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see
https://uk.investing.com/news/stock-market-news/gsk-sell-rating-removed-as-zantac-liabilities-expected-to-be-us5bn-2752198

Credit Suisse's"finger in the air" and it is no more than that, suggests a $5bill. hit to GSK by "buying off" the plaintiffs in the Zantac legal action.It is implicit that, to argue the merits of the case in the hope of winning a legal victory is a less sensible strategy than to yield to the US justice sytem's anti - US bias.
I am inclined to agree and would not be surprised to see GSK's lawyers seeking such an outcome.On that basis it may be that (almost)all of the SP damage is now done. I will watch and wait.

I suggested some months ago that the ITP sale announcement would NOT move the SP much and I think the next few days will prove that, but it is positive . Here's why
From the 2021 FY accounts, RR's debt stood at £5.1 bill and debt service costs were £863m in that year, pro rata, paying down the full sum against the debt would save £260 mill pa . for this and future years.
I haven't bothered to identify all the elements of the debt pile, but RR have said they will use the sum(about£1.4bill at today's FX rates) to clear the £2bn loan which is gov. guaranteed, so they may in fact have to find some further finance to clear the full £2 bill.
If we assume that after the debt rejig the position will be, debt ~£3.7bill, annual debt service costs ~£600mill (maybe a little more as "new" debt will incur a higher Interest charge)and following the recent commercial flying numbers it seems more likely that this FY will show a profit!!. As before, it takes the analysts and the market a while to A) digest and B)react to news so I expect very gentle upward momentum to follow.

Baggs .. If you choose another ISA provider and notify them that you want to make a transfer "IN" of your existing ISA they will set it up for you, I use interactive investor and they did mine some time ago without a hitch and little effort on my part.

there are two significant advantages to Van- based distribution, the first and largest is that the goods do not have to be moved from a warehouse to a supermarket and then to the supermarket shelf(if you wander round any supermarket you will see dozens of staff with trolleys unloading goods from shelves to meet home delivery, soon after other staff have wandered around with trolleys filling those same shelves!!) , see my post a few days ago about Kroger, they spend 30% of their costs on shelf-filling(and 20% on checkout).
The second advantage is that each van makes many deliveries per day and the net cost of fuel set against the equivalent two-way trip for the dozens of car drivers is stunningly more efficient , carbon-friendly and traffic friendly. As customer take-up of home delivery grows both of these advantages grow proportionately. A sensible government (if we ever get one !) will encourage the process of home delivery, indeed might wish to offer tax advantages to drive towards a carbon-neutral world.

...for the RR earnings for this year .
As I have mentioned here a few times one of the most useful guides to RR's fortunes is the Heathrow passenger volumes (esp. Transatlantic). Todays numbers from Heathrow see:
https://www.londonstockexchange.com/news-article/market-news/business-and-traffic-commentary-august-2022/15623709

shows that they are back to about 80% of the 2019 numbers taken from my excel spreadsheet.( It is no surprise that the very positive comparisons are still with "down years")
That stat. feeds(almost) directly into RR's CIVIL AVIATION revenue line which was in 2019 about £8 bill and in 2021 £4.5 bill. My guess for this year is somewhere in the region of £7bill and thus total earnings fro RR this year will be at least £11bill - 12bill and that should mean a tiny profit and free cash flow positivity. That is actually much more important than it might seem and IMV heralds the early shooots of recovery here. I'm not expecting a rapid SP bounce but remain confident that we will see slow growth here over the next few months, unless macro news deteriorates dramatically.

chilting ... Kroger pay a 2% divi pa, like most US companies divis are derisory and from my experience, Americans eat a 1000-calorie breakfast!.

correction
That last link doesn't work , go to the site via the link and type kroger into the search box.

