Daft now own 71% of boards.ie?

Yo Buddy. You still alive?

Who would have thought they would have that big a chunk! Will it mean any changes?

Story here. Credit to the indo and Gordan Deegaan.

http://www.independent.ie/business/irish/dafts-pretax-up-25pc-despite-writedowns-2358981.html

By Gordon Deegan

Thursday September 30 2010

Pre-tax profits at online media group, Daft Media Ltd last year increased by 25pc to €2.18m, its new accounts show. The group operates the country's largest property website, daft.ie.
However, accounts for the Dublin-based firm show that its pre-tax profits were hit for the second year running following the company writing down its investment in the firm that operates the community website, boards.ie.
The accounts to the end of December last show that Daft Media Ltd took a majority stake in Boards.ie Ltd last year by investing an additional €1.35m in the company to bring its stake in the firm to 71pc.
Daft Media Ltd had invested €999,750 to acquire a minority stake-holding in boards.ie in 2008 and last year's purchase of additional shares brings its total investment to €2.35m.
Daft Media Ltd wrote down its investment in boards.ie by €428,000 last year and this followed a write down of €749,750 in 2008.
The total write-down in boards.ie is €1.17m.
The directors reveal that Boards.ie Ltd recorded a net loss of €90,763 last year.
The directors also confirm that Daft Media Ltd wrote down its investment of €240,258 in Adverts Marketplace Ltd, that was formed last year to acquire the assets of adverts.ie, by €180,000.
Revenues
Last year, Daft Media Ltd's write-downs in boards.ie and adverts.ie totalled €608,258.
Established in 1997 by brothers Eamonn and Brian Fallon, Daft Media Ltd's revenues last year increased by 6pc from €5.7m to €6.1m.
The figures show that Daft Media Ltd's operating profits increased by 11pc from €2.45m to €2.74m last year.
The filings show that the directors received an aggregate €222,000 for management services last year and an additional aggregate €142,000 for consultancy services. The company's operating profits last year increased by 11pc from €2.45m to €2.74m.
- Gordon Deegan
Irish Independent

Wibbs

Old news and nada changed. Well nada beyond a more robust platform. That would be a good thing(tm)

seamus

It happened sometime last year. So...eh...no, there won't be any major changes.

4zn76tysfajdxp

The directors reveal that Boards.ie Ltd recorded a net loss of €90,763 last year.

That was when I was mod.

Cookie_Monster

The directors reveal that Boards.ie Ltd recorded a net loss of €90,763 last year.

so who's getting the boot to keep costs down then :pac:

Wibbs

See Frada above.

mike65

It means we are hoping for an upturn in the property sector.

Yawns

lol

RoadKillTs

Wished the put some money into buying more bandwidth the site is timing out a lot lately, besides that it's all good.

gonedrinking

Seems daft grossly overpaid for boards then.

How the hell did they have a 90k loss, what costs do boards have?

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

Boards.ie. The forum equivalent of Manchester City FC

seamus

gonedrinking wrote: »

Seems daft grossly overpaid for boards then.

How the hell did they have a 90k loss, what costs do boards have?

5 or 6 staff members, massive amounts of bandwidth and ongoing hardware upgrades/maintenance.

It's worth noting that a writedown on shares doesn't necessarily mean that boards is in trouble, that the value of boards has decreased or that daft grossly overpaid. It's effectively an accounting trick.

paddydriver

Ye mods must be getting a great cut of all those millions... ye hardly do it for the love of all us

super_furry

Agustin Slimy Voice wrote: »

That was when I was mod.

You're the Brian Cowen of boards!

R0ot

Came to thread expecting statistics on 71% of boards being "Daft", left disappointed. :pac:

Asok

R0ot wrote: »

Came to thread expecting statistics on 71% of boards being "Daft", left disappointed. :pac:

*Fills his underpants with custard*

Are you happy now!?

Miguel_Sanchez

paddydriver wrote: »

Ye mods must be getting a great cut of all those millions... ye hardly do it for the love of all us

Boards.ie is putting my kids through college!

