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Fats... if you haven't already, I recommend you watch the presentation done on 12 Oct, both co-CEOs were very clear on the direction of travel. In the last A/R for 21/22 the figures were clothing up 3.9% food up10.1%, the clothing sales showed online up 55% (from, I assume a low base,) and in-store down 11%. There was also comment about the vast space requirements for clothing, the number and range of sizes needed in stock and the fact that supplying clothing from stock is much cheaper than from store.High street store floorspace is expensive cf out of town retail parks and the former will reduce while the latter increases. The energy costs of stores were also addressed, heating and lighting are going to be much more expensive in future and although they talked about lower level lighting, LED lights doors on coolers......I am sure that they have no intention to reduce clothing sales but the emphasis is definitely changing, recent years have seen the proliferation of slicker competitors leveraging cheap manufacturing, short concept to product times, near- disposable clothing, which M&S admit they have no intention of emulating. Their strategy is IMV a realistic acknowledgement of where they now stand and what they do well, easing back on clothing where their market is no longer the fast fashion scene.

Can we stick with the real purpose of this board, ie to discuss the merits of RR as an investment. For those of you who wish to play political insult tennis , I suggest you head over to the LLOY board where you can join the polarised and paranoid who spend all day and most of the night in unarmed combat.

Hi I have been a MKS watcher for a considerable time (like a decade or so!)and through all of that time have thought it just too expensive as an investment , though in 2020 as Covid broke I was tempted, but there were just too many other distressed companies with better short-term recovery prospects.Still I kept an eye on MKS and have finally started to buy with a couple of tranches bought below the psychological (but otherwise irrelevant ) level of 100p.
Why?
Well, in strictly numerical terms there seems less downside than for ages with the SP at near all time lows (on figs back to 1994!!),a P/E below 7 ,stable revenues of ~£10bill,a return to profitability last year with hopes of continued improvement, no divi (but likely IMV to be re-instated soon(ish)).A long delayed recognition that they cannot compete with the fast fashion , online , teens and twenties market and a similar acknowledgment that their future is in food, online delivery and an abandonment of their dated, no longer relevant, high streeet emporia in favour of out of town , parking friendly, newer food- led stores.
I watched last weeks presentation and was, if not totally impressed, at least re- assured that their co- ceo's ( a nonsense I know) had a grasp or what is needed and the makings of a plan to get there. it seeem sto have the following components :
A rigorous control of cash,(£400 mill. off the cost base and debt-reduction, particularly important as debt service costs rise) less clothing and home , more food and the endless repetition of the "omni-channel " mantra,utilising their brand name and their suite of tools to sell partners product, a drive to add to and make better use of their sparks card customers and the trove of data that provides, suggests that they are at least(at last?) moving into the 20th century.
Thus , for my part, I am expecting/hoping that this is a multi-year low and that progress in a variety of ways including the SP, is in prospect. I shall add in the 100p region over the next few months.

MD it may have escaped your notice but only a sitting member of the house of commons can become Prime minister, your post is even more ill-informed than usual!!!!

There are a couple of things going on here and I'll try to tackle them both .
First on a simplistic level the object of the pension fund is to have enough revenue to pay liabilities each year , I'm sure it's clear that the liabilities are essentially the pension payments to those currently in retirement . So funds seek to ensure that they are at least in balance, the largest element of that is the stream of GUARANTEED revenue from gilts, corporate bonds and to a lesser degree dividends.Gilts will play a large part in that and although a sharp fall in the value of gilts is what happened a few weeks ago that does NOT affect the annual revenue from those gilts (though it obviously reduces their value and that is why the figure of £11billion is being quoted).
The second and undoubtedly more relevant point is to do with the rate at which future pension payments for those in retirement and those not yet retired can be discounted. If as we are seeing, the interest rate goes up, it tends to devalue future profits AND liabilities, on the basis that a pound owed in say five years' time is actually a less onerous liability than a pound owed now (I trust it's obvious that future liabilities can be met with today's money after the receipt of five years of interest/capital appreciation)
So in summary the fall in assets of the pension fund though apparently a big deal is actually not so much, as I have mentioned on a few boards the net effect of rising interest rates will be to move many more pension funds into surplus and in BT's case may reduce/eliminate any further requirement to "top up " the pension fund .
Hope that was clear and has helped.

While it is only an initial judgement, it has the benefit of being morally and legally correct(IMV)and I believe is likely to be upheld through the appeal stages. They will, as usual, take some time but if/when the legal process is complete will result in a sum of probably well over £100 mill flowing through to the bottom line. To put that in context that is roughly equivalent to a FY pre-tax profit. The SP may not fully reflect the decision in the short term but will eventually. For me, the resultant uplift may almost cover my wife's cheese pastie habit!

see
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/kroger-delivery-arrives-in-greater-detroit-301652174.html

eight more scheduled.

HI Mr Math..... as someone who spent countless hours in late 2019/ early 202 trying to warn of the risks inherent in SXX I'm glad to see you still posting and investing, despite your losses, (which you seem to be recovering).
I wish you well!

