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Good find value.. I posted here on 31 March that the only outstanding claims were by OCDO against Autostore and they appear to have taken the pragmatic view that a mutually agreeable deal is better than a drawn-out court battle. The £200 mill is handy cash in the short to medium term and we may be near the point at which OCDO can fund the rollout of CFC's from cash and revenues. As a former holder and well-informed commentator are you contemplating buying back in? OCDO's history has been littered with false dawns but maybe just maybe....... ?

Hi Mapper, AFAIK once shorters exceed the 0.5% threshold they are required to report all position changes within 2 working days , so if you're interested you can have some idea of the price level at which they added or reduced a position, tho' with the intra-day volatility of OCDO that's not easy. It is also worth remembering that many /most? shorts are not naked , it could well be that the holders of short positions are using it as a hedge to a larger? long position in a volatile stock. I have a family member who spent ten years working in a hedge fund and he learned and passed on to me some of the complex positions run by "quants". What I describe above is typical of the sort of complex positions they create and manage on an hourly basis.

Volatility is their friend and OCDO has that in spades.

Mapper.. it's not quite that straightforward. Holders of a short know what their break-even position is and, initially it is, approximately, the price at which they borrowed and then sold into the market. As the SP moves up their position worsens. but, if they borrow some more and sell on their break-even rise, thus diminishing the risk of loss though increasing the stake in the bet.So for short holders, it's essentially a defensive move, forced by the "wrong" direction of the SP .

Do a little mental exercise with simple numbers to get your head around it, or think of it as the shorters equivalent of "averaging down".

if that's not clear I'll set up a small-scale example to explain.

The usual simple and clear statement from 'spoons, illustrating a near-complete recovery from the pandemic lows and signs of steady progress since early 2022.

quite what the free cash flow will be is at the mo' anyone's guess because of investment in rationalising the pub estate and whether the CFO (one of the best) can repeat the swaps wizardry.

My estimate is FCF from ops of ~£500mbut how much of that is ploughed back into debt reduction and estate improvement is an unknown.

Happy to hold for an exit above £10.

PS Jonn's stuff is almost entirely discountable, 'spoons are the most reliable investment in the pub space.

What's the relevance to BT ?

Well, Hermes who run the BT pension scheme owns 8.7 % of TW. I have established that they bought a 13% stake in 2012 and that in 2006 Kemble (the TW holding company in an astonishingly complex structure) was deemed to be worth £8bill.

So , I guess that the sum invested by the BT fund was something like £1bill (+/- 20%). Even before recent events , the value of that holding was probably down considerably and , worst case will tend towards zero, esp. if the gov nationalises it.

However, given that the total value of the BT pension fund (at June 22) was £47 bill and that it fell byover£10 bill in the previous year the current crisis is a drop in the bucket!!! (geddit?)

So have another cup of decaf and relax, no need to sell BT today.

Mapper re your 14.12 post .

It's not unusual for different "profit centres" within an organisation to have contradictory positions, one holding another shorting, they may well have different timescales and conflicting views, indeed legislation makes it illegal in may circumstances (eg acting in a takeover or bid situation) for them to communicate or co-operate , equally, it may be that they run a more sophisticated strategy, such that movement in either direction nets a profit.

Mr Maker - that's the point, the lender will get back the value of the shares he lent, ie he is no worse off than had he held and has received the 2/3/4 % "loan fee "he charges.

simple example

An investment manager (IM) lends 100 OCDO shares to Smart shorter(SS)price at the time 500p, IM charges the shorter a 3% commission, so SS pays IM 500X100(+3) =£515.00.

SS then sells 500 shares in the market at 500p nets £500

If the shares fall to 400p and SS decides to close he buys shares in the market 100X 400p =£400, and returns them off book to IM, makes £500-£415=£85 profit, IM retains the £15 and has his original shares back even though they are now worth less BUT he is still £15 better off than had he merely held the shares through the period.

If the shares rise to 600p and shorter decides/is forced to close he buys the shares in the open market and returns them to IM.

IM has his original shares now worth more and retains his £15 fee he is £115 up.

SS is down £600-(500+15)= £85

Whts in it for the shorter?

Well, if he gets it right, his profit is £85 on an initial outlay of only £15, about 570% up if he's wrong

he's down a similar percentage so it's a high-risk high-reward play.

For the IM its a steady revenue earner with no more risk than simply holding the shares.

hope that makes sense and the sums add up !!!

Lingotto's investment in OCDO represents almost 10 percent of their entire asset base, from my knowledge of hedge funds and private equity that is what would normally be described as "brave....." or perhaps they, like me , are pretty confident of long-term profits.

Chilting WADR I think you misunderstand shorting. typically shorts borrow shares from large institutional holders , then promptly sell them on the open market, that generates revenue approximately equal to the price at which the short was opened as detailed here

https://shorteurope.com/details_company.php?company=OCADO%20GROUP%20PLC&land=united_kingdom

and leaves them with a liability to the "lender" of the relevant volume of shares.

When they "close" a short they buy shares equivalent to some or all of their liability in the market and RETURN THEM to the lender, thus discharging some or all, of their debt. They do not hold those shares and hence do not have a "long position " as you suggest , after all, their thesis assumes the shares will, over time, fall.

"Short closing " means that shorters are in effect forced to buy in a rising market and give back stock in a private "off-market" transaction which does not affect the SP, thus, they temporarily, drive prices higher. We will see in a few days whether , in fact the overall short position has changed.

Thursday's sudden SP rise (430p>560p)and quadruple volumes suggest that this is exactly what happened.

