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!)

thanks for your comments Eric..........I for one appreciate them.....I am in EPO holding 400k shares at an average of 3.25p. I will not operate a stop loss on this share as I knew the risks when investing.....if it goes belly up then I will take it on the chin.......I was not hoping for a return on my investment yet i saw it as 2/3 years away but I was hoping for a firmer share price and good news. My personal view is that the Hong Kong venture is exciting and developing new markets........this is the only way long term this company can flourish...........but the facts are this is for the future.......It is important to keep dialogue going if just to realise you are not the only one in the ship :-))) I need to check the website but when is the AGM?.......next opportunity to see the board. Confidence has been dented but the upside is still potentially good.......market conditions are also not helping but lets hope '2005 will be Earthport's year' :-))))........have I heard those words before?

astonvilla

Don't think any forward dates announced but final results last year were on 26th November and AGM just before Xmas. Since year ends 30th June, presumably results could be earlier; however it will be the trading statement for first quarter and any forecasts which will be more relevant; will the three October deliveries have been made? are they holding their schedule for the IT projects?

I reduced my average cost to just over 2p with a purchase at 1.08p, accepting it could be good money after bad but reckoning the upside potential still had my vote. I hope that longer term users of this bb have not lost interest because there were comments from several closer to the company and any straw in the wind could prove beneficial. tf may have burnt his boats with rc, which would be understandable but unfortunate, because rc really does owe him (and therefore us) something.

Eric

i am still hlding 3.2m shares(i wish i did not. i dont mind losing on any stock but RC has misled a lot of people including TF and myself regarding the US deal where he lied to me. Lets hope the hong kong deal is on schedule for the 1st october at the very least!

ssanebs

That's quite a holding although all these things are relative I suppose. Absolutely right, if you continue to hold EPO you can't mind too much losing. Puzzled by your reference to the Hong Kong deal in relation to 1st October - the reference in the announcement was to 2005 as the first full trading year and there was no explicit reference in the recent Trading Review.

Eric

ssanebs - 27 Sep'04 - 21:26 - 549 of 550

I agree with your comments, we all accept price of stocks can go down as well as up, however what is not acceptable is CEO misleading shareholders, i accept this problem is not confined to EPO alone, nevertheless its unacceptable, much more so when one considers the history of this stock, previous management failed despite having us believe they were 'going to land on the moon'.

I also accept there are short term traders who have bought stock in or around 1-1.5p, downside for them is minimal as opposed to many who have invested at much higher levels, for these people including myself its most unlikely consider selling at these levels, breached pain barrier !!

Finally i still don't believe RC has the skills to take this company forward, his track record in my opinion makes him a very unsuitable candidate, i also believe if TF Shares magazine reported his conversations with RC accuarately then RC's postion is untenable.On that point i think TF made a gross error of judgement buying shares in the first place considering history of news coming from EPO

Don't be surprised if the next RNS from EPO confirms CEO has been replaced, i stress i'm not an insider, it's not a question if but when, i suggest.

JW,

I can respect your comments and agree with them. There have been some misleading comments and TF as the public voice was the one that reported some of them...not that I blame him.....although the post that was put here by the editor of shares magazine was disrespectful to the smaller shareholders. I am expecting that the key dates towards the end of this year will shed some light on the way forward for EPO and possible timescales. Lets hope we get some realistic answers rather than '2004 will be Earthports year'.

Eric, ssanebs

the relevent part is in the interims it was this.....

"Issue of cards commenced in Q4 2003 and the payments service is expected to go live on July 1 2004 and to be fully operational by December 2004."

So, in theory, it should be up and running now, and generating revenue already, however, I strongly doubt this, given the spending & other issues raised about the platform in the TU...(also given their history of misses, I cannot see why they would manage to get this right..!).

we will see.

I also suspect the agm will not be until late december, as I'm told it was last year..

regards

T..

astonvilla - 28 Sep'04 - 08:42 - 552 of 553

Perhaps one should ask RC does he stand by his original comments that '2004 is going to be EPO's year '.

I hope he would provide an honest answer to his beloved & demoralised shareholders.

I don't know his current salary, bonus's, perks, expenses account etc but i imagine he will need to start producing real results very soon otherwise he will be shown red card !!!

