Member Info for Bonz1957

Recommended Final Offer 840p. To include 500p in cash and 0.1874 Kraft share. Plus a 10p special dividend when offer becomes unconditional. Lets just hope they stick to the same recipes as they have done with Terry's Chocolate Orange. Is it too late to hope for a Hershey bid - who currently make CDM and Creme Eggs in the USA under licence - to push the price even higher????

Media reports over the weekend suggest Kraft could increase its offer to 810-850p. Price ticking up nicely today ahead of tomorrows deadline for Kraft to increase its offer.

RNS Number : 5165F Thorntons PLC 14 January 2010 Thorntons PLC ('Thorntons' or 'the Company') today reported its second quarter trading update for the 14 weeks up to and including 9 January 2010. Trading was satisfactory and the Company therefore expects that interim profits will be ahead of last year and in line with Board expectations. The period to 9 January 2010 was notably different to the comparative period last year which included sales to Birthdays (Franchisee) and Woolworths (Commercial customer) both of which subsequently went into administration. Furthermore, we effectively ceased the production of private label products. Excluding private label products, the Board is pleased to report that sales across all channels increased by 3.0%. This, together with significantly lower levels of discounting in the Own store retail estate, resulted in overall higher margins. "We saw a pleasing continuation of growth in Commercial sales and Thorntons Direct during this important trading period. The decline in Own store sales was disappointing although this was primarily driven by our own decision to protect profit margins through significantly reduced discounting, but we were able to sell all the Christmas stock by the end of the period." Thorntons will announce its interim results for the twenty eight weeks ended 9 January 2010 on 17 February 2010.

Personally I would like to see Cadburys staying independant, but if Hershey do make a bid and it forces Kraft to up its offer then at least we may get fair value for our shares.

Do you have any information to back up your expectations?? Is it just a stab in the dark, or was it meant for another board as you don't seem to have posted on here before? THT hit a low of 37p back in Feb 09 when the market generally was at a low point. Personally I cannot see it hitting these levels again without some serious bad news. It will be interesting to see what their interims have to say next month, but am not expecting anything to suggest we might see 30p anytime soon.

* Total sales from Oct 5-Dec 26 up 6 pct vs 2008 * Howden Joinery UK LFL sales down 4.6 pct over year * Analysts currently expect FY pretax profit of 54 mln stg LONDON, Jan 12 (Reuters) - British kitchen supplier Galiform Plc (GFRM.L) again upgraded profit guidance for the year following strong trading over the key Christmas period. Galiform, owner of Howden Joinery, said on Tuesday total sales from Oct 5 to Dec 26 were 220 million pounds ($356 million), up 6 percent from the previous year and boosted by three extra trading days in the Christmas week. "It is now expected that profit before tax for the year will be comfortably above the top end of the current range of market expectations," the company said in a statement. Analysts currently expect the company to post pretax profit of 54 million pounds for the year, according to data from Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Stripping out the benefit of the longer pre-Christmas week, sales over the period were estimated to be 4 percent higher than in 2008. Galiform added its gross margin performance at the end of the year continued to be strong. For the year as whole, sales at Howden Joinery UK depots open more than a year fell 4.6 percent, an improvement on the first half. Shares in Galiform, which jumped more than 400 percent last year as trading improved, closed on Monday at 78.25 pence, valuing the company at 494.3 million pounds.

Sorry girl, no predictions from me but it is certainly looking good right now. I must admit to being surprised that it has hit and stayed around the 200p level so quickly after the RI. Hopefully with the motorways being kept open NEX won't have suffered as much as the local bus co's in this cold snap. With a favourable set of results out soon the sp may well reach 250p and you will be back in profit a lot quicker than either of us thought. Best of luck in 2010.

How strange!!! I replied, rather harshly, to your 18:02 post because at the time your 18:00 post was not showing. Anyway, just for the record Mars bars are owned by Mars - also Milky Way, Snickers, Galaxy, etc - so Kraft will not be making them if they do get their hands on Cadburys, which is looking more likely now than it did a couple of weeks ago. Your initial post suggested kraft would close all the factories down once it had control. this is very unlikely to ever happen due to the scale of the operation. It is my belief that Kraft just do not have the facilities to switch all of the production to their own factories. You mention HBOS dissappearing, but they have not. I have an ISA with the Halifax and they are still one of the largest bank branches on my high street. They may no longer have a seperate listing but they are still a very big part of an enlarged LBG. The same would happen with Cadburys. They would still exist. Their products would still be for sale, probably using most of the existing workforce in the current factories. Take Vauxhall for example. They have been under the GM umbrella for 25 years, but the name carries on and the Ellesmere Port and Luton factories still churn them out. As you correctly guessed the 1957 part of my handle does indeed date me. While chocolate products were never 10-a-penny in my days, I do remember Cadburys making a 1d, 3d and 6d bar. The 1d, or penny, bar - back in the days when you had 12d or pennies to a shilling, or 5p in todays money - was about the size of a memory stick and about 2mm thick. It came beautifully wrapped in purple foil and the distinctive Cadburys block chocolate logo on the wrapper. The wrapping must have cost more than the couple of grams of chocolate. Oh happy days!!

