The latest Investing Matters Podcast with Jean Roche, Co-Manager of Schroder UK Mid Cap Investment Trust has just been released. Listen here.
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Sims - yes, you summarise it well.
@simx - agreed, the guardian is a nothing article or an article designed to swing the market for their cronies in the city, nothing more, they have cherry picked words from a conversation which would of course raise concerns relating to due diligence and the buyers ability to keep up with debt repayments. DK is the perfect buyer here he is not scraping the barrel with funds and isnt going to be leaving himself short with plenty of financial backup. I couldnt think of anyone else in a better position to take on this business with his wealth and experience.
@Bres well done on selling up at £3.22 but you should have been buying back sub £3.10, personally i am not trading this just waiting for the buy out as im sure DK will get it
Isleworth, the guardian article is a cartoon of journalism. KPMG would have been negligent to have ignored loan facilities when the ownership of the loan will obviously change when a company is being taken over; dotting the i's and crossing the t's is their job! The loan facilities have never been used. Kretensky could afford to buy IDS twice over. IDS is at no financial risk with his ownership.
Hounddog, thanks for putting some context onto the guardian article. I've had a look at the sections "Consideration of non-binding proposal by EP Group to acquire IDS plc" and "Going Concern Statement" , and how the guardian use them to create an article on financial risk warnings from IDS re Kretensky's bid.
When you see these ' financial warnings' in context it becomes apparent that they are clearly just standard due diligence that one would expect KPMG to highlight in the context of a change of ownership, and hinge around the current debt facility, and the question "whether the new owners would be able to maintain existing loans and secure fresh funding?". I believe kretensky is worth around £8 billion. I'm pretty sure the creditors would be delighted to continue extending the loan facilities to him in return for the annual payments he will be making for loan facilities which he will probably never use. Guardian hyperbole and bluster which can be comfortably ignored.
Ha! No worries.Here is one that is pretty easy to decipher:
OFCOM have today said surprise surprise that they will be opening an investigation into poor QoS figures.
So nailed on fine again. Pretty much any excuses that have been used in the past have gone .....although they still do blame industrial action still sometimes.
More recently I ordered some currency Special Delivery let's say a decent amount of money.....yep disappeared out of thin air.5 days for loss and upto 30 days for internal investigation.
Hurtsparrow, "Apologies for **** spelling useless on my phone...and in general."
No need for apologies your amongst friends. As long as we can decipher 😉
Apologies for **** spelling useless on my phone...and in general.
QoS isn't improving anytime soon.But saying that I think they are happy to pedal the same lines.They will blame local issues and then of course the government but as per last fine it still represents very good value for money.
And for a couple losing so much still ofcom not likely to hit them hard either.
Early days much not heard a sniffle from the new boss.
CEO MS did reply the select committee on her behalf over the fines for stamps and RM say the have made no profit on stamp fines.
I guess another big week coming just feels like this is going to drag on now re takeover.
Neeed = needed
I now rather expect that it was the going concern statement that held up the financials. It is the sort of thing that auditors obsess about. The Guardian article does not grasp that it is a rather technical issue. Sure, there is as normal, a change of control clause in the facility agreement which means that the facility will need to be renegotiated on acquisition or replaced but the facility is undrawn and only needed in a downside scenario. If Kretinsky buys he has the resources to provide any neeed funding.
You couldn't make it all up, I have never seen a shambles like it thankfully I sold up a £3.22...
The financials look at lot better, especially on the revenue front. The Q of S results look dire again and will no doubt result in another fine. 74.5% next day for 1c and 92.4% by day D for 2c is very poor.
It is all very bullish in the wording and they clearly have a lot going on. Daventry cleared almost a 1m parcels in one 21 hour shift. If they were to replicate that across a whole year (admittedly unlikely) that might be processing some 30% of RM domestic parcels.
One point that does not come out is letters. Letter volumes have declined 9% for the whole year.. It was 8% for the nine months to 31 December 2023 at Q3 (was 8% I think for 2022/23). Of course thes numbers imply a much bigger drop in the Q4 three months. I make it over 12% with no material rise in revenue because of price increases (£895m v £872m). I rather expect letter volumes to start going down much faster and so outweighing. the benefit in revenue from price hikes.
@ hurtsparrow.
In one breath IDS are saying accept the offer, and in the next (according to The Guardian) they are denouncing the offer.
Am i missing something here?
I wonder if IDS now think that 360p is too low.
I cannot wait to see the market reaction on Tuesday:
1 - To the results
2 - To The Guardian piece
Only highlighted it because it was the first mention of any trial date etc I've seen but yes a huge potential sum of money.
Hurtsparrow, the £50m fine is small fry compared to Whistl's claim which I believe is around £600m. RM will have to defend the claim robustly as losing the case would be a disaster for all concerned.
NOFEAR, AirForce, Dowsie, thank you for the updates on TMS (previously known as AngerSharkz). Unfortunately, I suspect that they will be back under another alias.....just like Teslo/Teslon/Teflon......
Competition law:
Royal Mail's appeal against the Competition Appeal Tribunal's judgment to uphold Ofcom's decision to fine it £50 million has now concluded. The fine and interest (c.£52 million) were paid to Ofcom on 10 August 2022.
The stay on Whistl's related damages claim has been lifted. There have been two case management conferences (in December 2023 and April 2024) at which a trial date has been set for November 2025, plus significant milestones leading to the trial. Royal Mail believes Whistl's claim is without merit and will defend it robustly.
Interestingly (maybe) although letter volumes down over 9% revenue was up 4.4% because of price increases.
NoFear got a nasty belting from TheMoneyShark ex-member
RM Loss £348 M
GLS profit £320 M
Hi Oligarch
https://www.lse.co.uk/profiles/oligarch/
It was obvious to me that the lse member account name got barred and deleted once I realised that their posts were missing.
What you need to do is placing their members name like this and hit enter:
https://www.lse.co.uk/profiles/themoneyshark/
Crap
Lots of detail to read through. But financials in line. Positive 2nd half for RM. QoS on an improving trajectory. USO message being repeated. Weekend reading to get full picture.