How many users now?

Hi Dave,

I was referring to the share price. A price over Ā£5 seems high to me atm. I hope itā€™s right though.

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That share price makes no sense. At the crowdfund 6 months ago it was Ā£2.60. Spreadsheet says Ā£7.17 which would be a 2.75x increase in six months - not remotely plausible. I would be happy if it was over Ā£3 now

https://www.crowdcube.com/companies/freetrade/pitches/bwL9Jq

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Looking at public peers AJ Bell is up 30% and Robin Hood is up 50% off the yearly lows. I could see FT being worth 50-100% more than the last raise but not 275%

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I think we have to take into account the drop from Ā£9.25 to Ā£2.60 which I think was exceptionally unrealistic, so a Ā£5.21 would be more accurate in my book.

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Oh the days of Ā£9 share price. What a time to be alive.

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If the price at the last raise was unrealistic youā€™d expect it to do huge volumes, the fact that it raised a fairly modest Ā£2m suggests it was relatively overpriced Vs previous rounds that raised more.

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That doesnā€™t make sense, Freetrade at the last raise was more profitable and a bigger company than at any time compared to the other raises; doesnā€™t make sense the sp could be classified as overpriced compared to other rounds. If anything those other rounds were overpriced maybe?

My suspicion is Freetrade dropped the price to attract interest but they dropped it far too much and it backfired, hence the reduced interest. They stated that they were following the same trajectory as HL and AJ but those companies did not lose 70% of their value over the same period!

If I was looking at a company and they showed strong growth and increased revenue, even turning profit but told me the SP was 70% lower no way would I buy into that, smells fishy. I donā€™t think Freetrade are fishy, I think they made a tactical error.

If they had dropped the SP to say Ā£6 at the last raise that would have felt more natural and in keeping with the overall market peers and may have attracted more interest - my opinion anyway.

All it tells you is that growth was below prior expectations, you only have to look at the implied growth in previous prices to see that they could grow significantly but still shed value.

Those mature companies are a lot less sensitive to discount rates, which hiked massively.

You are assuming a very high level of irrationality in investors to suggest they prefer buying things at a higher price, all else equal.

Iā€™m not pretending investors in aggregate are perfectly rational, but I think we have to at least grant them some baseline rationality.

Without any significant news I find it hard to believe the price would be hugely different to 6 months ago - probably around Ā£3 (driven by falling discount rates).

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If someone offered me over Ā£2 iā€™d shake their hand and have the paperwork signed before they finished the sentence.

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It will be interesting to see what the introduction of UK T Bills does for the AUM figure. Would image quite a large increase if things go well.

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At this stage in my life/investment I agree with you - I would dearly love Ā£5+ and I think it is worth that but I now have fatigue and just want to move on after all these years

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I have just written off my investment as a bad learning curve. That way I canā€™t be anymore gutted than I have been in the past year or so. I donā€™t think the values were bad or wrong but were based on the assumptions that all things that were ā€œcoming soonā€ would actually come.
The fact Xmas lists of past years are still waiting to happen show roll out hasnā€™t been what was expected and would drive down value from a expectation point of view.
That said the last year has been quite good for roll outs, just not what was in most demand. :rofl:

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Written off your investment? Are you having a laugh? Just wait for the numbers to come out particularly the number of yearly subscribers I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

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If youā€™re writing off your investment, let me buy your shares!

I understand your disillusionment, but IMO the team have been firing on all cylinders since the last fundraise. Product delivery has been great, systems resilience has appeared strong (ex-third party service failure), and Marketing appear to have woken up again in Q4 with a fundamental understanding that customer retention is a vital part of an intelligent growth strategy. Maybe they arenā€™t building what you want them to build, or building what they said they would build in the past, but they are building smart and strong.

I first invested in Freetrade in February 2017! It may not have gone how I hoped it would (I was sorry to see the JP Morgan buy-out not occur), but I feel more confident in the business now than I have in a long time. That manifests in my own increased use of FT with 18 instruments in my monthly recurring order. The product is good.

I also agree with @MohammedMohammed about the numbers likely indicating a pleasant surprise.

One clear area for improvement is customer/community/investor engagement with some low-bar high-touch quarterly Exec AMA. Someone somewhere is probably already thinking about it.

In any case - best wishes for 2024! I hope it exceeds all our best expectations.

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As I said the last year has been good but the last crowd funding was a shocker and most people aired the views of confidence in the product being an issue. If I have made a loss I write it off and do not double down, average down, etc.
I personally know the people I got to join who have added into 6 figure numbers have now moved to other platforms as promises were not kept and I myself use other mostly and wonā€™t fundraise again. Valuation is also about confidence and this forum shows confidence is much lower than the past.
I think FT will do fine but missed a crucial time to really go for the throat.
I say I write off the investment as I at present have lost 70% so no just forget about it and maybe one day int the distance I get a surprise but I will not be considering it for any value in my financial journey.
And, best wishes also!!!

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Iā€™d be surprised if they released the numbers as they havenā€™t given a real update to crowdfunding investors apart from when needing money and itā€™s probably a surprise you donā€™t want.

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I believe that people who invested +5K (if I remember correctly) in the last round were due to get more regular updates. Not sure if thatā€™s happening but know they offered this as a perk in the last round.

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Thatā€™s fair enough. But has there ever been a proper update for everyone else other than the next crowdfunding round?

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The crowdfunding perks by Freetrade have always been a lame duck, from people not getting socks or hoodies for months (years?) etc. Best to disregard any promises made.

I invested enough, Ā£10,000 in a round and got a Freetrade NFT which @Viktor said would be ā€˜coolā€™. Nothing came of it and neither he nor @adam or anyone else at Freetrade have ever mentioned it since.

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Iā€™d guess the cool part was not getting an NFT

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