Member Info for Couerdelion

There's another update in Investor's Chronicle. Simon Thompson thinks that the pressure will grow for an orderly unwind of investments and a return of capital to investors. Even selling for 70% of NAV would make this share worth 15p.

Related to this, the selling down of investments won't be great news for holders of APH or SQLI.

Are they allowed to sell everything or are they not tied into holding a lot of their assets for some limited time period? Even if they weren't tied in, a sale would be at a heavy discount to current market values given the relatively sizeable stakes. I'm not sure what price would be needed for an MBO but doubt it will be at a huge premium.

Do we know how they lost the waiver vote? That, on it's own is not a great sign - shareholders don't want to buy more stock and they like the idea of concentrating their stock but they don't want the Concert Party to hold too much of the company.

Now that is classy. The earlier post was potentially quite condescending to genuine investors who see good prospects here and it's often useful knowing if posters here are invested or simply trying to talk down the price in the hope of a quick win - though it's unlikely that this is a good description of Harry.

But hey, we take the risks and should be willing to accept them. It won't be took long before we find out how the dice have landed.

It probably won't help the share price but the Board had no choice to shelve the buyback due to the failure of the waiver resolution to pass. What happens now is anyone's guess but we may be into MBO territory if the Board take the view that they don't have sufficiently broad a support among shareholders.

The other RNS is interesting in that there is an activist shareholder pressing for cashflow. I'd guess this would only force the company to consider buy-out options.

"RPI doesn't reflect reality". = "RPI does reflect what BouncyDeadCat pays"

Notably, RPI doesn't include mortgage costs for fairly obvious reasons.

BouncyDeadCat,

If you are worried about inflation you can get inflation linked bonds which will currently get you around RPI+130bps. Currently RPI is higher than official inflation (and will be till 2030 when they change the way they calculate it). Nothing I can say to allay your concerns that your paying higher inflation other than to note that plenty of things inflate at different rates but the variations should even out over time.

But Chariot would seem to be a good investment if you worry about the increasing price of fuel.

James, I think you can be better than that. More importantly, I'm not sure what you're trying to achieve other than to provoke others to post similar unproductive posts.

Let's be clear, you are continuing to buy stocks in a company where you already have a significant investment, yet making comments about people who can wipe out that investment with the wave of a hand. I'd not like to have to share a life boat for risk you'd find a way to sink that too.

If I read his post correctly, it was more about the tone of the discussion and I have made similar remarks that it does tend to drift into "Daily Mail" levels of hysteria.

That said, opening up a arguments about equity across generations was perhaps unwise despite there being an element of truth in the claim. But the older generation have always complained about the younger one, every bit as much the younger one will deplore those who came before. The one thing I can't blame the younger generation for is the current state of our finances which has little to do with immigration but plenty to do with demographics.

Enough for trying to be reasonable. Who's to blame for me losing money here?

BouncyDeadCat,

I'd argue that taxing CGT is not a repeat tax on the income invested since you only get taxed on the gain. You'd be on stronger grounds on the double-tax claim arguing that it comes from company profits which are already taxed (same goes for dividends). But that's not to say a marginal rate is fair or desirable for the reasons I gave that a very large proportion of the reward goes to HMRC.

Also a potential technical point, when referring to government bonds, the investor only has to worry about the return, not where it is spent. If we take it as read that it doesn't default, then you get the yield at which you bought it. And if you want to get inflation protection you can get RPI+1.2% on some medium term ILG. They are a bit tricky to managed but you can treat government bonds as a guaranteed cash return and if you buy low coupon gilts, most of the return is tax free.

I'll probably skip on the point about productivity simply because the discussion may not be the most productive use of our time here. Sort of agree with the general point but suspect the idea of large numbers of our best people moving is also a little overplayed. But it does highlight an important balancing act for the Chancellor and underline the age-old truism that the art of taxation is to "extract the most feathers with the least amount of hissing".

We will of course find out how this turns out on 30 October and I suspect we are now worrying about the worst case scenario. Of course the new government are "kitchen-sinking" the news to headline a tax grab but the rest is all guesswork. On which note, I think the removal of IHT on pensions is a safe bet as is a reduction in tax free cash (to say £100k). The possibility of an increase in the CGT rate is enough to make me consider realising some gains now but I will have to wait till 30/10 before I can figure out whether I need to make more drastic changes.

/Those with assets predominately in ISAs have far less to worry about.

