Member Info for Bootsox

LUANDA, Aug 25 (Reuters) - Provisional results from vote counting in Angola's general election indicate the ruling party MPLA, which has been in power for nearly five decades, holds a strong lead over the main opposition party, the National Electoral Commission (CNE) said on Thursday.
With 33% of the votes counted, CNE said the first provisional results showed the MPLA, led since 2017 by President Joao Lourenço, who is seeking a second five-year term, garnered 60.65% of the vote, and UNITA got 33.85%.
https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/angolas-first-provisional-results-show-mpla-wins-election-2022-08-25/

Reg, the information I quoted is freely available on the Angolan elections Wikipedia entry.
I’ve been a long term AET/SEY holder, nearly 20 years.
Do you think the outcome of the election and a possible regime rage will make no difference, the deal isn’t signed yet?

If the opinion poles are anything to be believed, it’s not looking too good for the incumbent Angolan government.
What happens if they get booted out, is it all bets off for AET?

No direct connection with ECK I'm afraid, are you posting out of general interest?

Maybe a false dawn but my AET holding has been "reactivated" on my HL watchlist.

Are we re-listed, HL say so?

I shop in a range of supermarkets regularly and have seen no evidence of beer sales booming.

Chester, my home city, a major tourist destination, is pretty dead most nights of the week. Even Saturday night's customer levels are a fraction of pre-Covid numbers.

Folk are undoubtably feeling the pinch and will continue to do so.

Based on the premise that most AIM stock valuations are mainly puff and nonsense, I just had a thought that ECK, by declaring a dividend, make themselves more exposed to (less favourable) scrutiny in some way.
As if the dividend declaration becomes such a clear marker that it is easier to identify where the company is heading/how well it is doing (as opposed to the wooly-head stocks where nobody really knows what's going on). Almost to say, they (we) would be better off not declaring a dividend at all.
I'm not an accountant but I find ECK's accounts very detailed and comprehensive. Is this a consequence of boiling down the numbers to get to a point where they can actually demonstrate how the dividend gets paid?

Philpot always come across in measured and informative way.

Noel,

Re dividend timetable, from the full year results:

"Post year end the Directors are recommending that a final dividend for the year ended 31 March 2022 of 0.67 pence per ordinary share be paid to the Shareholders whose names appear on the register at the close of business on 23 September 2022, with payment on 21 October 2022. The ex-dividend date will be 22 September 2022. This recommendation will be put to the Shareholders at the Annual General Meeting. Based on the shares in issue at the year end, this payment would amount to £2.0m."

...strange, none reported by LSEG but London South East reporting trades.

Must be a record, lunchtime and not a single reported trade

Being realistic, this share is just slowly sliding down the pan, every day tests new lows. The number of disgruntled shareholders must be in the thousands (I am one).
I think Oleric has some good points, Elrico has been the ‘emperor with no clothes’ for quite some time now (and TW). I’ve never come across a company that’s promised so much (with their endless blizzard of promised deals) but actually delivered zero shareholder value.
With all that’s happened COVID-wise over the last 2.5 years, and the MSM obsessively fuelled concerns about health, if you haven’t been able to deliver a health-lifestyle-product in that time, you probably never will.

Hmm, interesting situation re AET. They’re suspended, which seems to get them off the hook in terms of reporting obligations to their shareholders (aka owners) but they must still have governance obligations as a plc.

So, unless a frequenter of these boards actually attends the AGM and reports back, we are all in the dark. Or, are AET as a plc mandated to publish minutes (which could still be terse and uninformative)?

I used to attend SEY AGMs but you didn’t learn much, usually because they were in the middle of drilling (yet another) dud exploratory well.

“Operational variances showed the effect of the challenges to the Swedish business, in particular, although their negative contribution of £32.6m was a distinct improvement on the £49.9m loss in 2020.“

Jeez Louise, any part of a business losing those sorts of money needs sacking off!

I sold out of Marstons in Feb this year. My original prompt for buying was a Tempus article in the Times on 06/12/17. The attraction of the company being their high yield. Downside was their worryingly high levels of debt, which exercised the minds of many on this BB.

Once Covid came along, the dividend was cancelled. This was the correct decision from a company point of view but useless for anyone relying of dividend income. After much hand-wringing, I took a loss on Mars in Feb (offset a little by the previously good dividends) as I could see no prospect of a return to dividend payments or at least anywhere near their historically high levels. Not relevant to Mars but I reinvested my money in MNG which, like many financial sector companies, offer a very attractive yield.

The above aside, I just cannot see Mars recovering at all, I am a fairly big frequenter of pubs and they are still relatively dead compared to pre-Covid levels (even at the weekends). As far as I am aware, Mars still have their cripplingly high debts to contend along with the prospect of even higher interest rates.

Worst case, I can see them: 1) going bust, 2) being taken over for a pittance, 3) just staggering on until the usual stock-market shenanigans whereby existing shareholders are diluted into oblivion because of some emergency fund raising exercise at a knock-down share price.

Favourable market response, 10% rise in share price today (admittedly from a low price) on a healthy volume of circa 1M shares.

Just to add, even outside a SIPP/ISA wrapper, HMRC still allows £2k of total annual dividend income free of tax.

I don't think anybody actually "wins" anything, just a restructuring of what an individual shareholder already owns.

Hence the stock market's fairly neutral reaction to the proposals.

I wonder if part of the story is SOH's frustration with the (largely dysfunctional) AIM market?