p2pincome
P2P Blogger
https://p2pincome.eu/
Posts: 27
Likes: 6
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Post by p2pincome on Sept 10, 2019 13:21:59 GMT
I started investing in Monethera and I posted an article on my blog taking a look at the platform and also why I chose to start with it. In this Monethera review, you can also take advantage of a 5 EUR bonus and a 0.5% cashback bonus for the first 180 days on the platform. |
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Post by jmot on Oct 4, 2019 17:57:12 GMT
I invested in Monethera a very small amount (as suggested by a clever fellow investor in the German forum) since the platform is very new and unproven.
I like to perform basic due diligence on projects and many in Monethera come quite short of what is acceptable risk: most are small companies that take loans of excessive amounts relative to their balance sheets.
Some examples on the projects I analysed: - last project proposed www.monethera.com/projects/19 it is a Perfume oils company, first I checked a sample of the prices paid for the raw materials and sales values and they do make sense, then I checked the company here ariregister.rik.ee/ and here www.e-krediidiinfo.ee/11292997-SAVIAUGU%20PUIT%20O%C3%9C and here storybook.ee and I do not like what I see: tiny company 2018 State taxes: € 547.28 and 2018 labor taxes: € 618.21 Turnover (2018) 6,889 €. They are asking for a loan of € 329750. In the 2018 annual report submission (presented this year on 05.06.2019) they state they are a micro undertaking company: "Micro undertaking – a private limited company which indicators meet on the balance sheet date of an accounting year all the following conditions: total assets up to 175,000 euros, liabilities not exceeding the owners' equity, one shareholder who is also the member of the management board and which sales revenue during an accounting year is up to 50,000 euros." For me this project is out, they are financing a big risky project almost completely with somebody else money and the company has no balance sheet to support such big debt. I do not know what personal guarantees from director means, but the opacity of such statement does not bode well.
- (sorry for being shorter than the first one but I have to save time which is my scarcest resource) www.monethera.com/projects/18 a big building project in the middle of nowhere performed by a recently setup company with a tiny balance sheet. In this case the due diligence stopped at the numbers presented: they do not make sense compared with the actual sale/rental value of property in the same area
- www.monethera.com/projects/17 Again the numbers seem just a bit high to convert vans into luxury ones, the main issue again is the (outsized) project compared to the balance sheet of the company. I might be wrong on this one, since the business idea could make some serious money, but I prefer to err on the side of caution.
- www.monethera.com/projects/15 Working capital for a Polish company. The project is not outsized and it is what the company has been doing for years. The company is well established and runs a big construction depot in the Warsaw metropolitan area (easy to see in google street view with lots of reviews also from old disgruntled employees  ) which is worth way more than the money borrowed. It is an acceptable risk and I invested a few hundred euros (again the platform is too new to invest more than this, since the investor should consider also the platform risk).
There was also another real estate project that I analysed, but it was too opaque to perform due diligence so I dropped it.
In my opinion the platform proposes a few peaches among many lemons, so extra carefuleness should be taken when investing. The "nominally high" interest rates offered might cause some serious adverse selection issues for the investors, this might be compounded by the fact that every loan is an interest only one which does not force the borrower to show its hand (let's call it this way using a poker analogy: principal repayments) until expiry.
Hope my personal view on the platform is useful to other investors. When I have some spare time I shall write about other platforms.
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Post by jmot on Oct 11, 2019 9:06:31 GMT
It is a total failure on a basic due diligence. It looks like a dodgy front finance company that is getting the money.
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Post by jmot on Oct 19, 2019 21:15:13 GMT
Another project from Monethera, this time the project projections are absolute BS, so I do not even look at the company: monethera.com/projects/21
"Business model:
Aircraft rent:
One hour of the aircraft rent costs 150 EUR, AIR Bus rent costs 250 EUR.
Estimated hours for flights per month is 130 hours for the aircraft, and 80 for the Air bus.
