Small Cap Value Report (Mon 5 November 2018) - Rob Terry, Mello London, AFN, GROW
Good morning!
Rob Terry's Return?
A couple of newspapers have been running stories on Rob Terry (thisismoney, Telegraph) over the weekend, and his plans to create another stock market vehicle.
It doesn't look like a breaking news story to me. The "entrepreneur" has been threatening to launch another stock market vehicle for several years.
He originally planned to launch one called Quob Park Estate:
But plans to launch under that name have come to nothing, and the website has been converted to showcase his vineyard only.
His new venture is typical of the man: a nebulous business plan, grand financial targets and gobbledygook descriptions of what the business actually does.
The sad fact is that he probably will find a few more unsophisticated people to fleece. But hopefully not too many this time, as his modus operandi has been highly publicised.
The disgraceful element of the story is that he is even allowed to try it on again, for the third (or is it the fourth, or fifth?) time.
It was all the way back in March 2015 when Australian law firm Slater & Gordon bought the core business of Rob Terry's failing Quindell venture for £637 million. Slater & Gordon has since sued Quindell (now trading as Watchstone (LON:WTG) ) for fraudulent misrepresentation in relation to this deal.
My view - not a controversial one these days - is that Quindell would have gone bust if it had not been bailed out by Slater & Gordon.
The Serious Fraud Office began an investigation into events just a few months later. More than three years have now passed and Mr Terry is apparently still free to rip off investors. Progress at the SFO must be glacial!
KPMG admitted misconduct in relation to its audit work at Quindell and was fined £4.5 million. So at least there was some accountability from that angle. But what about Mr Terry?
The tiger cannot change its stripes and I would be supremely confident in any future Rob Terry venture ending the same way that his previous ones did: with him enriching himself, his investors walking away with very little, and with dodgy financial tricks and flowery language being used to camouflage the truth. No economic value will be created.
Different investors…
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All my own views. I am not regulated by the FSA. No advice.
40 Comments on this Article show/hide all
In reply to post #415599
Thanks sharw for the info, but can't see any edit button.
-2 minutes after posting-
But now, I can! :-)
ADVFN (LON:AFN) has a momentum score of 0 on Stocko – I’ve never seen that before. Some may remember Clem Chambers, who runs the company, has another company Online Blockchain (LON:OBC) which rose 10x in 2½ months late last year after he mentioned the magic word “blockchain” and changed the name of the company. He raised £1m at the peak price and the SP from that point has since dropped 80%. I see Stocko awards Online Blockchain (LON:OBC) 0 for each category and does not even give it a StockRank Style – I have never seen that before either for a mature stock.
Rob Terry may not be the only AIM “entrepreneur” to stay away from.
If anyone wants to see a masterclass in gobbledygook I would recommend watching the interview that Clem Chambers did on Online Blockchain (LON:OBC) for Proactive Investor (available on Youtube). Clem Chambers states that 'we don't want to passively misled people', which must have been a Freudian slip as he is basically saying he prefers to "actively" misled people.
In reply to post #415649
Classic interview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcdxOlEhpII
Our Robbo seems to like companies beginning with the letter "Q".
ADVFN claims it has 4.5m users.
This has to be the biggest lie in amongst a whole host of lies this company tells.
The site is more or less dead.
You can tell this by user posts and how long a post remains before the next one pushes it down the list and the same for companies place in that list. Years ago there would be about 10 to 15 full pages of companies that had active posters posting each day.
Now there are 2 pages only and most of the posts are from the same group of bucket shop spivs trying to ramp a placing.
The site is like a ghost town.
At a very accurate guess, I would say there are about 300 active users on the site but would accept a number of 500 to cover for the passing trade.
4.5m users will refer to the users who set up a free acc since 1999 and then posted for a while and left forever.
Active users has to be less than 500 per day.
Rob Terry's wine leaves a very sour taste in the mouth.
In reply to post #415669
Only 500 ADVFN (LON:AFN) users, really?
Some individuals seem to have that many active aliases!
I would guess the thrust of your argument that the number of users is exaggerated holds true however.
It is difficult to judge however just based on the bulletin board posts however, I would suspect that the majority of users do not post at all.
I'm not sure how many active posters we have here at Stockopedia, but it will be a much smaller number than the number of readers and probably also much smaller than the number of paying subscribers.
The free BB at ADVFN seem reasonably active to me, 16 of my current holdings have had new posts today.
