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I'm nursing an average buy price of 3.86 ... the Three Degrees singing 'When will I see you again?' comes to mind.

"Now profits will drop to about £25m in 2020 and won’t be back to £40m until 2022 at the earliest." Where do they get this info from? Is it just an assumption, or will they have been fed this by someone at TEF? Anyone know how it works?

From the 2018 annual report - JDS, 29 May 2018 .... "Furthermore, we are well placed to achieve our stated goal of exceeding £50 million of total pre-tax profit for the year to 31 March 2019, which will represent a 100 percent increase over four years. Having arrived at this point in a short period of time the challenge now is to establish the business consistently delivering over £50 million of profit every year and furthermore to generate and sustain the next significant growth period."

Good use of the words 'the challenge now' but certainly hinting at what we could expect in the future. It looks like TEF has now got all the bad news out and are setting up expectations they are confident can be exceeded.

Terrace, I guess you are questioning why the market gives such a low multiple to earnings?

Current PE based on last year reported earnings is 5.7, and will be 6.6 based on your EPS of 43p. Earnings have been flagged to be significantly lower in 2020 - you say 26p. So PE based on average of these two years is 8.3 .... and this is not out of line with what is typical for other housebuilders (not a housebuilder expert - this is my only one!). So I can't see that TEF is being treated unduly harshly. I think that TEFs PE will get a rerating sometime, and I expect PE to move towards 10 - just not in the short term, ie sometime past 2020.

Thanks for your EPS projections, similar to mine in broad terms. I have TEF back to EPS of 50p in 2023, though it looks like you might be expecting higher.

And Strictly, I appreciate your explanantion of EPS calculation but I stick with reported numbers (for ease if not total accuracy) as I compare against different market sectors.

2018 EPS was 49.8p per TEF website. So there was 20% drop to projected 2019 EPS of 40p (I'm rounding). Similar 20% fall gives 32p in 2020. They have said EPS will grow from there ... and it's here that they should give more guidance if at all possible. Anyway I'm working on 15% EPS growth from there, which doubles EPS over a 5 year period.

So by 2023 we'll be back to the EPS we had in 2018. and onward from there. If the results are more stable and derisked there should be a rerating with higher value attributed to earnings. Factoring in all these things, and dividend return, should give 20% annual return compound if you sit out the 5 to 6 year period (hiccups along the way notwithstanding, and almost certainly guaranteed due to lumpy nature of business).

Would be happy with that. But this is all excel based number crunching, and needs to be beefed up with help from TEF.

Your points are well taken. Was expressing frustration at 10m shortfall in targets for FY 2019, and FY 2020 significantly below FY 2019. As I said, from my point of view the announcement of new partner and whatever else TEF can say at that time is eagerly awaited. BTW is 100% the right answer? Certainly in this market getting the sale away is crucial.

So TEF is morphing into a different company to the one I invested in a few years ago. Nothing wrong with that. The previous TEF has been a poor investment, my worst. And of course we can decide if we want to be invested in the new business. But I would expect that TEF give us some better indication of what the prospects are for the new business. Maybe this will come when the new partner is announced, I hope so. Otherwise I'lll sell out when I get the chance. A semi blind investment is OK if you have faith in the BOD but I agree with Stokest's comments yesterday about JDS and the team.

The new TEF should eventually be valued on a higher multiple to earnings - more stable, less risk etc. But I doubt this market re-evaluation will happen for at least two to three years given recent track record. I have been very disappointed with TEF, the next RNS is crucial. This company has been a real snoozer for me - snoozers are losers.

The Gazette article is dated January 2018 - 14 months ago ...

Hard to call. Early days yet, and may be nothing more than just an opportunity for JDS to round off his skills by seeing how it's done in another organisation. U&C certainly seem to have a different strategy to TEF, so some sharing and learning benefits for both companies in this appointment. Something to watch closely,

What do you make of JDS appointment as Non Exec Director of Urban & Civic? I can't see why he would want to do that. Any thoughts?