George Frangeskides, Chairman at ALBA, explains why the Pilbara Lithium option ‘was too good to miss’. Watch the video here.
LMEY is a privately held Swiss/Dutch investment company specialised in leisure real estate established in 2010.
Puss, almost right. You mean Westford Capital Ltd ;-)
Quisty, probably cause they didn't make the same mistakes years ago and aren't in the same position and hence do have buffers?
BTW I am sure you can make better arguments. Comparing companies based on relative share price? I'm sure you know that's absurd.
Puss, in the JV? Just as they have always been. Not sure what is so hard to understand about it. The last few days it was also hotly debated multiple times and most of the information is on the TC Group website. Half of the "mysteries" here can be solved by just going back and reading the relevant news articles. (BTW for most of the other hotels that people are looking for given there's claims of hundreds: they are not owned by TC).
Quisty, I think what it is that you didn't really read what I said. I didn't say things have gone wrong for years. I said the mistakes were made years ago. As a result any attempt at reversing it is going to happen on a fragile basis which is what you've witnessed in the last year. Blaming PF for what happened in the last year (massive Brexit mismanagement and a heatwave) is essentially claiming he can control governments and the weather and should have done so. At least they aren't flying with 737 Max or that would be another thing he should've fixed.
Puss, it isn't TCG doing that. It's the JV that is doing it. And if anyone really is still bothered with the "Where do they get the money for it?!?!" part. Just read the announcements really. I'll help and quote a very relevant part:
"Thomas Cook last year launched a hotel investment fund with joint-venture partner LMEY, a hotel development company, with five hotels and has since grown it to nine properties including a greenfield plot in Kos, Greece. The fund has secured €51m in funding from CaixaBank in addition to €40m from Piraeus Bank."
The assets are in the JV and the banks fund it as there's assets there. It's not in the balance sheet cause the JV is in the balance sheet.
Quisty, Mytravel merged with Thomas Cook AG in 2007, the 90s were long over by then. HG was cool but the people around her often very hit and miss and as she didn't know the sector that was doomed to fail. If you read the FY 2017 report everything was still rosy, shareprice was fine and no one was complaining about PF or the BOD. That was less than 2 years ago.
Quisty, if you followed the share for more than a year you'd know they did all that and had profits and all the rest but essentially it's all based on a rather weak foundation where essentially nothing was allowed to go wrong. Bring in Brexit and last year's heatwave and your business that is running with 0 buffers available is back in shambles.
If the BOD was so bad then everyone should have been wary of investing here in the first place and the shareprice would have never been what it was.
But I admire how we've got a board full of CEO's who are running better companies and could have fixed Thomas Cook if they had just been asked to do so.
Puss, the BOD has to deal with what they have inherited from the past. The actual management of the company is a bit all over the place depending on the region you look at. But a magical solution for the debt pile was never going to materialise without a lot of pain given the mistakes made. When it comes to actual CEO's he's definitely better than the likes of Many
Fontenla-Novoa. Harriet Green I would generally rate higher as a CEO overall but not for the tourism sector.
Sure, it's all PF's fault. The man only has 25 years of experience in the travel industry, utterly clueless for sure right?
It is funny how people think they should see companies like football clubs. Not happy with what is happening? Find some specific individual and blame him and get him out and everything will magically clear up. Doesn't work for football clubs (and there certain individuals influence is quite significant at times) and definitely doesn't work like that for most companies.
Quisty, indeed and they report the numbers of the airline so you will be able to see them. If the forum still exists when the numbers are released feel free to check in and discuss whether I was right.
You mean the privatised Tour Operator that will consist of TCG, the existing TCG joint ventures and quite likely Club Med and anything else Fosun buys and integrates? Sure. I can outperform anything TCG ever was. Note though that it will be private so you'd have to invest in Fosun to be a shareholder in it. As to the airlines: if tied up correctly it can do well cause there's no need to be concerned about the airline really. I expect results for TC airline to be just fine at the end of this fiscal year.
If you know he's correct then by all means tell us how one would do it. The whole idea that it is "easy" to support the debt levels has little merit. Putting all the blame on the current BOD is also one of those things that makes one wonder. At least he FT article made a fair assessment of where all this is coming from.
jj-- those invested are not interested in looking at peer companies. Reality hurts. I hope for their sake they are not invested and just trolls. In general the TUI results (and any results for same quarter) are fairly boring. I'm waiting for next quarter. Generally quarters end of March and end of September give the best information.
Amers, it has been suggested there's simply no shares available to be borrowed. Though they still went up 7th of August and might go up now too if someone is willing to borrow shorters some shares, it just takes time between when they open shorts and it gets reported. And that's only covering the reported amounts, shorts below threshold do not get reported.
pione3r: if you say bid, do you have a suggestion as to how NK is going to convince the EU he is allowed to own a European airline?
Each time I come back here and read up I am amazed at how many people here come up with "options" that imply this will happen. No Russian, Turks ... will buy TCG as a whole. Ever wondered why back when the Airline was on sale the amount of potential suitors was so low? Right, they had to be EU airlines so you could quite quickly narrow down the options. Nothing has changed since then and no backing by a foreign state would change any of that. It's not possible, the irony is that as soon as foreign holdings in TCG get to 50% they actually have to strip their voting rights to stay in line with EU regulations.
Anex can buy TCG if it becomes European first so unless NK is selling 51% of Anex to Europeans there's no option for Anex to buy TCG as a whole.
Your dream option (as a shareholder) is essentially that NK buys the Tour Operator from underneath TCG for a load of cash. In that case TCG (and you) has the airlines and Anex gets the Tour Operator, hotels ... just like Fosun but without massive dilution. It does mean stumping up a lot of money for something that is mainly a vanity move (as it is excessively more expensive than the D4E option). In that respect the industry source Travelweekly quoted is also wrong, NK does not need 2.5B £ for this. I am very sure you can buy Tour Ops (Brands and all) for less than 2.5B £ but not enough less for it to be in the range of what NK can do by himself.
Of course in that case he still has Fosun to deal with. He needs someone with real deep pockets to outgun them and for now no one has financially backed him up that comes anywhere near.
But just for the sake of keeping things at least a bit realistic: just talk up that magic RNS in which they announce the sale of tour ops to Anex and how much money TCG will get cause that would definitely make the TCG share price spike as you all of a sudden are holding a profitable airline. Likeliness that it will happen: extremely low but at least it's not impossible compared to a lot of the bs on here.
Now officially in English:
https://www.dailysabah.com/tourism/2019/08/10/after-recently-building-stake-turkish-tour-operator-now-reported-to-acquire-thomas-cook
They still ignore he can't buy a European airline though which essentially means it isn't fact checked and properly considered. But it also means he didn't bother to ask them to take any of it down after it was posted in Turkish before.
This is a proper summary of reality in my opinion:
http://www.travelweekly.co.uk/articles/340034/comment-why-thomas-cook-deal-is-unlikely-to-be-derailed
BTW typo in the ludicrous plan: 200M shares issue of course.