Mr Benevolent

Boards is making a 90k loss per year? Uhoh.

Much, much less profitable then I thought.

bonerm

Confab wrote: »

Boards is making a 90k loss per year? Uhoh.

A one 1cent tax on bad puns should take care of that.

Samba

Interesting, I wonder how much they're out of pocket on advertising revenue since the demise of the poker forum.

bonerm wrote: »

A one 1cent tax on bad puns should take care of that.

That's a bit excessive, 0.01 should suffice.

Cookie_Monster

seamus wrote: »

It's worth noting that a writedown on shares doesn't necessarily mean that boards is in trouble, that the value of boards has decreased or that daft grossly overpaid. It's effectively an accounting trick.

you don't write down an investment for no reason though. I reckon that Daft did indeed grossly overpay for boards.ie, I can't imagine the company is worth less now than it was so the value of the invest should be the same all things being equal, I imagine a lot of goodwill was involved and this is being written off thus affecting the investment value.. Well done to the lads who sold the shares, quids in on that at least.

as for the 90k loss, that by itself means pretty much nothing without knowing a lot more about rev and costs for the current and previous years to compare and clearly that is not available. If they have taken on extra staff this year for growth reasons it probably will cause a short term loss while revenues grow to cope with the increased cost. But that increased cost will obviously allow a lot more dev etc to allow the site to grow and be a lot more stable.

either that or cut back on the coke and hooker fund

Pherekydes

The big question is:

Did boards lend Daft €36bn to buy €36k worth of shares in boards?

R0ot

Asok wrote: »

*Fills his underpants with custard*

Are you happy now!?

You always win this game as your underpants hold an infinite amount! :pac:

SugarHigh

gonedrinking wrote: »

Seems daft grossly overpaid for boards then.

How the hell did they have a 90k loss, what costs do boards have?

I think it's the write down in value that makes the loss so high and not running costs. Thats a complete guess though and I'm open to correction.

Basq

I can't see any changes taking place to be honest..
























Post sponsored by Daft.ie

gonedrinking

Samba wrote: »

Interesting, I wonder how much they're out of pocket on advertising revenue since the demise of the poker forum.




That's a bit excessive, 0.01 should suffice.

what do you mean by demise of the poker forum, what happened it?

paddydriver

paddydriver wrote: »

Ye mods must be getting a great cut of all those millions... ye hardly do it for the love of all us

Damn. I knew I shouldn't've stepped down from being a mod.

Cookie_Monster

SugarHigh wrote: »

I think it's the write down in value that makes the loss so high and not running costs. Thats a complete guess though and I'm open to correction.

the write down mention is in Daft, not Boards. We don't know if Boards has anything to write down as such

Joey the lips

Thats daft......ie

Samba

gonedrinking wrote: »

what do you mean by demise of the poker forum, what happened it?

Without going into specifics...

What didn't happen!? It used to be one of the busiest forums on the site, now it's like a ghost town. Most people left to find new pastures.

We'll just leave it at the following, there was a difference of opinion which led to the above separatist community..

gonedrinking

Samba wrote: »

Without going into specifics...

What didn't happen!? It used to be one of the busiest forums on the site, now it's like a ghost town. Most people left to find new pastures.

We'll just leave it at the following, there was a difference of opinion which led to the above separatist community..

thats mad, I always wondered how the poker forum ever got so big to begin with, think it was the second busiest forum on here, its not like poker is a huge pastime/hobby in Ireland

oppenheimer1

Changes? Well there have been plenty of changes, all one has to do is look at the charter updates and sticky relating to "abuse" of celebrities. All of this to make the site more marketable to advertisers. I have noticed a decline in regular posters coming to the site too. Maybe they've moved on and are bored or perhaps the newer heavy handed moderation coming from diktat at the top is slowly driving the old, more eloquent posters away.

I think that advertisers may have started to realise that almost no one buys anything as a result of an online ad and the pay per click model doesn't work that well. It is very difficult to make money online.

