Cobus Loots, CEO of Pan African Resources, on delivering sector-leading returns for shareholders. Watch the video here.
London South East prides itself on its community spirit, and in order to keep the chat section problem free, we ask all members to follow these simple rules. In these rules, we refer to ourselves as "we", "us", "our". The user of the website is referred to as "you" and "your".
By posting on our share chat boards you are agreeing to the following:
The IP address of all posts is recorded to aid in enforcing these conditions. As a user you agree to any information you have entered being stored in a database. You agree that we have the right to remove, edit, move or close any topic or board at any time should we see fit. You agree that we have the right to remove any post without notice. You agree that we have the right to suspend your account without notice.
Please note some users may not behave properly and may post content that is misleading, untrue or offensive.
It is not possible for us to fully monitor all content all of the time but where we have actually received notice of any content that is potentially misleading, untrue, offensive, unlawful, infringes third party rights or is potentially in breach of these terms and conditions, then we will review such content, decide whether to remove it from this website and act accordingly.
Premium Members are members that have a premium subscription with London South East. You can subscribe here.
London South East does not endorse such members, and posts should not be construed as advice and represent the opinions of the authors, not those of London South East Ltd, or its affiliates.
"The first approach was rebuffed and Penn is understood to have made a series of sequentially lower offers for his British rival, with the last worth around $700 million, as the UK-listed S4’s share price fell. S4’s stock is down around 55 per cent since this time last year and the business has a market value of around £365 million.
Sorrell has described the offers as not “credible” but those familiar with the matter say Penn, 70, is serious."
Full article The Times ...... https://archive.is/LgGCE#selection-2725.0-2729.112
I wonder what the higher offers were? 1.2 billion
1msn, nice find.
Probably why share price is up today, need to close above 60p.
I guess he is trolling SMS. Can you imagine SMS giving up his golden share to sell the business to a former employee of his at an insulting price? I think not!
Very volatile
Crazy at one point today this was up almost 15%. Rollercoaster of a day.
Sweaty day for the 10% crew...I much prefer 3-5% NORTH moves really ...M&A Team get ready ....we coming before summers out ...LOL...
On Stagwell group.
'It is understood that Goodstuff had entered into partnership discussions with a number of digital specialist companies last year, including ForwardPMX which was folded into Assembly by The Stagwell Group in September.
Stephens told The Media Leader that progressive advertisers increasingly want “omnichannel brilliance” from a single agency partner, which is why the likes of WPP, Omnicom and Publicis Group are “reinventing themselves by investing billions into digital data and technology”.
“On the other hand you’ve got the newer breed digitally-focused agency groups, fuelled by private equity money, growing at a rapid rate,” Stephens said. “Which is why we reached the conclusion that to genuinely compete on a level playing field with both networks and specialists, we’d need to enter into a partnership that would build on our existing digital offering but would add comparable scale and depth of resources for our clients.”
“To illustrate the scale point, the likes of Assembly, Croud, Jellyfish and Brainlabs all employ thousands of people and Wavemaker, I had heard, deployed something like 75 people – or 50% of our agency – to design and build their new AI product. For Goodstuff to get to anything like these levels of resource, we needed to face into it and look for the right partner."
I think that Stagwell would have to offer at least a 50% - 50% joint merger valuing S4 at £1.5bln or 257p per share, maybe that would appeal making the combined company much larger and give S4 a USA listing. Although, according to the March 22 WSJ report Sorrell rebuffed Stagwell's offers so far because they undervalued the company and he didn’t view Stagwell as a good strategic fit with his firm. Don't rule out private equity firm New Mountain who also have been showing interest according to the WSJ report.
Which every way we analyse the share price... it should never be at this level.. wether it starts with a 1 2 or 3. the price it is now has not representation on the value to the company.
Does anyone think the US funds might have been acquiring on behalf of Stagwell or another interested party ? They would then be happy to lend the shares out for shorting.
Auson, I've thought that for months now. Our two largest shareholders USA funds Franklin Resources & Third Avenue Management as you know have been acquiring over the past 14 month and hold approximately 14% - 15% of the company. I believe that there's a good reason why they were happy to pay much higher purchase prices than we currently stand at today. Time will tell.
What's most likely, IMO, is that Martin waits till an agency ad market turnaround takes hold, particularly for tech clients, and a recovering share price will then give S4 a much better negotiating position.
