Hi guys, this is my first post in value pickr. I was able to gather a lot of info on Byke from your posts, so thanks for that.
I can see that their Q3 earnings have been much higher than the Q1 and Q2 earnings historically. Does anyone here know the reason? besides the fact that people tend to go on vacation towards the year end? anything to do with Byke’s business model?
I’m particularly worried about the reviews of Old anchor in Goa. It is located in a great spot at cavelossim. However, the user reviews indicate that the property is in a bad shape, poorly maintained. It looks quite obvious from the pictures in Byke’s website. I know some of you here attend the AGM. Can someone please hear management’s view on this?
They have declared the SHP for the Dec 2018 today
https://www.bseindia.com/corporates/shpSecurities.aspx?scripcd=531373&qtrid=100.00
Again they show only 16.85L shares as pledged. It says the Patodias didn’t pledge any but the Poddars and the CHOICE CAPITAL ADVISORS PRIVATE LIMITED have pledged. The Poddars personal holdings are 100% pledged. How are these Poddars and Patodias related?
So does this mean that ECL finance hasn’t yet started owning these pledged shares and hence ECL doesn’t show up in the shareholder’s list? So when the share price goes down can ECL finance start selling the pledged shares unless these guys can provide more margin funds?
@VikasKasturi any updates on your letter ?
No. The company secretary told me they cannot disclose whose pledged shares were sold to ECL. She said if public shareholders sell their shares, they wouldn’t get to know.
After December SH pattern disclosure, it seems that none of the promoters have pledged extra shares. I sent a query 2 days ago asking why ECL is not shown as a prominent shareholder since they purchased 5%. No answer.
The company secretary also handles IR and she doesn’t sound too confident. For example- when I asked her why didn’t you respond to my emails, she said she was searching for my phone #. I said why didn’t you email me asking for it- no answer.
Any idea why the falling knife is happening? I could not find anything in particular. Looks like a yet another ‘market knows investors don’t know’ example. I am on hold, and not averaging.
Google says the borivali hotel is opening today. Any idea guys? This might be a good sign if true
Where did you find that
My personal opinion is that somebody is forcefully selling but there is no enough buyers or volume.
I have seen the same kind of fall when Lehman brothers were selling the Archid chemicals shares(price came down from around 220 to 105 in 1-2 days) when Lehman brothers declared bankruptcy. Just 1-2 weeks before the fall, economic times wrote that Archid chemicals has a potential to go to around 300+.
Lets hope that some foreign investor is desperately selling in this counter also.
It was on Google maps when you search for the hotel. Curiously, it was saying opens on 31 till yesterday. But I see no reviews now.
@VikasKasturi Vikas are you in Bangalore?
I am curious about Byke Signature in Benguluru, I don’t see any recent reviews of this hotel in tripadvisor/makemytrip/goibibo/booking, very strange. There are old reviews when this hotel was under treebo I think. Will it be possible for you to go there sometime and have a look to get a sense about the occupancy level of the hotel and how it is operating?
There are 9 hotels listed for booking in the official Byke website, and nothing new has been added for months now.
It is an irony that when the stock price was in the 150-200 range, I used to buy with my eyes closed but now I have many doubts as the stock has fallen down drastically 
This looks to me like a money laundering front. These are some telltale signs
Trying to understand this more.
Negative FCF over 10 years - Out of these 10 years, initial couple of years were when new management took place and changed the business model, and there was big capex before this, which is why the last 10 years FCF is -ve. However after the operations changed fully by the new management, the FCF started positive.
FPIs holding large stake are holding some questionable businesses (like Kellton Tech, MBL Infra) - However they also hold many good businesses as well, so how do you conclude.
Some of the holders who have sold out have cross-holdings that are common -
How does this point to money laundering? What are they trying to achieve?
More over, could this be in collusion with the promoters?
There is a lot of mess and I haven’t looked deep but since you are invested you can look it up. Here are some points to ponder
Looks like he had Insider trading charges on him (exonerated).
https://vakrangee.in/data/media_coverage/04_ZeeNews_10_October_2012.pdf
Vakrangee Patodia and Byke Patodia look the same to me in google images.
What links these chaps to Anil Patodia? Well, he is a director in Aqua Pumps.