One simple aspect of tax I'd expect them to change is the IHT exemption for pension pots. That's a fairly obvious anomaly that I can understand the need to change. The idea to align CGT and dividends with income is another one that would appeal both on grounds of fairness and meet the objective of the taxes falling on those with the "broadest shoulders" and it will not have escaped attention that Sunak paid a lower tax rate on his £3m earnings last year than the average worker. However, if I make some fairly basic assumptions about yields (3%) and equity risk premiums(5%), a 45% tax on gains and dividends turns into a very penal tax rate on the latter - 45% x (3% + 5%) = 72% x 5%. So I end up earning risk-free + 1.4% which is not at all appealing when equities can fall 30%+ in any given year.

There's limits to what I can cram away in ISAs so I'm left with the conclusion that equities would become largely uninvestible and it makes more sense for me to focus on government bonds with a small allocation to VCT/EIS type investments.

And now I have to worry about what happens if the share price rockets and I have to give nearly half of it to HMRC. I'm far more concerned about the CGT changes than the tax on NSOG.

You're still arguing for a price below cash balance I won't complain because I'm also happy paying 98p in the pound for cash.

But James is not wrong that you are playing on investor fears to buy on the dip then sell on the recovery before spinning the next piece of news (probably the Autumn statement) that NS O&G is dead and JOG is worth pennies - which you will also be happy to pay for.

I will wait for the price to fall a bit before I buy any more this time.

Agreed, as long as the delays aren't extended this should not have too much of an effect on the take-up for the listing or on the price trajectory from that point.

Other activities should be continuing in parallel so not reason that this will push back other activities in any material way.

Thanks, in my case it was a broken freezer that took a long time to fix. I think I would probably go straight to the contact line as the route through to the store manager will encounter natural resistance from staff who have enough to deal with. First point to raise is that they should have a email address though I guess that might be something they tried and ditched after trivial or malicious complaints.

It all feels a little unwieldy for different types of issues. Via the store will be a hassle and will come up against a natural resistance to call the store manager. Via a central feature the risk is that you don't address the problem that is of a store manager unable to solve a problem but unwiling to ask for help.

The investor line is a last resort. I'd see to be seeing repeated problems before I wanted to challenge the Board and it would not be about my supply of fries.

It's worth recognising that the buyback activity is only around 20% complete. When finished, the number of shares will have reduced by around 10% which means EPS will be 10% higher.

Is this already priced in or can we expect the SP to continue on its current trajectory?

Well my view is that the madness is probably more visible within the markets than within government. Taking ministers at their word when they are taking a political stance is a common mistake so I am a little surprised in how the market is pricing these stocks right now. The idea that Milliband will be making these sorts of calls here is for the birds but his job is to phase in the green energy side of things and not cutting oil and gas production that Reeves is all too aware can disappear rapidly. And don't forget, the one project the government has right now is to fill the fiscal hole which will see all sorts of "nice to have" projects being shelved.

The bigger tax shocks we will see in the budget are not here but in other areas (IHT, CGT, Pension Tax relief etc). I've said before that the most important supporters we have here are the unions and I see no evidence of Labour picking a fight on that front.

Do we expect the news before opening or will we be thwarted by time differences? It's just a question of when I set my alarm.

While it is a very obvious point at which valuations will change, I did wonder a bit about how the options applied in the ASX listing. I'm guessing that the stock being traded on the ASX will not include the options attached as part of the offer.

I'd like to know the best approach to resolving these matters. I have my own pet gripes with the local store but there does not seem to be any obvious channel to raise concerns. Lots of stores means plenty of problems but if they are not fixed promptly, customers will be lost. I raised it with one of the staff but got an "understandable" response that it was out of their control.

As shareholders, can we figure out a way we can draw these matters to the attention of the people who can deal with them? Seemingly trivial matters can compound over time if senior managers are not aware of them.

Bit of a rollercoaster day here and kudos to those who picked up some at semi-bargain prices. Canaccord reiterating their target of 600p is another positive albeit one that I think could be a stretch.

Dividend is due at the end of October and I'm optimistic that the price can start drifting up between now and then. I'm not doing anything with my holding until it breaks £5

I consider BAE to be one of my core holdings - though I did briefly switch to QQ earlier this year when it started to look pricy and that worked out far better than I could have hoped for. The other stocks I put in that category are SHEL, MKS and GRG - that you can generally just leave alone and reinvest the dividends for the powerful compounded effects to keep the holding ramping up.

Always worth keeping an eye on sector rivals though as the prices can be a bit volatile but that same volatility also provides opportunities to get back in at a reasonable price. Right now, I'd not be a buyer but the medium term target prices look about right so good for holding and too cheap to sell. My instinct tells me there will be better buying opportunities in future.