This financing project is planned for 18 months. The total income is 711.000 EUR (per 18 months)."
So they are assuming a private chartered plane will fly on average 7 hours x day x 18 months (2555 hours per year). I became very suspicious about these assertions for a private airplane (these projections are more in line with commercial or cargo airplanes).
So the top US chartered private planes on average fly 1090 hours per year (the vast majority much less hours) which is 57% less than the projections shown by a company which is just starting in the chartered planes business!
This is an incredibly pretentious and out of line projection. In my opinion again another lemon that I shall pass on.
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Post by jmot on Nov 12, 2019 15:29:55 GMT
I shall continue on some basic due diligence on the two most recent project and show that I am not a total pessimist 
The project fundamentals do make sense (cost per sqm of commercial building in Latvia excluding land that they already own + cost of the machinery) so I went to the next step I checked the company in Lursoft: www.lursoft.lv/uznemuma-izzina/mkm-mezs/41203042173?lang=en The report looks good, they are not a very profitable company, but only last year they paid 306k EUR to the state budget (i.e. taxes, soc contributions, ...) which is almost the value of the loan, they have a 3.3 star evaluation as a company (see the meaning here: www.lursoft.lv/en/rating-of-the-company ) which is BTW the same as Mintos (even if own capital is much less  ). There is also a company valuation issued by Capitalia at 1.7M which is 5 times the loan requested. I see two main risks (which are inherent in any bridge financing loan like this one): 1) They have some cost overruns to complete the building project 2) They need to look for commercial mortgage from a bank at the end of the building project in order to repay the principal (after 2008 crisis most banks only provide loans only completed/licensed commercial buildings as collateral, bridge loans from banks are very difficult to get nowadays). So I took the decision to invest a few hundred euros.
I checked the prices of the machinery and the funding required makes sense to cover the cost of the expensive machinery (there are markets on the web where the prices can be checked). However there are no projected estimates of how much turnover the new machinery will produce (very sloppy) and then when checking the company in Lursoft: www.lursoft.lv/uznemuma-izzina/vedze/46101016122?lang=en I only get a 1.7 star rating, tiny 14.87k payments to state coffers and a valuation from Capitalia of only 66k EUR (the loan requested is almost 6 times the valuation of the company). Big gamble in my opinion and another lemon to discard.
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Post by captainconfident on Nov 13, 2019 12:07:42 GMT
Personally I wouldn't invest any money in this loser. She gets her arse kicked by Godzilla in the film. Mothra arrives just when Godzilla reaches her egg and engages Godzilla in battle. Briefly, she seems to be winning, even spraying Godzilla with a poisonous powder, though this is ineffective. Despite giving her all, Godzilla hits her with its atomic breath, and Mothra collapses and dies from exhaustion. Fortunately, Godzilla loses interest in the egg and proceeds with its rampage.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mothra_vs._Godzilla
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Post by southseacompany on Dec 12, 2019 2:45:09 GMT
Monethera's newest project (No 26) involves a web hosting company looking to finance an acquisition. Hosting might sound like a high tech field, but it is actually a pretty low margin business, since there is substantially no barrier to entry. Therefore borrowing at 18% to buy "servers and other technically innovative equipment" seems like an odd move. The borrower is named Coldbrook Services, based in the UK, and while Monethera doesn't tell us anything about the company, a quick search easily finds a company by that name (Link disabled by Mod), run by a Latvian businessman by the name of Renārs Būmanis. Here's how Monethera describes the company's track record in cloud computing: However, "years of trading" is a bit of an exaggeration, since filings show the company was dormant until 2017. Its 2018 accounts (Link disabled by Mod) show it had net assets of £4086, which is about 1/40th of the amount it now seeks to borrow from Monethera investors (although that's still a good step up from 2017, when it had a whopping £2 in assets). It's also interesting to see that the company has filed the following four classifications as its "nature of business": 10890 - Manufacture of other food products not elsewhere classified
46190 - Agents involved in the sale of a variety of goods
46380 - Wholesale of other food, including fish, crustaceans and molluscs
