Member Info for Billybob15

Always good to exchange views. I continue to buy.

Bobolove - thank you for your intelligent input. A refreshing change from some posters.

Ebitda is not perfect but probably a better measure than many others - what do you prefer? I don’t agree with your £550/employee because that is based on an average no of employees of 10,000. There are lots of seasonal workers and so I would guess permanent workers between 5-7,000. If it was a bonus why not mention it? I have no idea what it was but the labour cost jump of 20% year on year spooked me.

Bobolovisa - don’t you think it would have been silly to pay a bonus of 5.5m (which is a material figure) in the seasonally less profitable first half of the year to cause ebitda to be lower than the prior year by 5.8m? You may not like ebitda but many people do monitor it and it allows inter year comparisons without having to adjust for capital structure changes or interest rate changes.

The majority of the margin decrease came from wages not wage inflation. 1H25 wages were £64.4m whilst 1H24 were £53.3m that is a 20% + increase. The NLW increase was 9.8%. They didn’t open many stores so what caused the extra increase?

Bobolove - none of this suggests that ebitda in 1H 25 would be 12% lower than 1H 24. The comment they made about the weighting towards the second half is simply reminding people of the high seasonality of this business. Granted the UBS note spoke to lower margins but that note is not available to many people. If you believe that they flagged the profit fall (which you clearly do) could you please explain why the share price has fallen almost 40% in 3 weeks?

Bobolove - semantics. They reported lower profits than people expected which is why the share price fell from 143p to 87p. You say they guided to lower profits, could you please show me where and when they did this as I never saw it.

I agree with you LWHL that the management teams jobs may depend on the Christmas results. Issuing a surprise profit warning at the half year and then confidently stating that the full year will be in line (and getting it wrong) could be terminal for them.

I have taken a look at Cards Direct - in year to July 23 they had just over 50 stores with £14.7m sales and £703k operating profit. Now up to 76 sites (from website) - I think they picked up some Paperchase or Clinton’s. Don’t look well capitalised so clearly a threat but manageable imho. CF will be debt free after Christmas (ignoring leases) so if this does drop into the 70s I will fill my boots.

This all looks odd/fishy to me…why announce that you are in negotiations rather than there is a deal? Why does the sale of underwriting not complete until Q2 next year - and why is it not a done deal? Why so massively over complicated? Share price this morning driven by retail investors selling out on the news of a ‘deal’ - volume so far is 900k shares only about 0.6% of total shares. And if you look at the total cash payments set out, £207.5m or 145p per share, if share price stays at 135p the Ageas could bid 200p or 55p (£79m) more than suggested in the non deal and they would get everything else - Cruise, River, Travel, brand name (and the debt). I smell a rat and will wait to see the outcome once the institutions have listened to the management presentation.

It has now been over a week since the delay in the results publication. That ought to be plenty of time to have agreed a partnership. I am beginning to feel something bigger is going on. Some strange share price trading this morning though.

I am prepared to be accused of wishing thinking but one possible explanation for the delay in a deal (which Saga clearly expected to be agreed by the results day last week) is that Ageas decided against buying esure and so wanted to move from a partnership deal with Saga Insurance to a full acquisition. Separating Saga Insurance and Travel could be complicated not least around the use of the brand name so the easiest deal for Ageas would be to acquire the whole group. That would require them to feel comfortable with the value they could divest the travel business at and time to get irrevocable agreements with the top 6 shareholders who account for 51.8% of the shares.

Rupans - I disagree, it is sloppy journalism by the FT. The dates are wrong she has Saga merging with the AA in 2017 and then demerging in 2014 to float…The debt today is double that at IPO because…they bought a second cruise ship. And as for the cash crunch coming in 2026…the cruise ship business makes £80-90m ebitda so could easily be refinanced. If only she had spent 10 minutes researching for her article rather than five it may have been a decent one.

Hi Rogue - they were going to buy Direct Line for £3.2bn so I don’t see why they can’t buy both Saga and esure. Saga is targeted at the older wealthy demographic that they are keen on whilst esure is a generalist. They could easily sit together - arguably some cost savings too.

The RNS just now delaying the results announcement suggests to me that a deal on partnerships is imminent. It is accompanied by a statement that trading is in line so there could be a real bump up in the share price when a sale and leaseback is agreed and announced - presumably later this week.

Luke Johnson has had many successes and a few failures but generally has a strong batting average. Will certainly be an improvement on the outgoing chair (Keith Edelman) who I believe has been out for a duck quite regularly! He gets the prize for value destruction.

I found the filter button just above the post message button - that’s better now.

Could you please remind us how to filter JamesOxford - I am seriously bored by him

Hi Trenner - I agree with what you say but would add:

1. AH has been in place for 6 months and so will have a good idea of the upside. He and his CFO have been buying shares. Now is the ideal time for a PE house to approach.

2. I suspect Schroders will have limited ability to roll into a buyout after Neil Woodford and Mark Barnett made a Horlicks of unlisted investments - this will provide a floor for an offer - as Andy Brough will cash out.

3. A PE house will not want to be trumped by a competing offer that is 10% higher (meaning irrevocables fall away) so will not want to go in too cheap.

If we get a PE bid I would expect it to be 60-75p a share.

BH - Teleios has been selling for the last year. They have not been able to find the liquidity to get out without tanking the share price - until now. So I would have thought about your question the other way around. What has given the buyer the confidence to buy now?

Jed - in order to avoid an RNS the 9.92% would have had to be sold to a minimum of 4 new shareholders each taking less than 3%. The rules are that any holding above 3% has to be disclosed and then every time a whole integer percentage (eg 4%) is crossed either buying or selling. Given the whole 9.92% was sold on a single day I would guess there is a single buyer. Probably a new institution but could also be Moonpig, or CF buying back (I think they have authority to buy up to 10%) as others have suggested. I am not sure what would happen if a broker bought it on behalf of a PE house considering a take private deal. As a middleman the broker may not need to disclose but any lawyers or CF advisers here may be able to comment.