.
24 February 2011

Gentlemen,

I stress that all the above is written and issued by Investec. Please also note that the 488p target price has been achieved (this morning). I have not yet received a TP update. However, I am not buying to close since momentum is now with the bears. Besides, I think the economic outlook for AVN is not good.

Simon Cawkwell

"Yesterday was also a fun day for Avanti Communications AVN). Evil Knievil went publicly short posting comments on ADVFN (I refused to run them on t1ps as they contained just too many factual errors). What I had not realised was that his calculations, such as they were, had a decimal point in the wrong place. His informant was clearly illiterate (the note EK posted was strewn with errors) and also (see below) technically clueless. I had not realised at the time that he was innumerate as well. An interesting combination for someone purporting to be an investment analyst. What with also confusing MegaHertz and MegaBits the sums were not to put too fine a point on it all wrong. But once the old boy has an idea in his head there is no stopping him so off he went. Call me cynical but there was only one way to react we bought a stack more Avanti for the SF t1ps Growth Fund.

Now some CEOs huff and puff and threaten lawyers when Evil goes off shorting and publishes factually incorrect material in support of his claims. But David Williams of Avanti has more style than that. A Welshie with style and flair, whatever next. Williams responded by buying 100,000 of Avanti shares in the market (his chairman also bought 50,000) which is a material sum for him. But as a coup de grace he asked me to pass on a note to Evil:

Dear Tom

Please extend an invitation to lunch in Shoreditch on my behalf to Mr Cawkwell. His informant, whom I presume is not an astrophysicist, got his decimal point in the wrong place and as a result I was able to buy 100,000 of shares at the wrong price so it seems polite to thank him.

David

That is pretty cool as you would expect from a CEO based in Rivington Street (Avantis offices are in the street after which RSH is named). A few more shorts on the basis of maths with decimal points in the wrong place plus a stream of factual errors and Evil will start to need free food if he is not to waste away.

On a wider level, when a CEO invests 1000 or even 5,000 in buying shares in his company I regard that as window dressing. But when he or she writes out a cheque which is a very material part of his annual salary that can ONLY mean he ( or she) thinks the shares have real value. The Rivington Street CEOs have made their intentions clear."

http://sharecrazy.com/beta/daily/4885/rivington-street-avanti-communications-odd-day

The last Cenkos report was this:

Decimal point in the wrong place

Avantis share price has fallen to a seven month low on the back of the aggressive
promotion of ideas based on misunderstandings of HYLAS 1 and HYLAS 2 and
Avantis competitive positioning. These concerns rest on a number of inaccuracies
regarding the satellites specifications and the premise that Avanti will compete headto-
head with Eutelsats Ka-Sat. This provides an excellent buying opportunity for
investors as both these positions are wrong and we are confident the shares will rally
strongly on the back of inaugural HYLAS 1 sales next month and on-going contract
wins. We are confident that investors will quadruple their investment over the next
two years. BUY
Capacity comparisons unfounded
Commentators have suggested that Eutelsats Ka-Sat has 70 GB of capacity versus HYLAS
1s 3 GB. Comparing GBs with GHz is not a straightforward comparison. HYLAS 1 & 2 will
have 11.25 GHz of capacity compared with Ka-Sats 40 GHz, implying that Ka-Sat is 3.6x
bigger. However, comparisons should be made strictly on the basis of a satellites forward
path capacity. In this respect, Ka-Sat is a symmetrical satellite with 20 GHz of upward path
and 20 GHz of forward path. However, HYLAS 1 & 2 will be asymmetrical with 8 GHz of
forward path versus 3.25 GHz of upward path. This simply reflects the fact that consumers
download far more than they upload from the internet. As a result Ka-Sat will only be 2.5x
that of HYLAS 1 & 2. Furthermore, the differential between the two will be less than the
nameplate capacity and HYLAS 1 is a flexible payload covering a greater geographic area
that includes North Africa and the Middle East. This should enable Avanti to achieve
superior utilisation rates.
Revenue assumptions are therefore wrong
Following on from this, the bears have then claimed that given the discrepancy in capacity,
HYLAS1 will be unable to meet our annualised revenue run rate of 45m as Eutelsats
previous CEO guided that Ka-Sat will deliver 100m of sales in 2013. Hughes, which was
recently purchased by EchoStar, has delivered $183m of consumer broadband sales from a
satellite just twice as big as HYLAS 1. Avanti still need to sign-up new contracts to achieve
our FY12 forecasts, however due to the strength of their offering we have a high degree of
confidence that they will outperform.
Pricing pressure unlikely given market potential
Numerous independent studies have highlighted strong demand for broadband in rural
areas across the Middle East, N Africa and Europe. The European Commission estimates
that 30m homes cannot receive effective broadband through existing terrestrial
infrastructure. Given that HYLAS 1 & 2 and Ka-Sat will only be able to serve approximately
2.5m homes between them, it is unlikely that either operator will incur pricing pressure due
to direct competition. Furthermore, Eutelsat is largely focused on France whereas Avanti is selling capacity to the wider European market.

with the markets now looking much chirpier, i tried to buy back this afternoon but could not get in at the price i wanted .... my logic was the recovering markets + shorters likley to start closing out soon ..... may well buy in the morning

RHPS have stated that 6 different directors have bought a total of 104,385 shares committing over 530,000 of their own money. Good luck to all that enters planet AVN. I will not be boarding the ship so you are safe.