But if the public bought a Mars bar it would not benefit Kraft, so what is your point? If a house on your road went up for sale, would you buy it and demolish it in the hope it would put the price up on your house??? No, of course you wouldn't, and neither will Kraft buy Cadburys just to shut it down. You obviously do not understand the basics of economics.

Not a chance, it would be commercial suicide. What would be the point of spending £10bn to buy the company only to shut it down? I cannot think of this ever happening, nor I suspect can you. Kraft see Cadburys as a very profitable company, with products that are Global brand leaders all over the world. They want the Cadburys revenues - £5.4bn in 2008 - to bolster their own revenue streams. What would be the point in closing it down? How would they recoup the £10.5bn purchase price? What would those people who spent £5.4bn on cadburys products buy instead? How many Kraft confectionary products can you name? Cadburys have the global brand leader in block chocolate with Dairy Milk. Are you suggesting that everyone would go out and buy Toblerone instead? And what about all of their countlines - Flake, Fudge, Twirl, Curlywurly, Picnic, Time Out, Boost, Double Decker, Wispa and Crunchie, to name but a few, all to be replaced by Kraft's only small bar the Daim - I think not. Personally I'd rather have a Mars Bar!!!! I don't wish to be rude, but what you are suggesting is sheer lunacy. It's a bit like Shell paying £120bn to buy BP, then closing all the refineries and shutting all the petrol stations and hoping people buy Shell instead, forgetting that people would be able to choose Esso, Texaco and supermarket petrol. It would never happen. Even if this take over does go ahead the brand name of Cadburys will live on long after you and I have departed this world, and I suspect they will still be using the current factories. I for one hope that this hostile bid fails and that Cadburys remains independant. If we are forced to accept Krafts offer I will be selling my Kraft shares at the earliest opportunity and reinvesting in a UK company. Holding shares in US listed companies in the past has caused me nothing but grief. Even if the share does well the chances are that the exchange rate goes against you and wipes out any gain.

Nice to see this touch £2 after such a bad last year. At this figure, everyone who bought into this share below £4.20 and took up the RI is back in profit. All we need now is some good news and to hope that this bad weather is not going to harm cashflow too much.

Their trading statement of 21/12/09 was as expected fairly upbeat. http://www.nationalexpressgroup.com/nx1/media/news/corp_news/pr2009/2009-12-21/ For the time being we will just have to content ourselves with the fact that the sp has done quite well since the ri and is up nearly 13% from the ex-rights price. Todays price is equivalent to a pre-rights price of £4.09, assuming you took up your rights. To be this close to £2 without any good news is not bad at all. I will be quite happy to see it around 200-210p when the 2009 Annual report comes out in a couple of months.

For Immediate Release 22 December 2009 Brinkley Mining PLC "Brinkley Mining" or the "Company") Suspension of trading on AIM and corporate update As previously announced, as an investing company under the AIM Rules, Brinkley Mining must have either substantially implemented its investment strategy or concluded a reverse takeover on or before 21 December 2009 or otherwise its shares would be suspended from trading on AIM. Accordingly, the Company's shares have been suspended with effect from today. The Board continues to explore opportunities for the Company and a further announcement will be made in due course. The Company will have a further six months to conclude a transaction before its shared are cancelled from trading on AIM. As previously announced on 4 December 2009, Brinkley has an investment of 8.13 percent in Dragon Mining Limited, an Australian Stock Exchange-listed gold producer (ASX Code: DRA) with a market value of approximately A$66 million and which operates the Svartliden Gold Mine in Sweden and the Orivesi and Jokisivu Gold Mines in Finland, which collectively produced 74,206 ounces of gold in 2008. In addition, as at 18 December 2009, Brinkley's cash balances amounted to £3.1 million. Richard Linnell has also today resigned as a director with immediate effect following which the Board composition will be as follows: Peter Gunzburg Executive Chairman Clayton Dodd Non-Executive Director Neil Maclachlan Non-Executive Director Peter Gunzburg and Neil Maclachlan are both directors of Eurogold Limited which owns 29.04 percent of Brinkley Mining. Clayton Dodd is an alternate director of Atomaer Holdings Pty Limited which owns 10.94 percent of Brinkley Mining. For further information please contact: Brinkley Mining Plc Peter Gunzburg Tel: +618 94810572 Beaumont Cornish Limited Michael Cornish Tel: +44 (0) 20 7628 3396 ENDS

Look up the above RNS for full details of Krafts improved offer. Kraft have received $3.7bn for the sale of their pizza business, but this only equates to an extra 60p cash per Cadburys share. So their offer now equates to £3.60 cash plus Kraft shares. IMHO this in no way represents fair value and I will not be accepting their derisory offer. Having read their offer and this RNS I can't see that they are offering the option to take cash in lieu of the Kraft shares, and based on past experience, I have no wish to hold an American listed share. Please read 'regvarny's post below and do not let Cadburys fall into the hands of Kraft.

