8I Holdings Limited (ASX:8IH)

Thanks to various fellow buddies for the valuable insights.. I have a friend that works for 8I as an analyst and course instructor. Hope he wasn't pressured to invest in these companies.

(04-06-2018, 10:19 AM)TTTI Wrote: They managed to somehow get a pte entity listed at a ridiculous valuation, aka sold out to the dumb public at IPO.

In principle, you are right. One is free to offer a company for IPO at a ridiculous valuation. The market is free to accept or reject that valuation and in this case there were apparently some buyers initially.

However, there are still rules and regulations pertaining to the IPO process and a lot of those concern full disclosure of the facts by the sellers in order to protect the buyers. In the Digimatic prospectus two companies with non-descriptive names (Champion Star United Inc and Aden Ventures Limited) are listed as large pre-ipo shareholders. There is no explanation of who these parties are and what their intentions are. From various sources, we now suspect that former students of 8I's investing courses are behind these entities. If true, it seems to me that this is material information that should have been mentioned in the prospectus. Any reasonable, prospective buyer of Digimatic shares, would want to know this.

(05-06-2018, 12:14 AM)jaco Wrote:

(04-06-2018, 10:19 AM)TTTI Wrote: They managed to somehow get a pte entity listed at a ridiculous valuation, aka sold out to the dumb public at IPO.

In principle, you are right. One is free to offer a company for IPO at a ridiculous valuation. The market is free to accept or reject that valuation and in this case there were apparently some buyers initially.

However, there are still rules and regulations pertaining to the IPO process and a lot of those concern full disclosure of the facts by the sellers in order to protect the buyers. In the Digimatic prospectus two companies with non-descriptive names (Champion Star United Inc and Aden Ventures Limited) are listed as large pre-ipo shareholders. There is no explanation of who these parties are and what their intentions are. From various sources, we now suspect that former students of 8I's investing courses are behind these entities. If true, it seems to me that this is material information that should have been mentioned in the prospectus. Any reasonable, prospective buyer of Digimatic shares, would want to know this.

What I know is from the blog post links in the comments earlier in this thread.
Specifically this:
https://imgur.com/a/6LET7
Alright, so as u said so yourself, "there are still rules and regulations pertaining to the IPO process and a lot of those concern full disclosure of the facts by the sellers in order to protect the buyers."

Have they infringed on the rules? If so, I'd think someone would take action against them, or rather, have brought it up during the IPO process.
If they haven't infringed on the rules, even if you rightly think that they should've mentioned who are the parties behind the entities that took up the stakes in Digimatic, then well, they haven't infringed on the rules. Period.
There's no middle ground here.
They either infringed on the rules, or they haven't.
And as much as we can say that they should've done this or that, if the rules didn't require them to disclose, that's too bad.
The rules may suck, but they didn't do anything wrong, and I wouldn't really term it as "financial engineering".

Also, at IPO, the PE was >100, so if "investors" didn't bother to investigate deeper and paid up the equivalent of more than 100 years of earnings.....
No sympathy from me.

The way this works out is if everyone bothers a bit more about what they're buying. If a dodgy IPO like this comes along and everyone does just a tiny bit of digging, the obvious red flags would put everyone off. Then such dodgy IPOs will naturally fail to exist.
I'm talking about obvious stuff. The PE at IPO is certainly obvious and doesn't require much effort. You don't need to trace and track a long paper trail for that.
So, that's just too bad for the IPO "investors".

The right buttons were pushed during the pre-IPO briefing. CPA was marketed as a super growth company. Their revenue then was generating online website leads for different companies. So naturally PE across different business of similar nature, like Facebook, was brought up for comparison. For those who signed up, I believe it was informed that they’ll be equity note holder of Champion Star, and a moratorium period of, think it was a year, was to be observed.

(06-06-2018, 04:57 PM)TTTI Wrote: Also, at IPO, the PE was >100, so if "investors" didn't bother to investigate deeper and paid up the equivalent of more than 100 years of earnings.....
No sympathy from me.

The way this works out is if everyone bothers a bit more about what they're buying. If a dodgy IPO like this comes along and everyone does just a tiny bit of digging, the obvious red flags would put everyone off. Then such dodgy IPOs will naturally fail to exist.
I'm talking about obvious stuff. The PE at IPO is certainly obvious and doesn't require much effort. You don't need to trace and track a long paper trail for that.
So, that's just too bad for the IPO "investors".