AnnyHallsal

Joey the lips wrote: »

Thats daft......ie

Can see this catching on. It's my new *stock* response :pac:

Post of the day surely ...

ScumLord

Invested €1.35 million! In boards! Jaysus I didn't think there was ever that much money involved, Christ almighty, 1.35 millions, how the hell do they plan to recoup their investment with google ads?

biko

The story you linked to OP is:
By Gordon Deegan
Friday September 25 2009
Profits at one of Ireland's largest online media groups, Daft Media Ltd, were hit last year following a €1m writedown on an investment in the firm that operates the community website, boards.ie.

Your quote is from another place, www.propertyweek.ie
This doesn't make sense, pls explain.

Edit - NM: http://www.herald.ie/national-news/daft-gets-profit-jump-2359454.html

Thursday September 30 2010
ONLINE housing group Daft Media reported a 25pc jump in pre-tax profits last year, despite a writedown against its investment in community website, boards.ie.
The group's accounts for the Dublin-based firm show that its pre-tax profits were hit for the second year running following the company writing down its investment in the firm.
Recent accounts filed show that Daft Media Ltd took a majority stake in Boards.ie Ltd last year by investing an additional €1.35m in the company to bring its stake in the firm to 71pc.
Established in 1997 by brothers Eamonn and Brian Fallon, Daft Media Ltd's revenues last year increased by 6pc from €5.7m to €6.1m while pre-tax profits jumped to €2.18m.

Yo Buddy. You still alive?

biko wrote: »

The story you linked to OP is:
By Gordon Deegan
Friday September 25 2009
Profits at one of Ireland's largest online media groups, Daft Media Ltd, were hit last year following a €1m writedown on an investment in the firm that operates the community website, boards.ie.

Your quote is from another place, www.propertyweek.ie
This doesn't make sense, pls explain.

Edit - NM: http://www.herald.ie/national-news/daft-gets-profit-jump-2359454.html

Sorry about that. I have corrected to opening post to link to the newer article. copypasta error on my behalf.

DeVore

Thats Merc, he has an axe to grind but I'll answer questions regardless.


#1. Most of that is about Daft LTD. They are a completely different company who bought shares in Boards some time ago.

#2. Actually our company plan forcasted a loss of about 130k so a 90K loss is (kinda bizarrely) rather good in an unexpected economic collapse. We're more than happy

#3. Daft not only were happy to have paid what they paid for the first chunk of shares, but they paid the same amount again the second time.

#4. I told the Mods about this at the time because they power the site and I wanted them informed. I kept it quiet from feedback because I wanted to be able to write #5.

#5. Daft has had majority shareholding in the company for over 18 months now. Noticed much that has changed? We still make the rules, we still did what we felt was right about the poker forum debacle, despite the lose of revenue (about 10k). We are still making our own decisions. Its been 11 years now, I think I've earned the right to be trusted.

#6 The site wouldnt be here if we didnt go this route. In every meaningful metric, its triple the size it was when we first sold shares (2008). Conor and Ross have transformed us from a rickety site that ran slow and fell down into something that feel ubiquitous and rold-solid. Dav and Darragh have had a longer job of trying to bring some order to our chaos. Mostly I write essays and worry.

#6 Daft most certainly value the company at more then 3M and no, we are not in trouble, it takes a few years at 90K loss to eat through that cash
We're rock solid and in fact hope to be hiring again soon (probably another techie).

#7 I dont think people understand the breadth of my ambition... I will be happy when Boards is the ONLY irish website. I want every Irish person, every company, every politician and every journalist focused on Boards and beholden to our rules. We're about half way to completing my "vision" (yeuch!)... its only been a decade, give me a chance loike.

I am a very patient man sometimes

DeV.

hinault

DeVore wrote: »

#7 I dont think people understand the breadth of my ambition... I will be happy when Boards is the ONLY irish website. I want every Irish person, every company, every politician and every journalist focused on Boards and beholden to our rules. We're about half way to completing my "vision" (yeuch!)... its only been a decade, give me a chance loike.

Nice one!