What a total debacle!
It would not be at all surprising to hear that shareholders in Team Internet Group (LON:TIG) are very concerned about the way this cash-generative global internet services business has fallen out of grace.
Despite yesterday morning’s ‘resilient’ Q3 unaudited financial results for the nine months to end-September – which declared that its “Increasing gross margins and cost control provide the basis for sustaining bottom-line profitability and increased adjusted EPS” – the market gave its own views of the disappointing statement.
Questionable Dealing Activity
The company’s shares, which were 138p last Thursday, followed on Friday by a fall to 119p after very heavy dealings just one trading day before the Q3 results were to be announced, absolutely collapsed in total mayhem after Monday morning’s news.
Last night they closed 27.01% down, 32.20p lower on the day at 87p, after hitting the lowest level in the last two years of 86.10p at one stage.
As I reported yesterday morning, the daily average volume was 424,512 of shares traded.
Last Thursday only 202,911 were dealt.
On Friday, ahead of the news, some 1,126,407 were traded.
Yesterday, over 12 times the daily average changed hands – some 5,216,618 shares.
From Where I Stand
I have to say that I am very disappointed by this situation, having championed this company since July 2021, when its shares were 89p, they subsequently reacted to good corporate growth over the following three years, hitting 207.50p in June/July of this year.
In the last three trading days the group’s value has fallen over £140m, closing at just £238m last night.
Apart from suggestions that there should be a ‘dealings enquiry’ by the LSE, market whispers also infer that some of the group’s institutional investors could be calling for the heads of 49-year-old £920,000 per annum CEO Michael Riedl and ‘Billy’ Green, 47, the £423,000 a year CFO.
No doubt, the professionals will have been running their calculators over the massive ‘share buyback’ programmes of the last two years, with over 16.5m shares having been ‘repurchased’ on borrowed money, at such substantially higher prices than at which they stand today.
It was interesting to note in this morning’s Transaction announcement that yesterday the group only bought back some 105,019 shares at an average 98.25p, with the lowest price paid being 90p – you would have thought that in the midst of such a meltdown the company should have been buying shed loads of its own stock at such low prices – in effect committing to a massive ‘averaging’ of its buyback prices – but alas it was not to be.
It is suggested that, in retrospect, the loss of value that the programmes have created was more than the combined CEO and CFO salaries for the whole of that two-year period.
The market whispers also mutter that the group’s joint brokers and its PR firm, all very experienced and professional outfits, should have anticipated such an ensuing debacle and bolstered up the group’s corporate walls in advance.
But we all know just what a ‘wicked mother’ the market can be, especially if it is able to create profitable dealing opportunities for those ‘in the know’ and fleet of foot.
This group really is a ‘money machine’ that will carry on lifting its earnings, but will it possibly be with a new corporate team in charge.
Add to this: CEO currently being investigated for insider dealing by UK authority; CEO has provided preferencial financial terms from Team Internet with a third-party company he is invested in ShortDot, that has affected TI performance. CEO has shared client data with that same third party company placing them in an unfair market position. The Board needs to step in!