Member Info for fatsuperman

ItsYourGo, I don't think feathers were particularly ruffled? Holders of this share are by and large very calm and stoic - go and spend some time on a penny share by comparison.

Both this and your previous post are good logic, but many could come up with equally logical reasons why the market cap and share price should be driving higher, not lower - general market momentum, comparisons with peers who are faltering, the constantly improving quality of the product, the increase in style perception of the clothing, the food pricing becoming more competitive, the new and refreshed stores being amazing to visit, the coffee shops being great value and full of fantastic products (one of the largest coffee chains in the country with the best loyalty offer)... and so on.

For us investors there feels many more reasons to be optimistic than pessimistic, and we know the price doesn't only go up. All that said, it's certainly your prerogative to turn up on red days and point out that the price on that day has aligned to one of your predictions. Leave me your number and I'll be sure to text you on the blue days ;-)

PS: Hope you read this in the spirit it was intended, peace!

Difranco, NI and wage inflation will affect every company in the country, and I would suggest that given the rude health MKS seem to be in, they are in a good position to weather these increases, limit the impact to customers - which they have proven very good at when you look at the past years food inflation issues - and therefore, capture even more market share, as competitors fail to address it as adroitly as M&S likely will.

It's an annoying additional cost, but I trust the management team to deal with it professionally, and limit the impact to customers. And frankly I would rather take the profit hit than damage customer sentiment - which is much more impactful long term.

MKS adroitly proving that there is a fortune to be made trading the share. Obviously the challenge is getting it right, but it’s bouncing around a lot in the past month. Hope you keep calling it right Fender.

And I agree, unless they have some unexpected disaster, Christmas will be amazing for them, it always is.

Re-read it all last night, International business feels problematic. I’m sure it’s really hard out there, but do feel the company either needs to go for it and invest, or just accept it’s going to slowly shrink. And given all the other uses for that investment, it may be better to just let it bob along miserably until other bigger fish have been fried?

Yeah I don't see the negative sentiment to trading this. I simply hold because I don't have the skill / time. But it's been almost perfect to trade in this last period - and Fender has all but published what he's been doing. Personally I'm quite impressed.

These are just different strategies for us to try and make a profit, neither are wrong or right, neither are inherently more or less risky. Trading means you risk missing a sudden rise, but it also means you might miss sudden dips!

Tough to say Andy. Feels a bit over heated to me, but these things never seem to directly mirror the fundamentals. As I said the other day, the pattern is consistent that MKS grows solidly in this period, then takes a dive after Christmas results in January (which will be due to investor profit taking). But this feels like new territory so I’m nervous on this pattern repeating. That said, PE ratios still lower than peers, so that’s positive headroom.

They are almost guaranteed to have a stellar Christmas. When they have a decent year, they have a brilliant Christmas. That is absolutely certain in my mind. The question is how much can they actually grow - do they have the capacity to capture much more this year than last?

I’ve been trying to work out if the Christmas food website is an indicator of anything. When they stop taking orders, we know that they have reached their capacity. I’m keeping an eye on it but I can’t work out what it will mean. If it shuts early December, then have sales been incredible… or is it the same supplier / delivery constraints they’ve always had?

At least a homemade jumper is still a net gain! We might wake up to find we’ve been burgled!

I’m optimistic, but not planning any celebrations :)

Past results and all that, but looking at last year (probably the closest* parallel we have);

- November results to mid-November saw a 16% increase in share price - it did not drop at all.

- Mid-November to early-December there was a a bit of movement both directions and ended flat.

- Early-December all the way through to January we continued to rise, very likely hype and expectation of a great Christmas period (30%+ increase from the equivalent point today)

- Just before the Q3 and Christmas trading results were released, the share took a big dip (-10% in less than a week), and continued down until March (ending -20% down from Jan), before it started the rise we are currently on.

- This November to January pattern is really consistent with M&S, and it has been what I've been looking at to manage my expectations (ie: a dip post January and into summer is also common)

*Worth bearing at the very front of your mind that compared to this time last year we are 60% up, so it's a far higher starting position to follow the above too closely.