It's also foolish to continue to have S4's primary listing in the UK as it chronically undervalues us in the market - I find it hard to understand why he hasn't started to explore a primary listing on the NYSE. It's a no-brainer given the depth of the market there and our revenues are circa 80% from North America. That should be step one to get S4's SP on a path to sustainable medium to long term recovery.
The NYSE primary listing move is what CRH did back in May last year - link below. They have 75% EBITDA coverage from the US and hence was a prudent move. The stock's now at all-time highs up from £38 when the move was announced last May to £65 now - they're still retaining their LSE listing, but the reporting currency is now USD.
That is what a primary US listing can do for us -- it just needs Martin and Mary to get off their backsides and make it happen.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/crh-plc-announces-transition-us-133000446.html
GoCPI, I agree, I've been saying this for over 2 years. I even emailed SMS to ask why not have a Nasdaq listing, his reply was it's not an easy thing to do. Well plenty of other companies are managing to do it.
"GoCPI, I agree, I've been saying this for over 2 years. I even emailed SMS to ask why not have a Nasdaq listing, his reply was it's not an easy thing to do. Well plenty of other companies are managing to do it."
Thanks, NigeCo. You're spot on - it's never an easy thing to do, but you need to consider what's good for the wider shareholder base, and for me that's moving the primary listing to the NYSE. I suppose the accounting delays faux pas back in 2022 is still on Martin's mind when he said it wasn't easy, but it's not like they're still doing large scale acquisitions at this time that warrants a cautious view on moving the primary listing to the US.
Ultimately if he's really serious about extracting the best possible value for shareholders, he and Mary should really consider a primary listing move to the US given our revenue/profitability profile that's skewed towards that region.
I have no experience here so may be talking out of my a** here, but I could see one hurdle being that they would have to report their financials to US GAAP rather than IFRS as required to be UK publicly listed, including comparative years. Quite a bit of work there and may not have the knowledge readily inhouse as the accountants are likely trained to IFRS.
Once that's done, I can imagine its just paying a broker a fee?
I would not do a Nasdaq listing. They would just be a small fish in a big pond, as SMS said.
It also means a lot of time spent on meeting regulation there.
It is not as great as what may appear ... European companies that list in the US generally under perform US domestic listings
Nasdaq wants the fees of course, so they try and get listings in
"It also means a lot of time spent on meeting regulation there.
It is not as great as what may appear ... European companies that list in the US generally under perform US domestic listings"
Poker - The issue is more the first line that you wrote - they'll have to put out detailed quarterly revenues/P&L, and also provide guidance. It's a major headache versus the LSE, where they don't need to put in as much effort. It's an easy way out of dealing with such strict US requirements.
For all intents and purposes, S4 is a US company as that's where their vast majority of revenue base is. I get that the top tier management is based here, but that's that.
As you and others have written already today, it's not likely that MS will go down the US listing route although it's unequivocally beneficial for S4's shareholders and I suppose that's the reality we have to live with - the valuation gap will never be filled. We should yet get a few multiples of the current price once the market turns for S4 and revenue growth ensues.
My last point on this topic - only on the shallow LSE can you have the SP brought down circa 25% without any volume, as we saw play out in April/early May. And there's no real bounce that we can speak of in the SP even though MS had a few positive things to say on the earnings call, and the PE/competition vultures are circling because of our shiite valuation on this moribund stock market. Mini rant over!! ;-)
Will go all the way back down to the 0.4s now there is no news Shorts back in command.
UK stocks are a shorters dream.
Will go up eventually, just not yet.
They'll have to put out detailed quarterly revenues/P&L, and also provide guidance. It's a major headache versus the LSE, where they don't need to put in as much effort. It's an easy way out of dealing with such strict US requirements.
well BT Group pulled out of a US listing in 2019 citing costs and complexity
By giving out all that detailed info each quarter you are also handing it all to your competitors and potentially setting yourself up against Analysts who can adjust their targets and be much more nimble on earnings projections as a quarter moves through,than you can be with an initial guidance
SMS has played the game for decades, he knows it all inside out
When the FED etc cannot make any detailed predictions up front and only like to when the data comes in, then exactly how easy is it for all these BODs to, given the continuos volatility they face on many fronts ??
" only on the shallow LSE can you have the SP brought down circa 25% without any volume, as we saw play out in April/early May "
why not?... what not to like about selling high and buying lower and ending up with far more shares than you started with ??
Maybe you are misunderstanding what the game is all about ??