47290 - Other retail sale of food in specialised storesWell, maybe this would-be fishmonger / grocer found success in cloud computing instead and was too busy "proving its reliability" to bother to file to change these. In summary: While I think this company has a slightly better chance of being legit than Alborg Petrol, I don't understand why anyone would choose to put their money into this. |
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Post by jmot on Dec 16, 2019 13:24:10 GMT
Monethera's newest project (No 26) involves a web hosting company looking to finance an acquisition. Hosting might sound like a high tech field, but it is actually a pretty low margin business, since there is substantially no barrier to entry. Therefore borrowing at 18% to buy "servers and other technically innovative equipment" seems like an odd move. The borrower is named Coldbrook Services, based in the UK, and while Monethera doesn't tell us anything about the company, a quick search easily finds a company by that name (Link disabled by Mod), run by a Latvian businessman by the name of Renārs Būmanis. Here's how Monethera describes the company's track record in cloud computing: However, "years of trading" is a bit of an exaggeration, since filings show the company was dormant until 2017. Its 2018 accounts (Link disabled by Mod) show it had net assets of £4086, which is about 1/40th of the amount it now seeks to borrow from Monethera investors (although that's still a good step up from 2017, when it had a whopping £2 in assets). It's also interesting to see that the company has filed the following four classifications as its "nature of business": 10890 - Manufacture of other food products not elsewhere classified
46190 - Agents involved in the sale of a variety of goods
46380 - Wholesale of other food, including fish, crustaceans and molluscs
47290 - Other retail sale of food in specialised storesWell, maybe this would-be fishmonger / grocer found success in cloud computing instead and was too busy "proving its reliability" to bother to file to change these. In summary: While I think this company has a slightly better chance of being legit than Alborg Petrol, I don't understand why anyone would choose to put their money into this. Yes, the typical lemon from Monethera. I did check the accounts and they are joke. So far I have only found 2 relatively solid companies that are borrowing in Monethera: a lot of lemons and very few peaches. 
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Post by theitalianleathersof on Jan 23, 2020 20:39:59 GMT
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Post by wiseclerk on Jan 24, 2020 14:37:25 GMT
See important update in last sentence here
I never used Monethera
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benaj
Member of DD Central
N/A
Posts: 5,591 
Likes: 1,735
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Post by benaj on Feb 6, 2020 14:59:10 GMT
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Post by jmot on Mar 10, 2020 20:30:46 GMT
Monethera withdrawal of Jarton zoo expired principal (a few hundred euros) has just reached my current account after almost a month from request (14/02) 
Considering the fact that they are joke of a platform (their current account has been changed three times in the past 4 months probably due to dubious business practices), very little transparency (they still have not published any real document about the loans and the projects) I consider myself lucky that at least a third of my (small) investment has come back. The "high" interest rate has been demolished by the delay in withdrawal and as initially suspected the fact that all the loans are bullet type (not amortized) the real test was left until the expiry of the loan. The test has FULLY FAILED. I do not even know why they do not start voluntary liquidation and present projects for investment, any investor with some sense after what happened in the past two months would keep away a mile from this platform and the jokers in its management.
Even if the projects are real, the platform is the real risk. Since I was mostly testing my total investment amounted to less than 1k EUR, but I have seen people putting thousands in the projects.
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) which is worth way more than the money borrowed. It is an acceptable risk and I invested a few hundred euros (again the platform is too new to invest more than this, since the investor should consider also the platform risk).
). There is also a company valuation issued by Capitalia at 1.7M which is 5 times the loan requested. I see two main risks (which are inherent in any bridge financing loan like this one): 1) They have some cost overruns to complete the building project 2) They need to look for commercial mortgage from a bank at the end of the building project in order to repay the principal (after 2008 crisis most banks only provide loans only completed/licensed commercial buildings as collateral, bridge loans from banks are very difficult to get nowadays).
