There is obviously a huge appetite to invest in Monzo for those that feel affinity with the brand.
I, personally, wouldn’t invest in Monzo in the upcoming round (except to top-up and maintain my current position), assuming a share price of £8-10.
From an investment perspective, curious to hear what people’s perspective on the opportunity is (assuming the valuations above)? Would you invest for the first time now? Do you have a plan in mind for your shares?
I probably won’t sell my shares any time soon. I think they still have room but would like to see Monzo get to profitability in the next 3 years and see some of the market partnerships they’re talking about materialise. (This is assuming similar market conditions). Otherwise, I’ll start to get itchy feet.
Keen to hear other people’s perspective, whether shareholders or not.
I’d invest somewhat more - I still believe in Monzo and think they have a lot of growth to come. I regret not investing more in the previous round I was part of (it was my first investment - I had yet to learn to be more financially savvy - so I was extremely conservative)
I have three lots of savings -
One rock solid Govt. backed guaranteed return of 1% per year in NS and I - covered up to a million pounds
One in a Stocks and shares self selected ISA which is “giving” me 14% over a couple of years tax free but risky,
and also a stocks and shares account which has increased in value by 51% over the last 4 years again a risky bet.
I also had some stocks and shares in the early 2000s dot com bubble - lost almost the lot, turned £10,000 into about £1000 in the year following the hype
I bought Monzo in the first crowdfunding round - 1950ish shares for £1000 they are now / will be “worth” about £13650 - £15600 based on £7-£8 value, that was what, 1 or 2 years ago now - a risky bet but wow what a reward. Lol always assuming I could sell them at that price - am I contemplating selling them ? - no
Would I be happy buying now - money I could afford to lose - yes, where else are you going to get the potential of doubling your money in a couple of years - thats 50% + every year - the upside being massively more than doubling your money - the downside being losing what you can afford to lose
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Anarchist
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Yes I’ve done every round so far and I’m not looking to dispose of shares just yet I’m fortunate to have been in every round. The financial return is awesome so far but I think there is so much more non financial things to be proud of…the biggest things I’ve taken is the transparency and being focused on the customer so many companies say few do it it’s influenced me in my job
I’ve mentioned this in other threads before. I am always amazed how keen people are to invest without seeing the price. I had made the point that, if Tom’s prediction of £2-3bn for 1m customers was true, it would be a long time before the new members of the crowd saw a return. Perhaps that’s a factor in why they’ve gone for the more conservative £1.5bn, although there must be better reasons to leave nine figures on the table. Perhaps the bigger investors thought the same, and negotiated things down a bit to leave themselves some future growth.
Personally, I would go in again at a tenner. Just need to decide what to sell to make room
Given the FSCS protection, I am guessing that someone (the Bank of England?) regularly checks the health of Monzo. It would be great to see their latest findings and whether they are as comfortable as the investors with the current level of losses. As we do cross the 1m customers, it would become quite embarrassing for the regulators if something went wrong, particularly in the context of those like me who have gone #fullmonzo. As long as nothing like that does happen, I think there is a huge amount of growth left, and certainly wouldn’t sell before the US or the Marketplace had been attempted.
That is interesting. As a user, I somewhat appreciate the transparency and customer-centricity. They benefit me. As an investor, if they have a positive impact on valuation or share price because those practices are fashionable for investors, they also benefit me.
I can’t say that feels like a reason to continue investing money in Monzo. Are you saying you’re willing to keep putting money in on those grounds alone, even thought the return on your investment would be significantly lower if you were only investing in the latest round?
I would agree re: people wanting to invest because they want to invest, rather than there being a significant opportunity.
I think you were criticising the constant focus on the £150 average account deposit value in other threads? For various reasons, I agree with you. The fact that 80% of people’s deposits sit elsewhere is positive… there is more money available.
As a technology company, users are more important than deposits. As a bank, deposits just as important as customers. Journos won’t take this into consideration, though.
But, as somebody pointed out, I think Monzo would consider themselves a technology company rather than a bank.
If they become a dashboard and put deposits elsewhere and leverage other deposits for lending, those partnerships coming to fruition as they have imagined is so important. The model gives much more credibility to the valuation, however conservative.
Do you have a timeline or do you feel secure enough to ride it out, even if they start slowing down their delivery (beyond nice but just nice UX tweaks) given the additional regulatory scrutiny now on them?
Sounds pretty ‘financially savvy’ to only invest what you could reasonably invest at the time. Monzo is no sure bet. Many companies have seen significant early trajectory, only to fail to scale effectively or reach profitability.
I don’t agree with that, because they can only monetize their technology through banking. Unless the marketplace comes off, and people start using Monzo as their first port of call instead of all the other comparison sites (and soon to be Amazon), I doubt they can sustain the entire thing through overdrafts and small loans (for people who are drawn in by the tech and then happen to need those). They will need to be collecting referral fees off every customer if they want to realise their full potential without investing externally.
That is true. But a bank’s business model revolves around taking deposits from customers under the assumption they can lend that out at an inflated cost because the customer won’t need immediate access to that money. (That’s teaching everybody on here to suck eggs, I know). Monzo don’t do that. Yes, they take deposits but their ‘end state’ business model isn’t that.
Monzo’s differentiation is it’s UI and UX, not it’s banking propositions. It doesn’t have any.
It’s not an important discussion, really. But, I’d argue they aren’t building a bank. So, when I’m assessing the investment, I’m not comparing the opportunity to other banks like many of the articles do.
Feel free to go and get 3% from your bank - you can rest assured that your pot of money will grow at a rate slightly above inflation. I totally don’t blame you.
I’m just looking at the maths. Value placed on raw user numbers equals 1700 per head. Last week they added around 17000 users which potentially adds 28m to their value. And next week, and the week after… while this is a simplistic multiplier what do we think the value will be at 2m users or 5m users? If you think they will continue to grow then invest.
I think you mean a “legacy” bank’s business model. Monzo is a very new, different type of bank, but it is still a bank. It will do things differently, and may or may not become as big as the legacy banks. They can and do take deposits and lend them out for profit. The maths is pretty easy - they don’t pay anything for credit, but they charge 50p a day for debit. They will also shortly be charging interest on Spread the Cost loans. The other banks make money by doing this more aggressively, charging other fees, offering other products, and investing externally. This is not the Monzo way - they have chosen not to charge fees, or offer other products, but will hopefully profit from commission from those who find new customers via the marketplace.
Not sure what you mean by Monzo not having a banking proposition. They have about 200k customers who are using Monzo as their main bank. I don’t know any technology companies who can say that.
