8I Holdings Limited (ASX:8IH)

[Debronic]

Vindication perhaps for the blogger who had to take down his blogs on 8i? Let's see if business times gets a call from the company this time round.

[karlmarx]

BT stated only facts, and unlike the blogger, it did not speculate on the identities of those that purchased pre-ipo shares of 8I's subsidiaries/portfolio companies. Neither did BT attempt to lift the veil on 8I's business model, and question its sustainability. Even though there was no investigative reporting the article, I give credit to the writer for highlighting the divergence between the principles that 8I claims to be guided by, and its results.

The operators of 8I should not have flipped the pre-ipo shares at such high valuations. If it were sold at only a small premium, hence ensuring its pre-ipo investors still had some meat left, most of its ipo would have a higher share price post-listing. This would then ensure greater demand from pre-ipo investors for subsequent listings, giving 8I's pre-ipo business greater longevity. What were the operators of 8I thinking, when they sold the pre-ipo shares at such high valuations? Did they believe that this can be done repeatedly?

If a business is not so honest with its customers, how will they treat their minority shareholders? Will you be confident of the quality of its financial reporting?

[Debronic]

An article that appeared on Business Times today. Online version available at https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/compani...t-espouses

[Image: vo6893.jpg]

BT stated only facts, and unlike the blogger, it did not speculate on the identities of those that purchased pre-ipo shares of 8I's subsidiaries/portfolio companies. Neither did BT attempt to lift the veil on 8I's business model, and question its sustainability. Even though there was no investigative reporting the article, I give credit to the writer for highlighting the divergence between the principles that 8I claims to be guided by, and its results.

The operators of 8I should not have flipped the pre-ipo shares at such high valuations. If it were sold at only a small premium, hence ensuring its pre-ipo investors still had some meat left, most of its ipo would have a higher share price post-listing. This would then ensure greater demand from pre-ipo investors for subsequent listings, giving 8I's pre-ipo business greater longevity. What were the operators of 8I thinking, when they sold the pre-ipo shares at such high valuations? Did they believe that this can be done repeatedly?

If a business is not so honest with its customers, how will they treat their minority shareholders? Will you be confident of the quality of its financial reporting?

Actually I don't think the blogger was speculating on the identities of the pre-ipo investors.  He merely stated what the company disclosed. See pages 2 and 3 of the announcement for the pre-IPO transaction of 8i's subsidiary, Velocity property:
https://hotcopper.com.au/documentdownloa...OlHhlFA%3D 

Says there about the buyers and I quote
"Labelle 
Capital Inc. is a venture capital company financed by a consortium of approximately 
200 of investors largely based in South-East Asia, many of whom are minority shareholders of the Company."
"Crescenta Investment Ltd is an investment company financed by a 
consortium of approximately 360 of investors, largely based in South-East Asia, 
many of whom are minority shareholders of the Company."

[karlmarx]

IIRC, it was suggested that 'the minority shareholders of the company' may be students of 8I.

[Debronic]

If you go back and reread post #41 (credit to bardsmanship for saving these posts!), the blogger clearly stated he knew "nothing about these companies and these investors". I think the revelation that these shareholders were in fact students of 8i came in the comments section from two supposedly ex-course graduates.

[karlmarx]

I see. Thanks for the clarification.

I doubt 8I will take on BT though.

Hopefully, we will get to see a more investigative report from The Edge or BT.

[Debronic]

You are welcome. I do not think they will too since a large part of the report is just quoting facts and numbers posted by the company.

[jaco]

8I Holdings released its financial Half Year (ending 30 september 2018) report recently. The financial results are getting ever more dire, with accelerating losses at the Hidden Champions Fund. However, in this post I want to draw your attention to some developments in the Digimatic saga, which we have discussed extensively in this forum.

8I Holdings already transferred its educational activities (VIC, Millionaire Circle, etc) into Digimatic earlier. On 1 october 2018, it subsequently sold the existing "Digital and Marketing Businesses" to Ivan Ong for a consideration of 3,031,974 8VI shares at A$0.66 per share, which is about 2 mln AUD and thus also about 2 mln SGD. The name Digimatic was dropped and the company renamed itself into 8VIC Holdings Limited, with ticker 8VI as referenced above. The share price has dropped to A$0.55 since. 8VIC Holdings Limited presents itself at https://8vicglobal.com/ and announces Mr. Ken Chee arriving as the new CEO on 1 jan 2019.

It's all small potato business and hard to take very serious. Yet, I wanted to dedicate a posting to the disposal of Digimatic for 2 mln SGD, which brings a certain closure to the Digimatic "financial engineering" saga. The story was first exposed by the blog investingisbusiness.wordpress.com and later referenced in a The Business Times article on 31 july 2018. In a series of partial purchases, a "restructuring exercise" and the public listing of the original CPA Academy business, its implied value popped from S$3 million to S$63.54 million within a few months. Certainly, one of the most remarkable events in Singapore's corporate history. However, if I interpreted the recent information correctly, the value of ACE/Digimatic seems to be only S$2 million now, instead of S$63.54 million.

The disposal seems a vindication for the blogger of investingisbusiness.wordpress.com, who detailed their concerns about this implied valuations already in may 2016. It seems these concerns were justified. Although I did not agree with the blogger removing these posts later on, I still want to recognize and salute him or her with this post.

[Ray168]

Some observation of 8IVC

1. China branch was hot in 2017. But now it was drop from the group. 
   
2. New CEO annual remuneration is $144K. Is he one of the board member or just a employee?
   
3. Could not find the share holding information. Anyone has insight? 
   
4. Clive is Non-executive Chairman .... so he is passive now?
   
5. Where is Sean? He was 8VIC CEO isn't it? 
   

So does this change means that the 2 founders of 8IH were kick out?
Lol.


Above is just a personal opinion. 

[Bosco]

For those people who are going to sign up for his course, take it from someone who used to trust in his vision, with my time, and money. I’ve renewed my mcircle multiple times, and each time when he sold us the pre-IPO deals, I did not suspect anything. I believe in his grand vision of wanting to build a hundred millionaires from his mcircle community, and eventually turning 8IH into a billion dollar cap company.
When he sold us DMC, we were told it’s a very fast grower company. To put it up there with google and Facebook, DMC has the potential to grow. But later did I know we were the suckers he sold the inflated business to, making our cheques payable to Champion Star.
A five figure loss is a hard grit to bite. But if someone were to tell me any of this earlier, it would’ve mitigated the pain a lot. That said, I like Sean Seah, I wonder if his vision and Ken’s are aligned, or if he knows any of this before he sold Financial Joy Institute to 8IH (which in itself isn’t a fair deal because part of it is swapped with 8IH’s shares). If not, like the other analysts and the CFO before him, I’ll only attend his course when he leaves 8IH.


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