Rumor isEvil is out? No proof.. so Dyor Cyniclooks like EK has come out of this as a bit of a dick....I bought just short of my other half back yesterday

3 Monkiesyou could do worse..

I still don't get this. This is from the AVN website:-

"Do you live in a broadband notspot? Are you so far away from your local exchange that your DSL access speeds are low? If so, Avanti satellite broadband can help you.

Avanti satellite broadband is sold and delivered through our pan-European partner network. But you can register your interest in receiving Avanti satellite broadband products with us. Once HYLAS 1 completes its testing phase, we will get your local partner to contact you to discuss how they can help you. It's that simple.

There is no obligation to buy, and you can also enter our competition to win a year's free broadband."


To me, the important thing here is :- "Avanti satellite broadband is sold and delivered through our pan-European partner network."

How much is AVN going to get out of their technology? I appreciate what Tabby has posted and I don't intend to talk this share down but unless AVN sell to individuals rather than 'partners' I cannot see how they can maximise their potential. It maybe of course, that they have a different selling strategy for Hylas 2.

Whatever, I am baffled and am torn between re-investing or leaving well alone. My heart says the former, my head the latter.

Uncorked my favourite red to do a bit of musing. :o)

Those directors should have waited a bit longer before they bought

Jeff.That chart will be looking slightly different in a couple of hourslol

Completion of In Orbit Testing and Service Launch
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TIDMAVN

RNS Number : 9311C

Avanti Communications Group Plc

15 March 2011

Date: 15 March 2011

On behalf of: Avanti Communications Group plc ("Avanti" or "the Company")

Embargoed until: 0700hrs

Avanti Communications Group plc

-- Completion of In Orbit Testing and Service Launch

-- Contract Win

Avanti Communications Group plc (LSE: AIM), the broadband satellite operator, is pleased to report that it formally completed in orbit testing of the HYLAS 1 satellite yesterday.

The testing process confirmed that HYLAS 1 is working in conformance with specification and, in some areas, delivering higher performance than originally specified. The satellite lifetime is expected to be at least six months greater than planned and the available power is several percentage points better than specification. This will translate into improved service quality, flexibility and usable capacity.

The provision of services on HYLAS 1 will now commence. The first live customer service in the UK will be installed next week. Avanti has a test customer base of 5,000 end users whose service is delivered with leased Ku band capacity. The migration of these customers to HYLAS 1 will begin on April 4(th) . Avanti has over 60 Virtual Network Operator customers in 16 countries in Europe who have bought capacity. Many of them are also migrating existing end user customers from leased Ku band capacity on other satellites and this migration also begins on April 4(th) .

Commenting, David Williams, Chief Executive of Avanti Communications, said:

"The in orbit testing phase of HYLAS 1 has been a complete success and puts us in a strong position for future growth.

"With Europe's first fully operational broadband satellite, Avanti will now provide a range of satellite data communications services to consumers, enterprise and governmental organisations across the UK and Europe. In such a vast market with so much growth in data demand, and a strong customer base already committed, we are highly confident of achieving rapid commercial success for this powerful and flexible satellite."

Contract Win

Avanti is also pleased to announce that yesterday it signed a seven year contract with a new Virtual Network Operator Customer for the sale of 80 Mb of capacity (with volume beginning at a lower level in year one and rising to 80Mb to match the Customer's expansion in end users). The contract, which commands pricing which exceeds market expectations, is worth EUR7.1m over the seven year term. The customer has approximately 3,000 satellite broadband end user installations in Europe which currently use Ku band capacity on a competitors' satellite. The Customer will migrate that existing client base to HYLAS 1 and then grow its business further with Avanti. For reasons of commercial sensitivity during this migration period the Customer is not named.

Commenting on the contract win, David Williams, Chief Executive of Avanti Communications, said:

"The signing of this contract is significant since it further demonstrates that expert customers in Europe choose to work with Avanti. We offer a flexible, service oriented approach and reliable and well regarded technology. Avanti has announced a steady flow of contract wins in the last two years which underpins our confidence in fully utilising our satellites at attractive prices."

--ENDS--

I just put some money in my pocket and got my kicks for free...this went down to 4-10 on the mornings fantastic RNS...a bright light on a dark day...the MMs have chalked some mad prices in their time...this ranks with the very best of the boopers... like shopping at Harrods and paying Aldi prices...

16 March 2011

Avanti Communications Group plc

("the Company")

Directors Shareholdings

Avanti Communications Group plc (AIM: AVN), the broadband satellite operator, was informed last night, 15 March 2011, by David Williams, Chief Executive, that he had purchased 11,895 ordinary shares in the Company at a price of 416 pence per ordinary share. David Williams now holds a total direct and indirect voting right interest in 1,536,967 ordinary shares in the Company, being approximately 1.9% of the issued ordinary share capital of the Company. Mr Williams has a further revocable and indirect interest in 522,233 ordinary shares under the Company's Long Term Incentive Plan which are subject to certain criteria.

--ENDS---