The Kroger/ Albertsons tie-up , assuming it goes ahead and is not halted by US competition concerns(unlikely IMV as the combined operation will have ~17% of the Us grocery market, still less than Walmart) is entirely good news for OCDO.
The reasons are clear, a company concerned about its direction of travel ,ie online grocery ,would hesitate to make such an acquisition, the rationale for the acquisition includes the following quote
"Together, Kroger and Albertsons Cos. will have an expanded network of stores AND DISTRIBUTION CENTRES(MY CAPS AND SPELLING CORRECTION!), as well as a broader supplier base. Utilizing Kroger's End-to-End Fresh initiative across a broader network will enable the combined company to optimize its supply chain to deliver the freshest products from field to table to more customers more quickly."
Clearly there will be overlap in their footprint but the acquisition will allow Kroger to extend their delivery service and logically that means many more OCDO CF's (maybe another 15-20?)if we make the reasonable assumption backed by detail such as this
https://www.grocerydive.com/news/kroger-ecommerce-network-ocado-map/626990/
then the rollout of more CFCs will keep OCDO busy for some years.
Problems remain, OCDO are a significant cash consumer and borrowing to build will be more expensive in the immediate future, but I am comfortable with my recent build of stock here.
Incidentally, I watched the recent MKS presentation a couple of days ago and MKS too are basing a lot of their intended future growth on their food delivery plans , closing conventional high street stores, reducing clothing, aiming for 3% of the UK food market(cf 2% at the mo.) moving to out-of-town sites and building an "omnichannel" model based on the OCDO JV.

Much to my surprise I am about to agree with LTI - recent events are much less significant than the media would have you believe. I have been investing for a long time and this is at least the fourth significant stock market fall in that time- five if you count the short sharp shock which accompanied the Brexit vote. Those occasions have provided my most lucrative investment periods in that time, because each has seen a recovery to or beyond, the previous levels. Yeah, I know the FTSE has essentially gone nowhere for 20 years but it has seen peaks and troughs and surprise! buying when stock prices are low and selling when they are high works as an investment strategy.
To the specifics of this share, and to repeat a point I have already made see this from Innes Mcfee of Oxford economics:

"UK pension funds are investing within the regulatory framework set by the Bank and simply aim to fund their liabilities to defined benefit pension holders. The fact that gilt yields are rising actually helps their long-term position because it raises the rate at which they can discount their liabilities, which are greater than their assets, and therefore it actually helps to narrow the funding gap."
So why has the LGEN SP fallen?
Because some people are unaware of the exact circumstances and take precautionary action to sell, or
Cash is needed to meet demands elsewhere and LGEN is a liquid share or
some people are in panic mode and sell sound shares along with those less sound, or
some people read ill-informed scare stories in the press(the quality of business journalism is one stock at an all-time low!) or on boards like these and believe them.
I am currently buying, not just here but several other sound companies here and in the US where values have fallen significantly, I may be premature, but so what, I believe, as on other occasions, that prices will be higher(probably much higher) than now, within my 1-2 year timescale.

it could be worse see
https://celsiusnetworth.com/
There are plenty of others out there who are even worse at investing than you!
in case you don't know what this is about see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celsius_Network

Porsche.....(or should that be Trabant?...)Your post contains both a strong assertion and a fundamental misunderstanding.LGEN's role in LDI is as a facilitator, it is the pension funds that have the liability> LGEN , if they are liable in any way, it would be for flawed advice, BUT that advice was in response to and promulgated as sound,by the Pensions regulator. That aside, the rise in gilt prices is good for LGEN (and for those buying medium/long-term debt like me). It is also good for the long-term solvency of DB pension funds, whose primary task is to ensure a match between assets and liabilities . The decade or more of ultra-low rates for gilts and US treasuries has been the primary reason for the need for pension funds to leverage their assets to try to stay solvent. The recent rise in bond rates and the certainty that future bond issues will carry higher coupons actually solves the problem and as ever, once the short-term hysteria fades, will be recognised by the markets. I hold LGen and am happy to do so knowing that this is not a critical matter and for my longer-term horizon bodes well.
I note your negativity extends to pretty much all the boards you post on, and you recommend cash
(losing value at about 10%pa) maybe market investing is not for you?
respectfully
casa

Looking at todays RNS here are my estimates(OK guesses!)as to the likely FY outcome.

Ebita(note they don't add D for depreciation?) FY £800-£900m.
PTP >£500mill
EPS ~25p
DIVI 15p+ (or about 5.5% at today's SP)
Seems OK to me,will hold/add

I have held here before but sold around the time of takeover rumours in April 21 and because at a SP of 400+ I felt it had got a bit ahead of fair value.The company is well-run , chooses its bid targets well and seems to integrate succesfully. Obviously in an era where delivery is growing its core business is reasonably secure and it has a stream of innovative solutions in train.Having fallen to an 8-year low and with a divi (fully covered) of 6% and a PE at ~12 (also a long-term low) I feel comfortable re-investing.In these turbulent times this may not be the bottom and with a reported debt of >£2. bill., which may well incur increased service costs, not all is plain sailing . Nevertheless I see little further downside from here and while I may have to wait there is, IMV, every likelihood of an SP markedly higher than todays in the medium-term.

