Member Info for Analyst99

Yes official interim report at the end of July but initial update at the start of July.

Share price drop today seems a bit unjustified if it is about the CFO retiring, not due to happen till the end of the year so not being pushed or rushed out.

Any ideas when the update is due, last year it was Wednesday the 2nd July, I had assumed it would be today being a full 52 weeks later but presumably it takes a couple of days after the end of June to put them together?

Also @billyvalentine shorts at over 9% is well up on the normal figure that had been under 3% for years.

What has inflation in the UK done over the last 8 years, ie is the 44% increase for the morning breakfast deal much more than inflation?

My guess is shorts were betting on inflation having a bigger impact on sales and additional risk of cost overruns on their new facilities, both aspects appear to have been well managed by the leaders at Greggs.

This is rather old news from 3rd March and blatant advertising of your website.

Yes it should be a net £0 on Equity, but your margin percentage increases.

As an example:

Before dividend say you have Assets (value of the shorts) of £1,000 and Debts (owed to buy back shorts) of £800, so Equity of £200 (Debt / Equity of 400%)

After dividend Assets of £1,200 and Debts of £1,000, so Equity of $200 (Debt / Equity of 500%).

Some of the shorts are going to have to pay up the 50p per share as Greggs heads toward ex dividend date at the end of April.

Currently at 12.78% short this equates to 13m shares short. With average daily volume of around 550k this would take 24 working days to buy back all the shorts and that is if all trades each day was buying back shares. There is less than 20 work days before the end of April.

Ex dividend is 30 April isn’t it, not March?

And a GBP15m sale

I agree Greggs always looks busy, the question is did they look busy last year too, usually the investment community focus on growth in same store sales.

I wondered about a take over too, but unless those shorting have options they risk losing large amounts covering their shorts at the higher takeover price level?

Shorts just give an opportunity for people to buy stock at a lower price, not great if you are a trader, but not an issue for people wanting to invest for the long term.

Shorts don’t like dividends because they have to front up with cash, with CAPEX dropping this coming year I suspect management will look to see what they can do about dividends and share buybacks, as well as paying back any debts.

I don’t live in the UK is the number of people having the weight loss jabs that material, or is this just scaremongering to scare people off investing in Greggs?

Aren’t the cost of the weight loss jabs expensive, if so is this Greggs target customer?

I wonder whether shorts are simply jumping in knowing that Greggs has committed capital for a very good reason, so would likely sure up the balance sheet ahead of a large dividend every second year. Maybe an option may be to increase the second half dividend to say 70p, ie not as high as 50p plus a special 50p every second year dividend, but enough to make shorts think twice.

Higher dividends are likely to deter shorts as they have to actually come up with funds to pay the dividends.

If the increase in profits (due to the new distribution centre) is not likely till 2027 and short term nature of a lot of investors these days, perhaps this is the opportunity shorts are working on.

The level of shorts means any bounce back in share price following higher profitability may well be faster than it would be without the level of shorting.

When you say the company generated 5% return on capital in the last 3 years, where is this from, is it more capital to maintain the business as opposed to capital for new distrbution centres which is capital to enable growth of the business, ideally at lower costs?

At a micro level it is like capital for a new computer for a staff member versus capital for some software that automates processes and enables a reduced staff going forward?

Is there any published report on the savings expected from the new distribution centres, it would be a very useful business case to read.

Interesting that shorts are increasing as the price drops, you would think some may cover as the price drops. Of course it could be the increased shorting that is pushing the price down to these levels.

I would hope to see insider purchases too.

Enables people to buy into Greggs at a cheaper price.

Thanks for that, I guess my question is whether the short figures are right, “ According to the shorting statistics here the short pct increased from 4.7% to 5.7% on the 7th October, so 1% of shares or 1m shares, however according to yahoo finance there was only 600k shares traded that day.”

How do shorts go up by 1m shares when only 600k shares were traded in the day and not all those would be shorting.

How does the shorting work?

According to the shorting statistics here the short pct increased from 4.7% to 5.7% on the 7th October, so 1% of shares or 1m shares, however according to yahoo finance there was only 600k shares traded that day.