Member Info for Culley01

I must say I am livid with the way JL has handled affairs over the years. In particular he has (to be generous) misrepresented the overall position of the company in the last 18 months or so. He has indicated debt would be nil, FCF would be achieved & dividends would be on the cards for 2024. Instead he has squandered cash from sales, increased the debt & FCF + dividends are way off in the future. I had believed that he was a straight guy but that belief has gone.

Well done Adolfo!

Just purchased 325,000 shares

The one positive note was AHs identification of £100m savings (& hopefully that’s just the start) after only just over 2 months on the board. Makes you wonder what on earth JL has been doing all this time

An announcement that JL is leaving with immediate effect would be welcome

The lack of figures in the Dec Y/E announcement pointed to a disastrous set of results

I wish I’d followed my own advice to sell half.

This looks like a 2/3 year wait & certainly we won’t see any really good figures until Y/E 2025.

Potentially they could look very good with no more one offs ( unless AHs cost savings cost even more than they save) pension liabilities stopped & AHs + JLs savings of £160 m coming to fruition

Or just to show off ‘Virtutis fortuna comes’

If I was bold I’d sell half my holding now in anticipation of buying back in a week or two at 20% less. However I’m not so I’ll just hang on & pray.

Personally I think this will drop as results aren’t going to look great but a positive statement from AH could change that.

It seems the whole future of the company lies with how AH is going to tackle the lack of FCF & how he communicates this.

As a fairly large holder I must say it makes me nervous & if I was thinking of investing as a new investor I would wait a few months ( albeit probably not get the lowest entry) to see what progress is being made.

Fingers crossed

I’m not expecting anything great from results, we already know most of it without the figures filled in. If we can get through without a drop I’ll take that as a positive & then I do expect some good progress towards the August 1/2 year results

@Trisor Yellowstone present a report/ interview in conjunction with Capita probably with AH giving his thoughts. You can register with them to have access ( it’s free). You also get the opportunity to ask questions

Update from Yellowstone 21st March at 12am

@Gotout

It would be interesting to know if he has any financial involvement with any of the other bidders

Reading through Divan’s post it seems we lost 4 of JLs 6 years (2 to fiddling around & 2 to COVID) with nothing much being achieved .

I personally don’t think the Y/E statement is going to be particularly encouraging. Two figures of interest, how much have we lost & how much has debt come down ( or have they spent all the sale proceeds on exceptional! Costs as usual)

AHs statement will be the most interesting part & will set the tone for the next year or two & August 1/2 year statement should give us a real indication of how things are going

Thank you DD for a balanced opinion from the inside, much appreciated & if you have more to add please do so.

Welcome woolitch let’s hope your arrival brings us some luck, we certainly need it.

@The.Crowman Yes I do agree how on earth can they spend £25m on costs relating to saving a similar amount on salary when it could be done through natural wastage (which is pretty high anyway). Equates to a year’s redundancy pay .

Another better option than a staff cut of 10% would be to grow the business by 10% (in real terms) without increasing staff numbers.

Saves the redundancy payoffs & increases value of the business.

Come on Adolpho let’s see what you can do!

Just thinking the 900 staff redundancy previously announced was saving £27m so average of £30k/ head

A 10% staff reduction (4000 people) @ £25,000/head (& I’ve no idea of staff costs but including NI, pension, overheads etc can’t be less than £25k) would give £100m saving.

The potential is enormous

Let’s hope AH grasps it.

@GoCPI as far as FCF for upcoming report I think it’s going to be pretty bad hence I don’t really expect any substantial improvement until1/2 year in August

However if we get a really positive statement from AH & some substantial progress in the meantime that will be a big help