Investor Profit Portfolio - anyone heard of it?

ValiantSon

john-blackford wrote: »

Yesterday went to premiere of their film Fanged up it was in Leicester square red carpet event. fantastic day, for me it was an opportunity I would never had if I had not invested.... If like some on here say they are a scam they went to a lot of trouble and expense pre event drinks hire of cinema. Etc met a lot of other investors who have noting but praise as do i

Have you seen any returns on the investment, is the important question?

Give me £3,000 and I'll throw you a lavish party too!

intrepidfox

I've come across this thread and so I'm posting a reply in the hope that anyone looking at investing in the film industry, in particular with Investor Profit Portfolio and Gateway Films (Terry Stone), that they come across my post first and can hopefully make the right decision and stay away from anything film related. I can tell anyone first hand that YOU WILL LOSE YOUR MONEY as I have just found out.

I met a sales agent from IPP few years back actually regarding a totally different investment. The subject was then brought up about investing money into one of their film investments with Gateway. I was highly dubious as I'd already read bad things about film or TV investments. However they persisted telling me about Terry Stone's reputation and "success" of other movies, that the filming of this film was almost complete and that a Distribution company had been signed. Also this was the second round of raising money and that the first round had already been successful and they were on forecast to get our initial investment back within 12 months with continued money from royalties from worldwide TV and DVD sales for years to come. I even went to a filming day so all looked legit. So I reluctantly invested £10,000 which I was told was the minimum investment, turns out it was £5,000 which was the first lie!!

However this is where it all falls apart because there are way too may factors out of your control. Once filming had finished we were eventually invited to an investors only screening of the movie. Of course the champagne was flowing and everyone seemed to be happy....except for one thing - the film was below average, bordering on terrible which was the first thing out of our control. Everything then went silent and months turn into years, eventually the film flopped, the Distribution company went bust, Gateway Films failed miserably with any kind of marketing strategy for the film and all investors eventually lost our money!

So that is what will happen to your hard earned cash in the film world and I would urge anyone to stay well away from these kinds of investments. You are given the option if investing under the Enterprise Investment Scheme whereby you can offset some of those losses against your tax. But why would anyone want to invest in something where worst case scenario is you lose your entire investment, regardless of a "tax break". Even with the stock market you have full visibility of your shares and if the market goes down you can buy more and wait for the market to rise again. With these investments you have zero control.

Reaper

As EcoMiser said above anybody thinking of investing in films should have a read of the Carnaby thread.

They actually made quite good films but as far as we can tell no investor ever got a penny of their investment back.

intrepidfox

Away has also now gone into liquidation (check on Companies House) so that's 2 films by Gateway Films (Investor Profit Portfolio as sales agent) that have gone into liquidation that I know of! Don't go near these film investments and don't listen to anything IPP say...hang up! Its a scam to trick people out of their cash and duping them into thinking they're making these great movies and then they flop! :mad::mad:

AnotherJoe

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting

Felixdkat

Do not attempt to invest with these guys. They are a shambles. I was stupid enough to fall for their promises of returns with government loss relief as protection and 30% return via a tax rebate through the EIS scheme. I invested £5,000 in Away. All the way throughout they were telling me great stories about how it was being nominated for awards at the Sundance Film Festival, how it was being scheduled for release in the US which was a really big deal. All lies.

The EIS scheme is real and I got £1,500 tax relief in the year I invested. So £3,500 to go for breakeven. I have still to see a single penny from the movie (IPP or Gateway). They said all along that they return the production tax to you as well - which was £750 in my case. Apparently I'm getting paid out as the company is being liquidated this month. My pay out is £840. So if you forget about the tax relief and the production tax rebate, the actual return to equity, actual return that the movie made, on this investment is -98.18%. Just for clarity, that is MINUS 98.18%. Or another way of reading it is that for my £5,000 investment I got £90 back. £2,250 I got back through tax rebates but the movie did nothing. Total cash return is £2,340. IRR of -25%. Awful investment. Worst investment I ever made.

Apart from that, the communication to their investors is nothing short of criminal. The news is all positive right throughout. They were asking me to invest in other films before I saw any return from this one. Luckily I wanted to establish firstly if they could deliver before investing with them again. Once the time came to payout (post 3 year EIS period) everything goes silent.

Lesson learned on my part. Investing in movies is not for me.

Anyway - DO NOT INVEST WITH THESE PEOPLE. YOU WILL LOOSE ALL OF YOUR MONEY!!!!

bostonerimus

I haven't heard of this and so I would not touch it with a barge pole. In fact anyone who invests outside of well respected company funds from the likes of HSBC, Vanguard and Blackrock etc is taking more risk than necessary.