Eric

the july 1st 2004 date given was apparently not the date. RC sais he never gave that date as the going live date and said to TF the date was october 1st. TF said he remembers clearly that he did said July. That is why i said lets see if they announce that it has gone live. You are all definately right that he should be removed. Maybe i should send the recording of his conversation with me to his board and thay can remove him for misleading me!

Another fun day in the topsy-turvy life of an EPO holder...
i feel a novel coming on..............

astonvilla
Great idea - get David O'Leary to manage RC; don't think he'd last long.

ssanebs
Seems as if RC has forgotten that the July 1st date was in the interims, as pointed out by Tradx. They do also give 1st December as fully operational date. If there is any good news at all, one might expect RC to rush it out; perhaps Hong Kong live to whatever degree; perhaps the systems due to go live in October. We need news; he needs news; all God's children need news!
Interesting that spread widened to 35% today - even the mm's need news (not God's children!).

Eric

There is one thing that worries me more than anything else with this share.
If i were on the inside and even half confident on the future i would be
picking these up for fun at these prices if only to help support the price.

EWRobson - 28 Sep'04 - 22:05 - 557 of 558

Well David O'Leary has met his match with Deadly Doug, can one imagine how long RC would remain CEO with Doug as Chairman, not long i suggest.

Anyway i hear what you say about need for newsflow, may i respectfully suggest there has been too much newsflow BUT TOO LITTLE SUBSTANCE, O'Leary good with words and spin even at Leeds, but more importantly he knows its results which keeps him on the payroll, this lesson sadly has not been learned at EPO to date.

Regardless of what views we hold about CEO and his track record, a lot of this would be overlooked if he delivered on his promises, RESULTS, thats the benchmark.

dibbles has fair comment - why are those close to the company, individual and institutions, not buying at present price; cap. of only 6M? One argument is that of jonny wilkinson - nothing of substance to base buying decision on. Basically, the jury is out. In two year's time, will EPO be history - dibbles making money out of his novel, or could they be flying high? It will be one or the other, with an in between position just not on the cards: where would the funding come from for that? Since most comments on this column reflect the depressing fact of the share price collapse, let me just repeat a short list of positives: (i) they did manage to fund themselves for the current business plan; (ii) there is a Board of Directors with sensible attributes 'in control'; (iii) man group do have a substantial stake, whatever the reason; (iv) the technological achievements are substantive; (v) there are those, including the Hong Kong project and Wanadoo, who have bought into the technology. I may be whistling in the wind but these are essentially the reasons why I am holding on in the light of some excellent opportunities in the market.

Eric,

again I applaude your ability to see the upside, but is there any proof to support it?

1) We do not know their current cash position, but even taking into account the funds 'raised' as mentioned in the TU, current burn rate would suggest that they are living hand to mouth. We will only really know when the full years numbers are released (and on their t/o that should be an easy, quick job, but I bet they are not released until the end of DEC).

2) Please show the 'sensible attributes!' - they now have only two exec directors, (they keep losing COO's...why?).

3) There is no imperical proof of this, it is still 'just' a large transaction database with the ability to have open 'hooks' into other legacy systems..it is however underpinned as value proposition by the distribution network i.e. the banks, but it is difficult to call it's technology achievements 'substantive', nothing they have done is patentable, copyrightable..it has all been done before.

4) It hasn't helped so far, except terrified the mm's that their holding could be sold at anytime...hence the intra-day volitility in small volumes lately..

5) We have yet to see any evidence of either, and there seems a great deal of mis-info on when they will commence and show revenues..

The TU made some very specific claims, what will you say, if and when these are not achieved, delayed or simply forgotten about?

I hope you are right and I am wrong, but on the balance of evidence thus far, I still say the CEO has achieved nothing of substance and must go, and the business must show that it has a sustainable target market.

If they can do that, then you are right this could easily be valued at 30+ mill

As always time will tell.

DYOR, all imho and all that BS!

T..

Tradx

Message received and understood. Comments look reasonable. Will return as devil's advocate (wrong way round? - no, RC is the devil) when I have a bit of time this evening.

Eric

Tradx

I am setting out to state the case for EPO, as promised. The question is, presumably, prosper or die?. I will try to make this balanced if I were to conclude that the die option were the more likely, I would join the herd, take what is left of my money and run.