Watched the stream I referred to earlier and while it is specific to Kroger (results out after the bell tonite), it had some interesting stuff very relevant to OCDO, here are the highlights .
Unlike the UK where post-covid the pattern of greater ordering of food to eat or cook at home has faltered it seems to have become firmly entrenched in the US.
Kroger are using the better quality data from sales to tailor their ordering/stocking parameters,
they are also finding that many customers order and collect at the store (driving home from work?) far more Americans drive to work than UK , (I know 'cos in my experience in many US cities public transport is almost non-existent)
The analyst(from Bernstein) said that Kroger spends 20% of their store labour on checkout and 30% on shelf filling, so little surprise that they see OMNI Channel(the US term for an Ocado-type service) as a mega cost saver so they are keen to push hard and rollout will be as rapid as OCDO can manage. In fact Kroger were reported as saying they expect within 3/5 years that Omni channel earnings will exceed in-store sales!!
While OCDO only got one name check in the piece it is clear that Kroger are heavily focussed on Ocado solutions as their fundamental strategy.

I have recently re-invested here having bought and sold profitably three times over the last 3/4 years and I will add, there may still be bumps along the way but i suspect that the OCDO/Kroger link up may be the single most important driver of OCDOs future profits
( Outside bet - Kroger, a $35 bill MC company to bid for OCDO?)
for those who want to see the source it's here
https://tdameritradenetwork.com/shows/morningtradelive?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Don't know how many of you are as obssesive as I am in research but for those who are, this link:

https://tdameritradenetwork.com/shows/morningtradelive?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
is for a US broker stream which will discuss Krogers results due out tomorrow.I would expect some reference to how well OCDO's rollout for Kroger is going.For those insufficiently nerdy to watch I will report back here afterwards.

Given that the board seems to have returned to discussing BT as an investment rather than the worlds longest-running and still unresolved economic debate(Keynes versus Hayek or capital versus labour)I thought I'd re -address my post of 10 August on a possible re-entry to this share. When asked by Fleccy, my criteria I offered the following :
Divi At current SP levels it is a little over 5% with the prospect of at least stability and roughly twice covered by earnings and of course(?)the board know the importance of the divi to perceptions so they would cut only as a last resort.

P/E currently < 12 which is a little below the long-term average(see
https://finbox.com/DB:BTQ/explorer/pe_ltm#:~:text=BT%27s%20latest%20twelve%20months%20p,March%202022%20at%2016.7x.
but I don't expect it to rise sharply so long as fibre rollout continues.

Earnings momentum is also flattish but I expect a gentle improvement as more and more users migrate to fibre at slightly higher cost.
My other criteria are the general state of the market which I sum up as pretty poor and can only get better even if I(we?)have to wait some time.
Like Fleccy I have little concern about the machinations of potential tie-ups takeovers etc , BT will still be the "big dog " with a semi-monopoly position and all the economies of scale that implies. As I have said before the concept of competing entities for what is now a standard service expected and used by every household is a nonsense.
So to (finally) get to the point, I have set up my usual ladder of limit buys starting at 140p and points below that, to build up a stake which I hope to meet my criterion of 10% +inflation pa(tougher this year than it has been since I started investing seriously back in the nineties!) over the next few years.

Shaun....you say
"Smoking, eating processed foods and breathing in the filth diesel vehicles kick out are known carcinogens also, known to increase rates of specific cancers. Where are the lawsuits against them?"
The research is easy, here is a sample
https://www.encyclopedia.com/law/law-magazines/tobacco-litigation-trials-1954-present
note this para

"Still facing concerted action from the state governments, the tobacco companies as a group agreed to another settlement in 1998. In exchange for immunity from future lawsuits, the companies agreed to pay almost $250 BILLION to the states over a period of 25 years; to limit tobacco advertising, and to take various steps to reduce youth access to tobacco products.
Yes, you read that right $250 BILLION!!! for a product that is still on sale. I repeat, this problem is not going away soon, and the recent SP falls are directly related to this and the now recognised general incompetence of the GSK board evidenced by the shambolic split.

Swing.. it is true that the case was withdrawn, but see this from Bloomberg
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-16/first-zantac-cancer-case-set-for-trial-in-us-settles-instead?sref=XGjS8839
and note particularly this:
Generic drugmakers Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd., Perrigo Co., Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Inc. and Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories Inc. agreed to a combined settlement of more than $500,000 with Joseph Bayer after he alleged the popular heartburn medication caused his esophageal cancer, according to the people.

I am not suggesting that $500,000 will be necessary to buy off every plaintiff, but it is far from clear that cases will be withdrawn without compensation, this is far from resolved.

Should also have said that the point of the RNS stating "tax related " is to make clear that it is NOT a sign of lack of confidence in the company.

