Good morning, it's Paul here.

I finished off yesterday's report in the early evening, adding new sections on Avation (LON:AVAP) and Stride Gaming (LON:STR) . So if that interests you, here's the link.

I will be busy this afternoon, planning & recording my telephone interview with management of  Sosandar (LON:SOS) (in which I hold a long position). That should be published by early evening today. I will tweet out & put a link into Weds SCVR here. There seems to be a lot of interest in the company from you, so many thanks for the interesting questions you submitted to me. Time constraints mean I probably won't be able to cover all of them, but will do my best. We can always do a follow-up interview after the FY 03/2019 results are published in the summer.

On to today's trading updates & results statements.



Plus500 (LON:PLUS)

Share price: 1105p (down 32% today, at 12:35)
No. shares: 113.7m
Market cap: £1,256m

Preliminary results - for year ended 31 Dec 2018

Only a brief comment, as it's far too big for a small caps report. However, lots of us are fascinated by this company - the key questions being whether its massive profits & cashflow are real - that's an easy one, the answer is yes. But are those profits/cashflows sustainable? That's the big question mark - hence why the shares have only attracted a fairly low PER, and huge dividend yield in the past.

The 2018 financial results look absolutely stunning; 

  • Net profit us up 90% to $379m
  • Cash generated from operations is up 78% to $495m
  • Dividends of just under $2 were paid (c. 155p per share) - a yield of  14% at today's share price


Profit warning - here's the problem, in the "current trading" section;

Following our latest assessment of the impact of the ESMA regulatory measures, FY19 revenue is expected to be lower than current market expectations.

This, combined with our intention to maintain our marketing spend, is likely to result in 2019 profit being materially lower than current market expectation...


Directorspeak - The CEO doesn't sound too worried about this downturn;

"In summary, our highly…

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