Those of you with concerns about the recent LDI panic might find this a reassuring read , it's from Blackrock , who operate in the same space as LGEN and do much the same thing so it is pertinent to LGEN's position and it's a relatively straightforward read.
https://www.blackrock.com/uk/solutions/insights/liability-driven-investing?cid=organic-social:linkedin:blackrock:blackrock:stories+of+social+contribution:supporting+communities:united+kingdom:na&linkId=100000153155744

MD..... the article quotes the bank itself saying "everything is OK" most of the rest of it undermines that assertion and the comments from those who work at/have worked at the bank are damning. It's better to have an FT subscription than to quote headlines!

I said earlier that I'd offer some comments about the BENEFITS to LGEN (and other pension providers ) of the last week's events. Here it is.
There will be many trustees of pension schemes who are realising just how complex the process is and how events can quickly unnerve markets, many of them will be inclined to hand off the responsibility for managing their scheme to companies like LGEN, I expect the steady flow of mandates which LGEN have been acquiring to accelerate.
Both expertise and scale are beneficial. LGEN have both.
Rising interest rates are entirely beneficial for pension providers, while asset levels may fall in the short term(which was behind last week's "flash crash") in the medium term as gilt yields rise, meeting PF cash outflows just got easier.
The impetus behind moves by the pensions regulator to widen the range of investment opportunities for PF providers into infrastructure and development, which the latest turmoil is likely to accelerate, will allow LGEN and others to buy into or fund long-term infrastructure projects or utility services of the sort which have been hoovered up by non-UK entities (my water comes from LI-KA SHING a Hong Kong billionaire). These assets once acquired provide a monopoly, and regular revenue, often with rights to increase charges with inflation.
Government whispers also suggest that they are likely to allow /encourage investors with large asset balances to fund new infrastructure, roads/ports/nuclear/utilities/build to rent/buy... and to underwrite a guaranteed profit level as a way to generate infrastructure "off book".
I fully expect that (if the current gov. survives at least a few months!!)some of the proposals above will happen and LGEN and others like them will be allowed the sorts of flexibilities they have been seeking for some time.

I'd like to throw in a brief comment on the impact of the recent panic over LDI investing by pension funds. I don't intend to review last week's anxieties,BUT, in the medium term, rising gilt yields (the cause of the panic) are an unequivocally GOOD thing for pension funds. All pension funds are required by current guidance to hold a significant quantity of gilts, some will be shorter-dated, some longer , some fixed and some Index-linked.
Without taking any action the IR on the linkers will have risen sharply in recent weeks , hence the 6 monthly return will climb.
For fixed interest short-dated gilts the pension fund will, on expiry, be able to re-invest and get a higher return.
The longer-dated FI's will continue to pay until expiry ,or it may be that the fund can choose to sell (even at a loss)and buy other issues with a higher coupon (we know that the UK gov. needs to sell a significant quantity of gilts to meet spending needs and will be forced to offer a 4/5%or more? coupon) enabling PF's to lock in higher returns for the future.
Once the initial panic recedes it will become clear that part of the problem of funding for pension funds over the last decade has been the poor returns on gilts which they were forced to hold by government edict and higher gilt yields will ease such funding anxieties.Positive for both the BT pension fund and the company.

Got stuff to do today but I will post later about the medium-term POSITIVE effects for LGEN, of last week's ructions, in the meantime be aware that the short-term risks to financials have sharply risen, it's likely that CSFB (Credit Suisse) is in a liquidity crisis and from my info DB (Deutsche Bank) may soon follow ( I have a family member who consulted for them recently and they are, to quote " a shambles").
Markets will be choppy for at least a few days, maybe weeks, and this is NOT simply a UK based problem.
VGLA

Bald......LGEN like all banks/insurers has in essence two aspects to the business, first and most obvious is that they offer services for which they charge and hopefully make a profit, if they do that then shareholders get a share of that profit - no problem. BUT in order to run that business, they have to hold very significant amounts of assets in the form of bonds, shares and other financial instruments, if you look at the value of the assets on the books the numbers are stunning, in LGENs case the numbers at the last half year were £1.3trillion!!! You can imagine that the variation in that huge lump of cash equivalents for a 1 or 2% change is enormously significant. If ,for example, yesterday caused a 2% hit to the value of those assets that would wipe £20 billion off the number, no wonder the markets get nervous. Now in the real world LGEN will hopefully have arranged their assets such that no single event would affect all of them, some might fall others rise and with a bit of luck they roughly cancel out , but these are unusual times when shares and bonds are both falling, so markets will remain nervous and LGENs SP will oscillate, but that doesn't mean that LGENs business model is broken, merely that it may take some time to be seen to be healthy.