Hi Bitof..Most companies offer directors and some senior managers shares as part of their remuneration package, the logic being that they have an incentive to increase the SP for their own and the shareholder's benefit.BUT share awards are treated as taxable income so, eg if you are awarded 10000 shares worth £1 each it is the equivalent of a £10k salary bonus . As they will all be liable to tax at 40% ie £4K, they can, and generally do, sell 40% of the holding to get £4k and it pays their tax liability, they are then left with 6k of "free shares".
Clear enough?

Owls......True but I have my fingers bandaged and I don't think the knife will hit the floor!

I just bought back in at 689 in the expectation that whether the short-term be lower or not , the medium-term is secure, funding is in place, revenues are growing and re my post here about the modelling presentation in May the longer-term holds the promise of revenues finally exceeding costs!!

Anyone watching this stock with a view to a purchase needs to be aware of the huge overhang of stock holdings left by the split with holders who are committed to selling down their holdings.
my rough calcs from the various RNS 's published before and after the split reveal these:
GSK nominees 12.94%
Berkeley sq ( A GSK Subsid) 6.52%
Pfizer 32%
Glaxo(another GSk subsid) 5.4%
So around 56% of the stock is not on the market and the "Split docs "make it clear that both GSK and Pfizer intend to sell
In addition, HLN are committed to getting net debt :EBITDA down to < 3X by the end of 2024 so their freedom to pay divis is extremely limited.
I have said before(several times since the split announcement) that I think this co. is a poor investment and will remain so , recent SP action reflects that.

Repost of mine from 19 Aug.
"There are a variety of ways of shorting, using spread bets , CFD's or options BUT the method relevant to the short positions shown on short tracker or this site is as follows.
A company (usually a hedge fund or private equity or sometimes an investment fund )will " borrow" for a fee (of maybe 2/3%) shares from a major holder, for example,s sake we'll say at the then market price of £1 each, with a commitment to return them at some future point, maybe 1 month or 3 months hence, they will then Sell them into the market at or about that same £1 price so if they borrowed, to keep it simple 10000 shares, they pay out £10K and collect £10k from the market, so far so unclear. BUT if subsequently the share price drops to 50p , they can buy back the stock for £5k and return them to the lender, netting a £5k profit(less borrowing fee). If the stock becomes worthless , they DO NOT HAVE TO RETURN ANY STOCK, so they keep the £10k , the brokers lose no money as they have merely facilitated two transactions for which collect their fee. The original stock owner is the loser as they get either the stock back worth less than when they "lent " it or in an extreme case nothing.
Why do stock owners lend to shorters? , because they get a fee for the loan and in most cases will get the stock back at or near the original price. In the cine case what will probably happen is the shorters make 70-100% profit and the investment company loses out on that particular loan - but of course, they may have millions of pounds in lots of stocks out on loan, most of which will be paying a nice 2/3% per quarter thus bumping up their returns.

Seaking.... most of these are NED's ie Non-executive director, what that means is they don't actually have a full-time job with the company, they turn up at board meetings (hopefully ) having read the documents for discussion and offer their " expertise" in the discussion.They may only attend a dozen one-day board meetings a year and so it's generally the case that they hold several such posts.

Fleccy I'm not one for splitting hairs but this article does IMV imply that the entire "deficit repair plan"is secured against EE not the rest of the BT business see
https://www.pensions-expert.com/DB-Derisking/BT-Pension-Scheme-deficit-falls-on-back-of-recovery-plan?ref=/DB-Derisking/BT-Pension-Scheme-deficit-falls-on-back-of-recovery-plan&saveConsentPreferences=success
In particular these para's

"Under a recovery plan agreement, BT will pay additional contributions in the expectation of returning the scheme to a fully funded position by June 2030.

BT made deficit contributions of £500m, £1.66bn and £400m in March 2021, May 2021 and June 2021 respectively, with further contributions of £500m due in March 2022 and June 2023, and £400m due in June 2022 and March 2023.

The deficit repair plan, announced in May as part of BTPS’s triennial valuation, is secured against the company’s EE business."
That to me implies that it is specifically EE which is on the hook for the current " make good by 2030 plan" although at the mo. the combined entity is funding the shortfall