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Angela Rayner, housing minister says" We plan to build 1.5 million houses this parliament".

Rachel Reeves, chancellor says "From next April we are raising stamp duty on ALL properties below £925k".

Housebuilders' share prices collapse, who could possibly have anticipated that........I thought this government looked inept, they have just provided absolute proof of that, and no, I am NOT making a political point, merely a logical one.

I know that the Zantac settlement is provisional and there are some holdouts (around 8% of the claimants?) But to put it in context see this line from today's RNS

"Total operating profit -86% and Total EPS -100% driven by a charge of £1.8 billion ($2.3 billion) in relation to the Zantac settlement"

If it isn't clear I'll spell it out , the Zantac sum is LESS THAN one quarter's OP. GSK have sensibly IMV taken the whole hit in this quarter and all else equal will still return an OP of £ 5 billion for this FY.

Anyone who reads my posts will know that I am not a fan of management and have reservations about the company's medium term strategy, but they operate in a growth sector and at today's prices the divi is worth 4.3 % and I expect a minimum return of ~10% over the next year.

Me too, I've just bought at £13.99789, therefore, had I bought 100,000 shares costing almost £1.5m, (Ididn't)the broker would have rounded the sum up by a penny!!!!!!

Having read through todays RNS , the results are , IMV , yet another indictment of management(or rather lack of it).

In a field where it is almost impossible not to make profits , GSK is giving it a good go. I hold a few here and I am planning to add. If that sounds crazy then my logic is that markets overreact and the SP will recover from here . It may not be stellar, but the company will not go broke , and will return a decent divi. It therefore forms a useful part of my portfolio which I am currently turning towards lower risk and long -term income generation.

I'll start with an apology.......I am going to agree with Savage, something I thought was unlikely. Like him, I sold earlier this year, after evaluating several years' results and identifying and pointing out that the most pr profitable years had almost as much to do with shrewd money management as profits from the pubs. I have held a watching brief since then but have this on my watchlist, as it has now fallen well below my selling price, and, I suspect, might fall sharply if as I expect, the budget includes action to raise alcohol taxes('cos that might be the only bit of it which is hard to criticise).

Any SP nearing 600pand I will buy in , in the expectation that once the dust settles , the SP will recover to , or above the 700p level.

Sorry Savage , I'll try to disagree with you again some time soon.

Repost of a previous post elsewhere explaining how Blackrock (Assets $10 trillion....) operate shorts in , I hope very simple terms

i'll try to set out Blackrocks logic using much simplified numbers .

Lets say in a rising market

Blackrock hold 10k shares at 350 value £35k

they borrow 2k shares and sell for 350, revenue £7k liability £7k

share price rises to 400, assets value £40k , buy back short at 400 , cost £8k loss of £1k on short, net position up £4k

In a falling market

shares fall to 300, asset value £30k ie down £5k

they buy back 2k shares at 300 ie £6k, profit on short £1k ,net loss £4k

So while the shorts LOSE money in a rising market , they REDUCE LOSSES when the market falls.

Multiply my numbers by a factor of millions and you may understand Blackrocks logic.

Hope the arithmetic is right and the logic is clear.

Hi NDN , WADR , I think you missed my point entirely. I was trying to explain to Savage why his attack on pensioners was to misunderstand where the UK government's costs go. Pensioners are not nearly as large a drag on the taxpayer as many believe. They are essentially receiving a benefit they were promised when they retired after contributing for many decades. The bulk of government expenditure goes on other things. As I pointed out pensions are equivalent to 5% of GDP, and that is exceptionally low by international standards.

As to my personal position I am NOT advocating on my own behalf . I retired from paid employment in my early forties and have lived by my investment portfolio ever since( see posts in the past detailing some of the ups and downs that has entailed). I claim no government benefits, nor ever have.

Finally having been a committed socialist in my early life I am now a political agnostic, both major parties being entirely unworthy of support.

Savage you write

"a (sic) ageing & unhealthy population who take take take from a smaller working population."

UK government spending this FY will be about £1,189 billion of which state pension will be about £125 billion , ie about 11% of spending and around 5% of GDP. There are around 12 million people receiving a state pension of whom around one third don't receive the full state pension, logic suggests that means that the other two thirds have worked long enough (35 years) to pay the full contribution needed for entitlement.

Only 75% of the people in the 16-64 age group are in employment and that total is around 37 million, so roughly 9 million of working age are NOT working(and hence adding to the benefits bill)which Ex-pensions is £241 billion, ie almost double the cost of pensions.

I would therefore argue that the problem is NOT as you say" an ageing and unhealthy population who take take take from a smaller working population..

Maybe more attention to facts and less unsubstantiated rhetoric might be in order.

I've bought a few this morning even though I think there's a strong possibility of a sharp fall as the budget mayhem unfurls. Is that illogical? well yes to a degree, I May be under water on these within days , but I'm essentially a long-term investor and even after a possibly significant fall in the next few days, I still expect today's purchase to be in the black at some stage in the next few months or maybe a year. If the SP does fall further, I will add, to reduce my average and increase the chances of a net gain.

GLA

Savage...I'm not taking sides in your current keyboard squabble, but you should d be aware of this:

"The NHS has so far only paid around £25bn of the £80bn expected total cost of PFI since it was first introduced in 1998, less than a third of the final price. With just under £55 billion further to pay, the NHS will continue to carry the burden of PFI for decades to come unless action is taken, according to the report."

Source The King's fund.

The Blair/ Brown labour government left a legacy of ongoing debt which will take decades to erode.

FYI I think both of our major political parties are economically inept, and frankly so are all the minor ones!!!