1 Cash probably the most important issue. At 31st Dec. there was negligible cash and net current liabilities of 6.1m. Capital was raised in January to the tune of 3.0m (before expenses) via shares at 2.5p. The loss before tax was 2.8m for the six months.
The trading update on 20th August reported funds invested of 800k against Loan Notes. 120k per month was removed from burn rate, by placing a major development team into a separate company. The company had reached agreement in principle to sell a minority interest in ensurePay Ltd for up to 1.5m; the funds are to be applied to funding earthport and the ensurePay business going forward.
Reading between the lines of this report, the reference to milestones (so far achieved) suggests that the continued support of creditors is dependent on satisfaction of those milestones. I have previously suggested that these relate significantly to the IT development programme as one must assume these functional and performance improvements are critical to generate the transaction revenue from existing customers and to signing up prospects.
Your reference to hand to mouth suggests that creditors could foreclose at any time. My interpretation is that the cash will be available against the business plan so long as the milestones are met. May come to the same thing in the end but not quite a doom-laden scenario.

2. Board. Quite right, just two exec dir.: Cunningham and Hall, fin. Dir. 4 non-execs, two of whom are financial (one investment) one legal, (see earthport.com website) plus chairman. My point here is that our interests are in the hands of this Board and RC reports to this Board. Statements put out, such as trading review, and business plan must have blessing of the Board.

3. Systems. The website gives a run down of the systems and communication facilities. Is this copyrightable? Presumably the Board member, Rakison, is behind the legal claims. The code of any system cannot be poached. There are clearly many man-years of development in the systems; someone else could presumably work to the design concepts but would not be able to short-cut the effort by that much.

4. man group holding. A holding is also quoted on website for Savoy Investment Management. I admit I do not understand the implications of a holding by a Hedge Fund group.

5. client base; in particular Hong Kong and Wanadoo. The recent correspondence over Hong Kong seems to relate primarily to the live date. The major query must relate to take-up as I assume epo revenues will relate to transaction volumes. The trading update referred to an international customer going live in May but, again, there is no indication of transaction volumes and the suspicion remains that build-up might be delayed until IT systems updates are delivered.

I suspect that, overall, these comments are neutral. My conclusion is that the jury is out. It the rug is to be pulled, then it will be by failure to meet deadlines. The only positive read is that the onus is on the development teams which may be, stress may be, a strength of the company. Probability of making it? Difficult I am still an investor because I am about 50/50 and the upside is much greater than the downside. Would I put in new funds; probably not as no one else is. So, I am holding against news, which may be a cop out. Hope this is a down the middle review.

Eric

Eric.

Great post.
I'm holding my position, just hoping all will come good. (I'm down so much, as I got sucked in partialy due to TF, that what I'd get out now, is pittance compared to the possible reward) I think the risks involved with this share are typical of 'penny shares'. If a person can't accept the risks, then stay within the bluechips!

Highride

PS. I am concerned though about some of the apparant false or premature statements issued to the press, namely the Share magazine.

Eric,

Excellent post, balanced and to the point, you are to be congratulated!!

The key issue as Highride points to is can we believe them? The companys future now depends on them executing upon the claims they made in the Trading update; and they will have to let the market know as these 'deals' /events occur, so no news will of course be bad, and any news (one presumes!) will be positive.

If they do not do as they claim this time, then they will be found out, for sure.

Highride,

Most particlary the issue that springs to mind is that of the broker note - remember the broker was going to do it straight after his return from honeymoon?

Well the lastest apparent info is he isn't - they questions now are why? and what say TF now? (at the time he put absolute faith in this happening).

regards

T..

I'm being slightly contrary here:-

I just wonder whether the CEO simply spoke out of turn rather than trying to put out false promises. Perhaps he was just unwise, publicising what were perhaps very premature deals. Still, it was an error of judgement all the same, which again, makes one a little doubtful as to whether he can make this company happen. Lets hope so.

Regarding Tim Freeborn, in his original article (08.04.2004), he did state "Even new broker Bridgewell describes the company as 'highly speculative'. It is watching hopefully from some distance, waiting for some key deals to emerge".
Also, right at the end he stated "Not for widows and Orphans".
I feel TF did try to make clear this company is very speculative. However, I would love to see TF 're-re-visit' Earthport regarding the infamous Broker's note. That was really strange. WHAT IS GOING ON????????

Regards

H.