A first draft of thoughts on these results.
Revenue. Disastrous. Top line, like for like down 21%. Within that philatelic trading and sales down by 40% from £15m to £9.1m. Publishing was up a tiny bit. Dealing in coins and other collectible so were up, but they had Mallett for a full year. A point I have made previously: last year philatelic operating margin was 28% ( a rough £6.7m on £23.8m of sales) whereas the margin on other collectibles was 9.5%. So, they are rapidly losing high margin sales to replace with low margin sales. In the half, though "dealing in other collectibles" revenue was up by 75% ( £9.9m v £5.7m) the operating margin was ZERO. Last interims they made £707,000 on sales of £5.6m. This year £92,000 on sales of £9.9m ( OK 0.8% margin). SGI has bought in a Whole load of businesses that are far lower margin, and completely diluted the stamp business. And obviously been so distracted by management issues that the high margin stamp business has not only been diluted, it has been neglected. Philatelic sales were 42% of sales last year ( £24m of £57m). In this first half they are 33% ( £9.1m v £27m).
Coins and medals revenue was up 26% and operating profit steady at £1.7m. And who has left the Board, Ian Goldbart, the founder and inspiration behind Noble......how much longer will this be a power house ?
GMV. Stanley Gibbons has been talking for ages about building up the Marketplace and building up GMV ( ie the gross value of sales through its platforms). GMV has risen by 25% to £6.3m. But what is GMV ? It is the gross value, on which SGI take a commission or fee ( as EBAy does). So the "revenue" attributable to SGI is only the fee or commission. In 2014 I cannot see a figure for the net commission, but in 2013 they disclosed it was 7.6% ( which feels about right, taking 7.6% of the gross sale proceeds for vendors). That makes the net revenue to SGI, using the same fee assumption, on marketplace plus bidstart GMV of a combined £858,000 as a tiny £65,000. Or am I getting this wrong ? After all the hype, the many many launches, the vast IT expense are the online platforms really only contributing 0.2%…
Oh dear, Stanley Gibbons again! Another abysmal performance from a business going nowhere.
Only the recovery of 1.9m pounds from a legal dispute against their pension fund advisers has masked an actual operating loss of over 1.5m pounds in the half-year. LFL sales are down 21%. They are carrying way over one year of inventory, for which it would be nice to have an ageing (even in the field of collectibles, I'd expect there to be some dud items there). Judging by the number of flats in One Hyde Park reported to be for sale, collectibles might not exactly be at the top of their target clients' wish lists right now.
As for their online collectibles marketplace aspirations, well, what to say? Over one million pounds more "invested" in this "solution", a "solution" perhaps desperately in search of a problem. SGI could perhaps offer their obvious experience in the field of developing delayed multi-year, costly and non-functional IT programme to the British Government (NHS patient records? Universal Credit?). Seriously though, would HNW individuals even bother going online to search for collectibles? Would Abramovich really be sitting on his yacht off the Caymans and deciding, after a vodka or two (or perhaps several, given how Chelsea are playing this season) to console himself by logging in to the SGI online marketplace to look for bargains, the way I might look on eBay for that elusive pair of pink Jimmy Choos in just the right size? Honestly, is the whole strategy one that makes sense?
Why not simply sell the whole business off as a trophy asset in itself?
That would at least make some sense to shareholders.
PS: Simonty, sorry for the red tick, my mistake, I had meant to tick down the post on binary options just before yours.
PPS: There are already several perfectly good online auction sites for middle-value collectibles which SGI could simply have joined, leaving the really top dollar stuff for personal sales channels. They have wasted years and millions on this obviously failed strategy decision. Example: https://www.barnebys.co.uk/