As you say, it's trivial to find out what the PE was at IPO. That's why it's curious that there was enough demand for the IPO that it actually ended up oversubscribed. One can't help but wonder where this demand came from.

All just my speculation, of course.

(07-06-2018, 09:51 AM)bardsmanship Wrote:

(06-06-2018, 04:57 PM)TTTI Wrote: Also, at IPO, the PE was >100, so if "investors" didn't bother to investigate deeper and paid up the equivalent of more than 100 years of earnings.....
No sympathy from me.

The way this works out is if everyone bothers a bit more about what they're buying. If a dodgy IPO like this comes along and everyone does just a tiny bit of digging, the obvious red flags would put everyone off. Then such dodgy IPOs will naturally fail to exist.
I'm talking about obvious stuff. The PE at IPO is certainly obvious and doesn't require much effort. You don't need to trace and track a long paper trail for that.
So, that's just too bad for the IPO "investors".

As you say, it's trivial to find out what the PE was at IPO. That's why it's curious that there was enough demand for the IPO that it actually ended up oversubscribed. One can't help but wonder where this demand came from.

All just my speculation, of course.

I guess probably their inner circle contributed to a fair bit of the demand. Moreover with moratorium this may create an "artificial" price at the beginning where actual supply is being cut off. 8IH did perform quite well initially before it came tumbling down. So students or inner circle believed that DMC and Velocity will repeat a similar performance and apply for the shares. In conclusion, my own take is their mgmt did a clever marketing job promoting their IPOs to an "ignorant" group. Moreover most assume the IPOs should be OK as they preach value investing. Anyway the truth finally catches up and all 3 "brother" companies share prices performance are similar to what we see from some of the listed S chips listed here.

(07-06-2018, 09:51 AM)bardsmanship Wrote:

(06-06-2018, 04:57 PM)TTTI Wrote: Also, at IPO, the PE was >100, so if "investors" didn't bother to investigate deeper and paid up the equivalent of more than 100 years of earnings.....
No sympathy from me.

The way this works out is if everyone bothers a bit more about what they're buying. If a dodgy IPO like this comes along and everyone does just a tiny bit of digging, the obvious red flags would put everyone off. Then such dodgy IPOs will naturally fail to exist.
I'm talking about obvious stuff. The PE at IPO is certainly obvious and doesn't require much effort. You don't need to trace and track a long paper trail for that.
So, that's just too bad for the IPO "investors".

As you say, it's trivial to find out what the PE was at IPO. That's why it's curious that there was enough demand for the IPO that it actually ended up oversubscribed. One can't help but wonder where this demand came from.

All just my speculation, of course.

Ayondo's IPO was also subscribed.
Based on what logic.... I dunno.
The demand came from retailers who just want to flip it to the next bugger on the 1st trading day and pocket some gains.
The company could be called "Con Job Limited" and there'd still be demand.

Now that the share price of 8I and all its related companies have tanked to abysmal depths, the company is brought back to the spotlight again.

This whole 8I thing is just sad.


1) Salesmen offloading highly-valued companies of questionable quality to 'too trusting' learners.

2) Learners not using any of the 'value investing' skills they were taught. If they were taught at all.

3) Salesmen takes his sales pitch to new investors, after exhausting his present clients.

4) Learners lost their money having bought shares of questionable worth.


Instead of getting schooled on how to make investments, the learners were sold questionable investments.

I am both appalled and disgusted by what management has done.

Dear Members,

A reminder not to let one's emotions take over especially in a forum of Valuebuddies which prides itself for rational and calm members commenting. No actions will be taken but just a reminder to not make defamatory/overboard remarks.

<Acting in the capacity of a moderator>

(07-06-2018, 07:07 PM)karlmarx Wrote: Now that the share price of 8I and all its related companies have tanked to abysmal depths, the company is brought back to the spotlight again.

This whole 8I thing is just sad.


1) Salesmen offloading highly-valued companies of questionable quality to 'too trusting' learners.

2) Learners not using any of the 'value investing' skills they were taught. If they were taught at all.

3) Salesmen takes his sales pitch to new investors, after exhausting his present clients.

4) Learners lost their money having bought shares of questionable worth.


Instead of getting schooled on how to make investments, the learners were sold questionable investments.

I am both appalled and disgusted by what management has done.

They are schooled in the university of life

I always believe life is too short to make big mistakes; learn from others’ mistakes better