The budget is being tipped to include a rise of 2% in employers NI so I suspect Monday's opening will show a sharp fall in the UK's biggest private employers, in this list

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1218430/largest-uk-based-companies-employees/

one of which is GSK. I have been looking for an entry point here and I think Monday might be it. I wouldn't be surprised to see my anticipated market meltdown post-budget happen a bit early.

I will be looking for a buy in the Monday morning chaos.

Hi eccles , number of points, YOUR and everybody's yield, is a function of the current SP, AND the price at which you bought, therefore it is a dynamic figure, changing marginally with every price tick, so don't be surprised to see it sometimes wrong.

Secondly, share prices change for a whole host of reasons, some directly related to the present and future prospects of the company, others to the general economic situation and yet others to actual or potential regulatory

behaviour so a possible increase in yield may be hoped for but not reflected in the SP.

Thirdly, see my last para in the previous post, circumstances which affect the whole market will be significantly reflected in the LGEN SP ' cos they own an enormous chunk of it.

Finally, I am not predicting a sharp SP fall , merely setting out WHY such a thing may happen and how I have prepared for it.

Good luck with your investing.

I posted here a few times following the Truss/Kwarteng budget panic a couple of years ago, setting out why IMV it was much ado about nothing and of minor consequence to LGEN. Well, we're nearly there again. The upcoming budget looks like it's going to signal significant public spending, justified by a tweak to the measurement of government assets. I won't bore you with the details but, simply put, the assumption is that we have more money in the bank than we thought, therefore we can spend a bit more to do essential things. Sadly, I fear that, as the opinion formers these days lean left, then the S**T that should hit the fan, won't, or at least less of it will. Nevertheless, I think there might be a few wobbly days post-budget, because so much trading these days is bot-driven, and hence minor moves are magnified.

As I have said before LGEN, because of its huge asset base acts like a FTSE tracker , so be prepared for a sharp fall .My response is to have a couple of buys in place at 5 %% or thereabouts lower than the current SP.But equally important is this.

STAY CALM

...by the Tyranny Of Round Numbers. I have bought in here , having set buy orders at 1280, 1270 and 1260.All have been hit today. I previously held SMDS which was , I believe, best in class, but sold out after the IP bid was accepted. I still think the sector has a lot to offer , in both the short and longer term .The move to greter buying from home and the delivery industry whtehr food , clothing or other goods , means packaging need will only grow. IMV Mondi 's recent sharp fall has made it a buy. As ever, bad news and the resultant SP fall will take a while to recover , but equally , modern trading patterns involving lots of "bot" trading means moves to the upside or downside are significantly greater than the news deserves. Accordingly, I'll be holding here until some or all, of the recent weeks fall is recovered and maybe even longer, depending on the Co's news and progress.

WADR savage I think you are missing the fundamental point about an investment here. It's not about revenues per se, but far more about costs, which have been running at about £17/18bill for the last few years, of which staff costs and the equipment needed for the fibre rollout make up almost half. As the company comes towards the end of the fibre rollout those costs will sharply diminish and the resultant impact on profitability is significant. That means that the current pre-adjusted profitability which has hovered around £2-3 billion, yeah that's right, £2-3 billion, will rise by a significant double-digit percentage.

As to your observation about debt, you've got that the wrong way round, interest rates have begun to fall and borrowing rates for the public and corporates will follow. BT will be able to roll over debt to lower rates. The debt profile is shown at note 26 to the accounts and shows debts from this year out to 2081, much of the short-term debt is euro-denominated and the strength of the pound is diminishing the costs of that, and some of the higher coupon debt (the worst is a 9.6%$ bond!!)will, if terms allowed and a lower interest rate environment persists, be replaced with lower coupons. I hold happily here, sure of a reasonable divi, improving prospects and a stable, if not rising

SP and other much bigger players agree.

Stevie..The primary impact of a divi is on XD day , the payment day SP is unaffected.

However as I suspected the SP has drifted back to close to the Pre-settlement announcement, unlike some I don't think that's fear of expensive settlement of the rump of cases, 'cos GSK's legal team will stress the level of settlements already agreed in any further legal proceedings. IMV the risk of Zantac is now controlled and as a Pharma, an area where even this relatively inept co. has some promising products and a significant base of proven medicines, there is a real prospect of progress in the medium term. I haven't yet invested, but I am streamlining my folio and am cash-loaded for what I suspect may be a minor meltdown at budget time, where I hope to pick up some bargains. I don't think GSK will be adversely affected and I am a buyer here at levels around or, preferably a little lower, than now.

This will be MS acquiring options or CFD's on behalf of a client, the obvious guess is Bharti.....

One of many directors selling as the risk of changes to capital gains taxation levels looms in the upcoming budget. The Chancellors musings and threats have probably taken a couple of %age points off the FTSE in recent weeks and I fear more damage will be done on budget day. I have held here in the recent past but cashed out when I thought the SP had run too far, for a few months it looked like I had committed my usual error of selling too soon, but the recent falls and my comments above mean I am poised to re-invest, but probably in the immediate post-budget meltdown!!!

OP...A 5% gain adds about £3 billion to GSK's market cap...............probably roughly equivalent to the difference between the market's estimate of the possible cost of the litigation and today's announcement.

Back in sept '22 I posted an estimate of $5b for the costs of the Zantac issue and the recent news suggests that, once this settlement is implemented the remaining"holdouts " will settle for similar sums. Thus the total bill for GSK will come in at around $2.5 bn. It could have been much worse. Business in the US is always at risk of such legal extortion, but, for now, GSk are almost in the clear. I have held in the past, selling when the ULVR bid was rejected, but have held it on my watch list ever since. I expect a short sharp bounce this am, perhaps settling back over the next few weeks. Depending on where the price settles I may re-invest.All holders here should send a vote of thanks to GSK's legal team!!!