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IsleworthSpy - ‘Please try to understand that your attempt at trying to understand how delivery works, makes you look ever more stupid.’
I haven’t mentioned delivery. And I’m not interested in how it works either. I do understand business though and I know and have seen what happens when unscrupulous investors acquire businesses……..so I was pointing out that your assertion that ‘white collar workers’ will be culled is only a partial reality……
Hence why Dave and his band of idiots are on high alert and are extremely desperate for the takeover not to happen.
And for good reason.
@ TheMoneyShark.
Although i loathe replying to the most abusive,obnoxious and odious poster i have ever come across, i feel compelled to reply. Just this bit here.
‘There would be a massive cull’ (my words and your response, below)
I agree. But it won’t only be the ‘white collar’ workers on the chopping block.
Do you fail to understand that the more jobs that go, makes my job ever more secure? I will not do any more work. My delivery points, letters, parcels, sorting and prep will all go up. But i will still finish at my time, but actually spend less time on delivery. This is not rocket science. Please try to understand that your attempt at trying to understand how delivery works, makes you look ever more stupid.
7-9 thousand routes lost, if OFCOM approve RM's proposal for the USO review. That's scary. NOT!
How many vacancies are RM running with at the moment?
@ hurtsparrow.
42K. You can add another 10 grand to that.
2 managers to do 1 job. Daniel will love this. Get rid of the deadwood.
Hounddog10 - Thank you Sir, excellent post as per usual.
Very helpful and concise.
The rule makes sense and it stops the situation getting potentially farcical with various tentacles of Kretinsky’s coming in left, right and centre.
Merlwood/TMS
To be a bit clearer - as I was answering Merlwood’s post on how I see the situation not on the precise question Merlwood posed.
We are currently in possible offer territory; there is no actual offer. So if Kretinsky on 15 May (or before) says that he has no intention to actually bid for IDS then he cannot come back for six months. I think it will be either this situation or a much improved offer. Any offer, I think, will need to be recommended by the Board and supported by irrevocables (or intention to vote in favour of the takeover) by institutional investors with sufficient votes to give the revised offer a decent chance of going through. I cannot see him going hostile as IDS is such a political football and he will need all on side - Board, employees, unions, Ofcom, government etc.
Therefore, as set out above, I don’t see Kretinsky putting in an offer that gets rejected (which was Merlwood’s question). If he did then he cannot come back for 12 months. However, it is easy to be wrong on these things.
On TMS’s point as to whether another VESA vehicle can be used to circumvent any timing restrictions then I think the answer is no. The Takeover Panel rules also bite on any entities operating “in concert” with Kretinsky. The definition is broad and includes, inter alia, subsidiaries and entities where he holds more than 30%.
The rules are in 2.8 and 35.1 of the Takeover Code if anyone cares to grind through them. I should also add that you can go along to the Panel to get certain concessions. They are normally fairly pragmatic.
Hounddog10 - ‘not before six months.’
Would that be any subsidiary of VESA? The bid came from the EP group, could Kretinsky not make another bid from another group under the VESA umbrella?
Houndog-That's a shame, I thought we might get closer to £5. One large holder has already said they would not cosider anything under £4, and that was sometime ago.
Merlwood - not before six months.
I’m not having a go at you Sid I’m just saying the article is not factual true he didn’t bid 4.5 billion for the company or the share price would have been about 420 roughly and not 320 which is what he bid
If a new offer is made, and then rejected, what is the time frame allowed to put in another bid?
Dowsie, it's it's the actual financial times article and there's nothing new in it but I just posted it just for the sake of it
Sid786 I wouldn’t pay much attention to that article I’m not sure where you got it from but DK didn’t bid 4.5 billion for ids it was nearer 3.1 billion so whoever wrote it didn’t do much research
I honestly don’t think that an offer less than 400p is going to get through the door….maybe the board would be obliged to put it to the shareholders but the large II’s like Schroeder’s and Redwheel wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole…….and that’s the problem for DK.
That’s the problem when market is made up by neurotic jellyfish attributing a market cap of £2.7bn to a company that just on the back of the envelope calculations is worth double that.
Conventional 30-40% premiums go out of the window and the shareholders won’t entertain selling up and I think VESA and Kretinsky are learning the hard way here…..it’s one of those offs occasions where the majority of shareholders would happily reject a 30% premium.
Tick tock…..the finishing line is in sight.
Czech billionaire Daniel Křetínský’s EP Group has intensified talks with the owner of the UK’s Royal Mail about an improved takeover bid, after his initial £4.5bn offer was rejected last month.
Discussions between EP and the board of International Distributions Services, owner of the former British postal monopoly, have deepened in the past couple of weeks, said people familiar with the matter.
It remains unclear if EP and IDS can strike a deal, the people cautioned. EP has until May 15 to make a firm offer for IDS under UK rules governing takeover bids for public companies.
Křetínský, a lawyer-turned-energy tycoon, is the largest shareholder in IDS, with a 27.5 per cent stake.