Lot of Patodias in Choice international
https://www.sebi.gov.in/sebi_data/commondocs/oct-2017/choiceinternational-recommIDC_p.pdf
and so on. I am certain if I keep digging, lot more dirt will emerge. Choice International happens to be a NBFC. Choice International itself has Manasvi, Florence, Paath etc as holders. So it looks to be a web of cross-connections. I can hazard a guess that these companies may share directors past/present and/or addresses as well.
https://phreakonomics.in/shareholding/index/CHOICEIN
There is this entity which looks to be the equity broking arm of the above NBFC which is also holding common companies. This is probably the entity that is controlling the web of holders for pumping and dumping
https://phreakonomics.in/shareholding/holder/Choice%20Equity%20Broking%20Private%20Ltd
I have seen similar pattern of holdings play out in several companies in the past and none of them ended well. None of them will stick in a court of law and neither am I trying to prove misbehaviour in one but this much is usually enough for me to avoid a company.
That is some digging phreakv6, thank you very much.
That definitely answers a lot of unasked and deep questions.
This is fantastic work buddy
Thank you @phreakv6 !!. This is great work, and definitely a great learning.
I like your portal too. It is cool. Kudos…
Yes you are right, whatever the numbers look like, it is important to consider if one wants to get associated with such a promoter.
Thank you phreakv6,deep well digging.Great learning.Looks like market has sniff so scrip started downhill,time will tell final journey.I have to burn finger,so watching keenly…
I don’t think there really was a market here. The price started tanking after all the promoter benami holdings sold out - namely Chartered Capital, Clairant Trading, Darshanik Valuserve, Florence Agro, Manasvi Consultancy, Modern Trading, Florence Securities, Choice Equity, Paath Financial Services (They all hold different combinations from the same pool of companies). All these guys cleaned out their holdings completely by Dec '17 with the exception of Florence Agrofoods. Once there was nothing to pretend for, the financials started deteriorating from Mar '18 onward.
The same playbook has played out in Vakrangee where all benami holdings sold out before the scam surfaced and surprisingly numbers tanked (why pretend when there is no need to?). In BEPL where the promoter pumped up the numbers and bought shares from his own benami holdings to show increase in promoter holding and raised market sentiment while dumping from several other benami holdings. Similar playbook in Fiberweb where companies linked to the promoter and his wife were actively dumping shares while reporting fake numbers for non-existent products. All this learning helped me in playing a pump and dump which played out in the exact same way in Cerebra Integrated. There are several others (Veto switchgears for eg) which I have avoided when I see this same pattern.
It is important to know who your fellow holders are. If numbers look very good, the next thing to look at is SHP. Most of these companies don’t pay a dividend but then there are exceptions to this rule. I was a bit stumped when they looked legit because they paid a dividend but then you have to ask yourself what the dividend amount was and compare it against possible gains the promoter/related entities might make from the capital markets selling their holdings. I sometimes suspect they pay dividend from money received from warrants (The money to be washed? Usually this is through an overseas entity, possibly round-tripping) or report good numbers using this sort of diluted money, possibly even misleading the auditors (I doubt they are that stupid but I think they might be paid to look the other way). When the warrant holders exits few years later, they might have even multiplied the money several times over.
There could be several variations to this but the crux of it is to see if products are real and if they can contribute the kind of numbers reported. In Byke’s case, the tripadvisor reviews don’t point to a great business but they were reporting numbers which were at odds with well-established peers (say Royal Orchid or Indian Hotels). These are all smoke signs.
The Promoter of Choice international is the brother of Anil Patodia. They both have cross holding between Choice and Byke. However the remaining share holders I am not sure of . Anil Patodia being a director in Vakrange was a known issue and he resigned from them in 2012 . And yes there are lot of unknown. As per the recent share holding even ICICI Bank has 2 % in the company which they have bought in last quarter. Not sure whats happening in the company
Thanks for your response.I am not adept n learning from market like this .Now I burnt my finger but not so high stake.Dump at earliest,bell I doubted but now confirmed.DHFL I know as I took Home loan(luckily 90% disbursed by them in Nov18)so avoided.
Thanks again for your input.
Samir