Share predictions are about as accurate as forecasting the Lottery, and I would definitely not consider myself to be an expert. I have always bought shares in companies that I use on a regular basis and that I can see are doing well. So I bought Cadburys, Tesco, Vodafone and BP. I also bought the utilities - gas/leccy/water - cos everyone needs them. Along with banks, building societys, financial institutions and insurers. My best advice would be to build as broad a portfolio as you can, personally I own shares in over 60 companies, and I used to buy say £500-600 at a time. I have only once or twice bought penny shares, and usually lost out. So I now concentrate on the big Blue Chip stocks. They are less spectacular but - hopefully - more predictable. In a large potfolio you will have say 60% ticking along nicely, 20% doing well and 20% doing badly, so you are protected if one of your shares performs badly. Unless the market is falling like a stone and then they all do badly!! I always take my dividends as new shares if offered as this helps to build your holding over time. My investments over the years were always instead of putting a lot of money into a pension, so have been viewed long term. I have been through a couple of recessions where they all get filed away for 18 months, and then brought out again when things start to improve. So I have seen a nice 70% rise since Mar '09, but of course suffered a similar fall in the previous 18 mths. I was never one for buying and selling just for the sake of it, it's just a waste of dealing charges. But it is worth having a cull of badly performing shares once in a while and buy something different. With a few safe stocks you are likely to see a reasonable return over the long term. If you read some of the boards on here there are a lot of people with just one or two holdings in very speculative stocks trying to make a killing. That is all very well if you have picked the right one and can afford to lose your money, if not you're f**cked. What I have now I suppose is my own version of a tracker fund, so as long as the market is advancing then so am I. Of course if you do get a dead cert share tip please let me know. Best of luck.

Of course it depends at what price you originally bought your NEX shares, But are you sure you need £2.50 to make money? If you deduct the money you got from selling your rights from your original purchase price for NEX does that not give you a break even price under £2? I'm assuming you bought in the last two months around the £3.50 level.It all depends on the FTSE in general, and how well NEX performs as to how long it will be before we see any real improvement in the sp. You say you also have Lloyds. Did you get involved in the RI with them? People over on that board seem fairly confident that we will see some growth in the med/long term. The Government's 43% share of the bank cost them an av of 77p, so they will want it to get near that level before the next election. You are right about one thing though. You almost have to be glued to a screen 24/7 to know what is going on and make any real money. It's a lot harder for those of us on the outside looking in. All we can do is try to pick a good share, put it away for the long term, not get too worried about every little fall, and hope it is followed by a slightly larger rise. Remember, do not stake money you cannot afford to lose, and always DYOR. Merry Xmas.

A 52p div will be paid on 19/02/10 to all those on the register on 22/01/10, not a bad little earner.

The NEXN shares are your nil paid rights. You have until Dec 14th to pay the 105p to convert them to fully paid shares or they will lapse. If you hold paper shares you only have until 11.00am on Mon to get a chq to the registrars. If you hold in CREST it is probably already too late, you will have to check with your broker. If they lapse, you will have to wait for Nat Exp to sell them. They will then deduct the 105p that someone else has paid to convert them to fully paid shares along with their expenses and send you a cheque for the balance. Without knowing when they will sell, or how much they will get for them, it is impossible to say what you may receive. But if the share price holds around the 180p level you may get 60-70p per NEXN share.

Sorry to rain on your parade but I have to agree with HMMN on this one. David Mond has bought all of the viable bits for himself. When he refers to...'the current employees of the former Relax Group' he means those that he has taken on to run the business that he now owns. His own post refers to ....'the FORMER Relax Group'. And try looking at the Relax Group website - it's gone - always a bad sign. I'm not trying to gloat, I too have lost money in quite a few failed Co's over the years so I know how it feels. Hopefully no one lost too much, and it wasn't their only investment, or it could put them off shares for life. Best of luck.

What other shares do you hold, or was this your first foray into the stockmarket? I think you said you sold some of your nil paids, so you have taken some of the money out of your original stake in Nat Exp? Do you intend to put this money back into the market, possibly in a different share? This share held up quite well today considering the FTSE lost 90 points. Hopefully this is a good sign for post 15th.