Their numbers are a joke. They’ve missed every target set in previous rounds by a mile and are still running at a loss 5 years in. Crazy hockey stick projections for future years. I’m looking to offload my shares (at a discount) if you want them?!?
You are so right,as I say why on earth would a company with so many products that are in or have been in all the big supermarkets STILL need cash?? It makes no sense!
Priority access for WIT Fitness Seedrs | WIT Fitness | Pre Registration thoughts?
Has anyone received their EIS relief from the last eligible CHIP round?
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Exit coming… got an email now!
Very pleased for you 
.
I missed out as I didn’t end up making an investment in Secret Cinema.
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The terms don’t sound great from the discussion forum on Crowdcube but no details being shared. Discussions | Crowdcube
I don’t have any pre-existing knowledge about Secret Cinema, but their campaign makes for interesting reading (“Summary of Secret Group Share Classes and Waterfall”):
If the Company raises £5m from Crowdcube investors and is then sold for less than £85m,
Crowdcube investors would expect to receive less than their investment […] For example, if the Company is sold for £50m […] Crowdcube investors would expect to receive £10.32 per share.
Considering their raise was just over a year ago, in June 2021, when the capital markets were in their… let’s say, nutty phase… it seems very difficult to imagine that they’ve managed to exit at >£50m without some major change in the business fundamentals.
So, based on the apparent absence of information (if they’d managed to successfully exit, you’d expect to see singing-and-dancing on LinkedIn, instead of the founder quietly talking about his “[…] next venture after Secret Cinema […]”) I’m going to guess that this will represent a loss for all crowd participants.
An additional consideration is that >40% of the company is owned by one fund, and that fund (“ACTIVE CAPITAL PARTNERS II LP”) has been investing for many years, meaning their profit basis is much much lower than the crowd, i.e: selling for £50m may represent a good exit for them despite being a bad exit for the crowd. If the crowd don’t lose out on this exit, I’d be shocked.
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Agreed - looks like they are blocking all the messages on Crowdcube now so it’s unlikely to be a good result for the crowd. I had originally invested in this one early in the campaign but then cancelled after I saw the share classes you mention in hindsight that is looking like a lucky escape.
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Not a particularly positive update from Bank North today….
Another bullet dodged by me 
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Pluto has gone to 0…
What was Pluto?
Small robot company
New round
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Just looking at some opinions on this one, overall looks very interesting and a good growth / execution story.
They recently acquired the Czech, Finnish, Hungarian, and Swedish markets of European competitor Honest Foods from Delivery Hero. 9 markets with over 500 sites.
The thesis of Peckwater is that there’s a resource (commercial kitchens) that is underutilised (the kitchen will only produce as much as the restaurant it’s attached to demands, restaurant demand rarely comes close to saturating kitchen capacity) and so, given the costs of running a kitchen are so high, marginal costs of producing food are so low, increasing demand on the kitchen can provide great returns for the kitchen operator. A solid thesis.
I’m not a huge fan of the concept of a “moat” because it leans heavily on the idea that the entire value of a business can be distilled down into one behaviour, however, in this case, it’s a helpful concept to consider for this business. What does Peckwater have that their competitors don’t have? What’s their moat?
Peckwater is today where Uber was 10 years ago, and where Deliveroo was 5 years ago. The initial growth story of Uber and Deliveroo was great, they had a compelling offering for both sides of the market, drivers and riders loved them, but then people caught on, and competitors appeared, and now both companies are a decade old and continue to hemorrhage money because customer retention for a fungible service in a highly competitive market is… very, very difficult.
Another comparable industry is the rapid grocery delivery business model that was popular for a hot minute and has now imploded. Gorillas, Getir, Weezy, Zapp, Jiffy… all had impressive growth stories, because they were shoveling money into growth.
Peckwater’s business model is especially vulnerable because it’s dependent upon Uber Eats, Just Eat, Deliveroo, Door Dash, Postmates etc. to provide them with customers, and then their kitchen partners to deliver the food. What does Peckwater actually have? Their brands? Chilango (a well recognised brand in London) was acquired by a competitor, Tortilla, for £2m this year, who proceeded to kill the Chilango brand, clearly demonstrating how little they valued Chilango’s brand vs. the assets (even at a far too optimistic valuation of 50% of the sale price, that would value the Chilango brand at £1m). Peckwater have 10 brands (that I’ve never heard of) and using Chilango’s brand as a base, even at the most optimistic valuation, their brands are worth, maybe a few million.
Here’s what’ll happen to Peckwater et al.: the (unprofitable!) platforms they use to advertise (Uber Eats, Deliveroo) will see Peckwater as a golden goose and start to squeeze them as much as they can, while Peckwater’s competitors will go to Peckwater’s kitchen partners and offer them a better deal, and suddenly Peckwater is losing its kitchen partners and what little margins they have will get squeezed dry. How many Uber Eats riders also ride for Deliveroo? How many Uber drivers also drive for Lyft?
Peckwater should be thought of as a restaurant group, not a technology company. Maybe a year ago their technology company narrative would fly, but not anymore. If you want to back Peckwater as a restaurant group then I think they’re a pretty interesting choice, but personally, I would not value a restaurant group at a technology company multiple – and in the case of Peckwater as a restaurant group, none of their restaurants are particularly compelling.
Peckwater et al. are conceptually neat, they’re the sort of thing that seems clever and compelling at a glance, but it doesn’t stand up to meaningful scrutiny. I would bet money that if you talk to people in the restaurant industry, they’d have the same attitude towards Peckwater that taxi drivers had towards Uber. Restaurants don’t run kitchens because they love running kitchens, the kitchen is a means to an end, and so what’ll happen is all these restaurants-moonlighting-as-peckwater-kitchens will be replaced by shipping container ghost kitchens (that aren’t burdened by the costs of running a restaurant) and the restaurant business will be harmed by the race to the bottom.
Side note, Peckwater specifically is backed by SoftBank, which is probably one of the greatest counter signals available to investors. SoftBank are so good at not picking winners that it’s almost shocking that it isn’t their entire purpose.
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As always your insight @s_m is greatly appreciated and lol on the Softbank part (the overall track record has been dissapointing).
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I should say, though, that there is one player in the market that I find intriguing. Virtual Dining Concepts are coming at it from the opposite direction, where they understand you can’t just “create” a brand, and so they’re taking established brands (e.g: Mariah Carey, Nascar) and launching food brands for them using virtual kitchens (available globally, but mostly in the US for now). I think that’s a much more compelling business model, although it remains to be seen if they can make it successful, people might be willing to order Mariah Carey’s cookies once because of the novelty and never again. I guess Peckwater would argue that it’s more sustainable over the long term to build a wholly-owned food brand from the ground up than it is to part-own a quasi-food brand that is driven not by the food but by the brand. Either way, interesting to see what happens.
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Small robot company in financial times
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Has anyone who invested in eFoldi read and understood the new Articles of Association? I’m hoping someone will tell me otherwise, but the way I’ve read it, B shareholders (i.e. crowdfunders) are going to be limited to 1% of the proceeds of any exit or liquidation. This is despite having >12% of equity from the first CC round, and possibly more thereafter.
On a similar note, how radical can changes be when made through special resolutions - e.g. if the 75% decided the remaining 25% would only get any return if pigs landed on the moon, is that doable/legal?
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