Pretty sure it was a post on ADVFN that first led me to stockopedia, so it's not all bad :)
In reply to post #415704
But the quality of the posts are much, much higher here!
I actually learn (from both the staff posts and other members), rather than have my intelligence insulted.
I have used ADVFN for screening. Still have some filters that I use, as not replicated them yet, but I hate the BBs there.
L2 info. is the main useful functionality of ADVFN. I get my live prices for free at HL.
In defence of ADVFN, there are BB threads on some companies that are active and that include (amongst the bile, the ramping and the deramping) some well-informed and very interesting posts. Burford Capital (LON:BUR) and Plus500 (LON:PLUS) are examples.
So I think it still has its uses. The intrusive adverts ... and the psychopaths ... are a bit of a drawback, I will admit.
In reply to post #415694
Ah but there isn’t actually any Quob wine to drink. You can pre order the 2018 Premier Cuvee Millesime at just £100 per bottle which is a generous 50% discount to the target price of £200. That seems quite an ambitious price for the first production from a new vineyard, doesn’t it?
It will be ready to drink in 2020 so I don’t suppose it will ship until then. It will be aging on site.
But rest assured that they already know it’s finished characteristics just after harvesting the grapes. Well it was a good harvest this year.
Blend: The blend of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir.
Tasting Notes: A beautiful, vivid wild strawberry pink with a hue of red onion skin on the rim.
Nose: A whiff of magnolia blossom followed stridently by perfumed wild-strawberry compote with a hint of buttered white sourdough toast.
Palate: Rich mouth-filling flavours of strawberry balanced by zingy tart cranberry and pithy Amalfi lemon notes. The texture is creamy with a clean, crisp, yeasty finish.
Ageing: Ready to drink in 2020.
https://www.quobpark.com/shop/sparkling-wine/quob-park-classic-cuvee-rose/
I have used advfn for years I must admit and it has rather died I agree. Competition is tougher nowadays of course. I fully claim the credit for starting a thread called “time to have a punt on ASOS” when the latter was just below 4 pence. Yes the shares went to £76 so I called that one correct. I actually phoned the company only for a young woman to say “I am really sorry everyone is in the warehouse packing orders”...the orders were for copies of Pearl jeans worn by Victoria beckham. Always liked her..,
In reply to post #415754
Knob Park Premiere Fraude Millésime would be a more appropriate name.
In reply to post #415669
"At a very accurate guess, I would say there are about 300 active users on the site but would accept a number of 500 to cover for the passing trade."
Really? Are you sure?
That's an awful lot of aliases then
In reply to post #415654
Clem is actually less coherent in this interview than I remembered him being. Exactly the sort of scatterbrained leadership I try to avoid when researching potential investments!
I have used advfn for years too, on the positive side I must say that the portfolio display is much better than the one here so I continue with it for that reason.
I certainly would not pay for anything, the free boards mostly seem to be populated by poor quality posters, I hope those on the premium boards are better!
I know this is an old(ish) thread now but a couple of points in favour of ADVFN and Clem.
Firstly, I like the way their balance sheet data has a very simple overview display, with various assets and liabilities on one side or the other, in boxes and colour coded for ease. It is better to get the up to date info from the latest company reports, however this overview is handy and easy to assimilate.
Secondly, years ago I read an e-book by Clem Chambers on Value Investing. It was quite straightforward and not wishy-washy at all. It referenced ADVFN quite a bit, but this was fine, as it gave examples of setting up filters/screens. Could be turned around I guess, but if left as is, I wouldn't be surprised if it faded.
In terms of an investment, not one for me I'm afraid. Especially if they think Crypto is going to be a major contributor to their success. Block-chain will be invaluable for securing transactions and contracts in the future, but I'm not keen on the currency as an investment. I made a good profit on Ether around the end of last year, but it felt like a pure punt, not an investment. Didn't enjoy the ride and I knew it would be short-lived and I was riding a mini-bubble.
Just to remind you all that if you want to come to #MelloLondon then as a Stockopedia reader you are entitled to claim £25 off your ticket so just enter the code MLStocko25 in the box when buying a one or two day ticket.
We will be releasing the full programme schedule next week so you can plan ahead if you are just coming for one day but thoroughly recommend both as they are completely different and Graham is doing the SCVR one day and Paul the other.
Can you imagine the crazy posts that will appear on any Rob Terry forum for any of his vehicles? Would hate to be a green newbie poster who supports Rob Terry in his ventures on any forum.
A good question - just why is he not facing charges of fraud?