It's probably not a good sign when your social media staff are the busiest people in the office
Rebuilding Society (RS) are very good and prolific at social media. They have sent a total of 12,700 tweets out into the ether. They are prolific tweeters – a tweet every 2 or 3 hours. Many of the tweets and blog posts are actually quite informative and useful for investors. What makes this remarkable is that pretty much nothing else seems to be happening in the offices of Rebuilding Society. For every loan RS have ever issued, they have sent out 64 tweets.
What about the lending?
RS disclose that they they have lent a little under £1 million in total year to date. There are currently no loans at all available for sale. Secondary market trading volumes have fallen from £200,000 a month in previous years to virtually zero.
Rebuilding Society lists 13 employees on its website. However in a note to their most recent financial statements the number of employees is now disclosed as 7. Rebuilding Society lost money in 2016 and had just over £100,000 remaining in equity at Dec 2016. It would be interesting to know how much is left given the very low volume levels in 2017. There have been no announcements of any equity injections.
What next?
The CEO of Rebuilding Society, Daniel Rajkumar, maintains a very high public profile. He regularly talks up the prospects of Leeds as a Fintech hub. We wonder for how much longer it will be worthwhile to continue running a British platform with these origination volumes. Mr Rajkumar has several other current business interests to pursue. We do however see a very bright future for the team behind the prolific social media output of RS. That’s a field where there is strong demand.