He has been a prominent dealmaker in the UK, making investments in supermarket chain J Sainsbury and London football club West Ham United.
EP said it had “submitted a non-binding indicative proposal” to IDS on April 9, after his interest in acquiring the business was first reported by the Financial Times.
However, IDS rejected the indicative offer of 320p a share, calling the timing of the bid “opportunistic” and saying it undervalued the business. Other IDS shareholders criticised the proposal.
IDS’s shares have been sliding over the past three years, and the stock last traded at the value of EP’s proposal in May 2022. The shares closed down almost 1 per cent at 280.2p on Friday.
Royal Mail faces challenges relating to the high cost of its comprehensive, UK-wide delivery service while it adjusts to a steep drop in the volume of letters it handles.
EP is contending with scrutiny from UK government officials and a heavily unionised IDS workforce.
The Communication Workers Union has said handing over ownership of “one of the UK’s most prestigious institutions” to a foreign equity investor “cannot be right”.
Křetínský had made clear his intention not to break up IDS by separating the lossmaking Royal Mail from the group’s profitable European logistics business GLS, or touch the group’s pension scheme surplus, some of the people briefed on the situation said.
Křetínský has also said he will maintain IDS’s investment-grade credit rating and will avoid compulsory redundancies.
Representatives for Křetínský and IDS declined to comment.
Yep this a done deal with the deliberations only over the workforce and how if any redundancies are handled through reorganisation
RM will put the improved offer to the shareholders shortly
...according to the Financial Times.
I can see this bid going nowhere
DK want to pay under £4, hence the long silence....
And the board are saying NO NO NO
Why, because GLS alone is worth £4, and DK WANTS to pay £3.70 or abouts......and along with it DK want RM for free.
The board would have clearly told DK.
GLS is making big bucks. And is worth alot more.
RM is getting fixed , slowly albeit, but surely, macroeconomic situation is getting better, interest rates will start to come down possibly from June, and regulatory changes highly likely. All these will make RM profitable again..
Plus Martin Seidenberg, has brought in his own people at RM , and would like to give them a chance to turn things around at RM...
Plus RM have started to utilise the collect plus network, plus may soon have its Amazon type boxes, and other last mile improvements are on the way...will help customer experience as well as reduce costs and improve profitability
Mr DK will be saying, the closing price before the bid was 2.20 approximately. The norm is between 30 to 35% premium to that price. Above £4 the premium would be more like 70 to 90%..
Mr DK will be saying I ain't paying 70 to 90% premium,
Let's see, only a few days to go....
At the end of the day , the board has the upper hand, major shareholders are behind the board, things are looking better for RM, and also it may be the last chance for DK to own IDS...
INTERESTING few days....
I believe all will be revealed on the 15th of May.
Can’t see the next offer being £4
That would be a big increase on £3.20, and that is just not how it works.
£4 is what I’d need for a reasonable profit, £3.35 I break even but erroded with
No divis and inflation.
Pretty dismal considering the risk of shares too
The dead wood would be easy starting at the base c42k for a COM basic. Some still retain the old grading 65k+.Bonkers.
Thousands easy you will not find any other job with some many job titles within.
Anyway aside from my bitterness (?) I'm still hopeful we can hit the £3 mark soon then I can look at exiting. The timing of the FT seems there is certainly still plenty left to do but as with anything printed in the press, I would not always take it as gospel.
Genuinely would love to know what DK has planned for RM if he took over.
IsleworthSpy - ‘I'm now actually hoping that VESA are successful, at whatever price they deem fit.’
The price that VESA ‘deem fit’ is irrelevant…..given that it will be the shareholders that ultimately make the decision as I’ve been telling you for many years….but the information has bounced off your dense skull on numerous occasions.
The last bid of 320p didn’t even make it past the board and was instantly rejected. That tells you everything you need to know.
‘There would be a massive cull’
I agree. But it won’t only be the ‘white collar’ workers on the chopping block.
@ hurtsparrow.
Daniel has a few more days to get his act together then.
Looking at the share price fluctuations after his initial "bid", it would seem that any new offer will not be much higher. There are people in the know. Why has the current buying price not been hammered? It's all very odd, don't you agree?
I'm now actually hoping that VESA are successful, at whatever price they deem fit. There would be a massive cull, starting at the top. All the dead wood, white collar workers, of which there are thousands, will be gone. The waste is absolutely shocking. And anyone, of any grade, who works within RM, would agree.
@ LittleDickyBird.
"""3. Large parcels volume has increased 2000 %"""
20 fold, right? OM Goodness! I better buy a share. Where do you get this figure from?
20,000 redundancies? Was it that many?
How many contracts have RM won back?
And regarding election mail: Of course there was a spike in letters. Which RM have actually paid for. But judging by what i have seen in my office, it was no great drama. How much excess overtime is paid or failures reported, is how i judge volumes. As i said, no great drama.
Https://www.ft.com/content/a555bab5-c868-410c-b2c1-dbc0420df592
Still this will rocket iff D k gets kicked out