It is IMV improbable that anyone currently short OCDO is also holding shares.

" It’s (ie OCDO) up more than 40 per cent intraday, which is more than sufficient to require a statement if there’s anything needing said:"

BUT.......... there is no RNS this morning?

First, the Times article is extremely specific, quoting a price and the investment banks who will be involved, that in my experience is unusual.

second, there is a suggestion that other Us tech co's are interested hence why the Amazon bid is at an almost 80% premium to last night's close

third, I cannot believe that Kroger could stand by and have a competitor who is already a big player in the grocery delivery market buying the firm on which their online future is based, they would have to counter bid even though their firepower is way less than AMZN.

Finally I would not be surprised to see an RNS from OCDO tomorrow denying any contact with or from AMZN and insisting on their future as a stand-alone company. remember the board's very generous bonus terms are based on SP levels WAY above 800p.

Qantas see this chart

https://shorteurope.com/details_company.php?company=OCADO%20GROUP%20PLC&land=united_kingdom

If you study it, you will see that between early 2019 and about March 2020 short positions grew, however for the rest of 2020 OCDO's SP rose to almost £30 as ALL the shorts fled having been seriously burned.

In 2021/2022 as the SP FELL to about £9, it offered a great shorting opportunity which they ALL missed. Since then, the lower the SP has been the greater level of shorting , again the exact OPPOSITE of sensible shorting.

I have no doubt that history will repeat itself , as the SP recovers, the short positions taken at various levels in the £3/4/5 area will come under pressure. Indeed, a look at the price level at which shorts were opened proves my point.

Whatever happens to the OCDO SP (and I hold and expect it to rise, shorters have NOT so far, made profits here, rather the reverse.

Hardup - I just use the first two letters of their "ticker" no confusion surely?

I suspect it's related to the current Daily Telegraph situation- LL have lent the owners of the DT ~£1bill and as they aren't paying LL have sought to liquidate - the worst case scenario is LL lose £1bill, best case is The DT owners (the Barclay bros) drum up enough finance to keep the business afloat or someone buys it and honours some but probably not all of the debt.

In a wider sense it calls into question LL's lending standards and their monitoring processes - it should not have come to this.

Neil, to close a short you need to BUY shares to return them to whomever you "borrowed " them from.

My latest (brief) review of the daily blizzard of RNS's

see

https://www.londonstockexchange.com/stock/WG./wood-group-john-plc/analysis

STILL suggests that the institutional holders are far from convinced that a deal will be done , there are movements, but as suggested by Aucuba there is no flood to buy pending the possible 10%+ uplift if a deal completes.

I am not currently holding, having sold(profitably) at 215 .I still intend if/when the deal fails to pick up stock at a price well below the 200 mark, if as I suspect ,there is a market negative over-reaction . I'm off to France soon and will be happily out of internet reach save for occasional visits to MCDo's for a cr*p coffee and free internet access! so, I have set limit buys at 190/180/160.

For those of you still holding ATB

Ps shopify paid $450 mill for 6rs in 2019 and this is their website
https://6river.com/

Seems like a shrewd opportunist purchase by OCDO, assuming that they know that 6rs has some intellectual property which they value. From my brief research it looks like the cash value of the deal is less than $92 mill which appears to be the current US disclosure threshold, tho' I'll be amazed if OCDO don't RNS the deal with an explanation of the logic behind it ASAP. The other benefit is of course to take out a potential competitor in the Automated warehouse space. All round can be seen as a positive both in illustrating OCDO's managerial nous and the probable commercial benefit.

It's a problem of scale , the overhang of shares in the hands of reluctant holders is almost 5bill. worth around £15bill, the only viable medium-term solution is sale to a more willing holder who wants part (or all?) of HLN. At average volumes it would take several years to drip them into the market without driving the price down substantially . In truth when the GSK board engineered the split, they ensured that the bit where they personally remain is viable(assuming a reasonable flow of new treatments) while the rest was thrown overboard and had a concrete lifebelt thrown to it.

This long-awaited development seems finally upon us and there are a couple of points worth making. First I expect that the parties have been in touch with UK authorities and have tacit agreement that the deal will be approved, there may be conditions but essentially it will IMV, be approved in its current form.
Second an examination of VOD's last annual accounts for FY 22 show that its international revenues were : Germany 30%(of total revenues) margin43%, UK 13% margin21%, Italy11%, margin33%, Spain10%, margin23%.......(sorry for the formatting- I have tried formatting tables on this site before and they come out unintelligible)
However, I hope it is clear that VOD make decent margins in Germany and Italy and much less so in the UK and Spain.......guess why they are planning to rationalise the UK market to one less player!!!

Hi Box... I was a holder of both ULVR and GSK at the time of the ULVR approach for what is now essentially HLN, and said that GSK's failure to sell was idiocy. time has, I think proved me right. HLN is in a bind, almost half of its stock is owned by Pfizer and GSK and BOTH are committed to selling .I said in a post months ago that I felt that would be a drag on HLN's SP regardless of how well sales and profits went , indeed as the SP rises so the likelihood of sales by GSK/PFE grows.
The SP here is essentially flat since launch and is IMV unlikely to rise much from here . the recent piece in the FT see
https://www.ft.com/content/ec441144-52ae-4fa2-8a04-4238db0ee504?emailId=9ddd2df7-69d5-44e6-896f-f501dd3a51d9&segmentId=69ce8bbf-afc9-7c01-fb70-6e4448aa1f37

reminds everyone that large scale potential sales will be a drag on SP performance for months, possibly years. A persistent and committed seller of a a very large block of stock cannot be good news.