Hard to say Fender, as it still depends what the group mind thought was priced in. Some may be expecting better progress on cost controls than to be effectively flat, however the more reasonable position is that these things take a while to show in the results. Further hype over the next few days could just about carry us to a new 12-month high, but if these results are broadly what is announced, would we go much beyond that?

Lovely bit of work Fender! Does seem to be going up and down a bit and you may be able to get in and out a few more times between 6th and Christmas trade results?

Hard to see the budget being anything but a negative to everybody involved, I suppose the only hope is that it's already priced in to most of the FTSE, but you can never tell really. I think the 6th will be good news, but even with the best possible outlook, surely it won't jump double digits on the day, so still won't hit the level you sold at. I think you are right, a steady increase over time if they keep delivering on this momentum. I think £4 by the end of the year, but probably won't get much past that point until summer.

Yeah I did do a quick sum and thought 'this guy isn't messing around' :) :)

Hey Fender, it’s also likely that even if results are stunning, you’ll be able to buy in really easily.

I do take your point about things being priced-in, and I might argue that the previous patterns suggest otherwise, I also feel like it’s fairly unprecedented times for MKS and us investors. Certainly unprecedented in the past 10+ years anyway!

Good luck to you too, onwards and upwards

Just had a quick check of the pattern for the past couple of years of this performance rally. November seems to bring good news, as does the Christmas trading update in January. 2 years ago we were £1, 1 year ago £2.20, now £3.80

Obviously past performance is not an indicator of future success.

Buy back before Christmas? Note that the half year results come out on November 6th, so you need to use that as a key date. If you believe the company is going in the right direction, you might want to buy before that news. If the opposite, well I guess you might not be buying at all after that date! :)

Yep I don't worry too much about the daily ups and downs, it doesn't seem that extreme to me - very rarely more than a couple of percent. I just look at the trend over time, which of course looks brilliant and the outlook from the business and the general market. The former also good, but the latter still seems a bit mixed.

I keep looking at the general trend between summer and Christmas, and for most of the past few years it's been a really good build. So hopefully we follow that pattern and get toward £4 for Christmas

Ah I see what you mean. Homeware has always been a small thing for M&S, relatively speaking. You can imagine the internal fight for space will be between their Food and C&H businesses, with the respective MDs arguing about that on a macro level. Then with whatever space the C&H team have, they are invariably going to fill it with the more profitable lines - clothing. I can also imagine the head / director of homeware to be constantly trying to justify why they need more space in order to grow that business. I did feel there was a good home and furniture opportunity a couple of years ago, with lots of competitors failing / faltering, but M&S didn't seem to go after it very aggressively. In their defence, there are so many areas to focus on you can't smash them all, so they are bound to focus on their core. Personally I think they have done brilliantly to maintain their advantage in lingerie and women's basics, really motored forward on menswear, which is brilliant now, and kidswear is much better than it was, but still huge opportunity there. Home (and furniture of course) have just suffered because of this other success - probably a good problem to have.

Your wider point on format refresh / review is a good one - the food business have done an amazing job on this, but I suppose that is the result of years of work. C&H maybe a bit further behind on this front? Anybody know of plans to revamp C&H formats?

Bernadou, what do you mean do a White Company? Probably have similar profile of customers, but TWC products are probably twice the price of M&S, whilst the company is something a 40th the size.

Exactly. The performance awards gift shares to the exec as a bonus, so when they vest they essentially have two choices - pay the tax from their own bank accounts, or sell enough shares to cover the tax. Hardly a surprise SM chose the later.

Absolutely agree that the tax burden should be shifted to the right as much as possible. There should be a greater tax free amount and if very low NI for the lowest paid. The main burden of this should shift onto the elite as much as possible, rather than the middle who already pay massively disproportionate amounts. But if that's the only choice, then I'd rather that than the current situation.

Lower tax burden at the bottom end gets more people into work, doesn't hurt employers as much and hugely benefits the workers.

For M&S, I'd love to see more money going into the retail staff's package, ideally in the form of a performance-linked bonus.

M&S m’ share price traditionally has a good build from now until December. So assuming that pattern broadly holds true, and the usual performance and macro economic conditions are accepted, then we should expect a very nice Christmas!

Did anyone see the news that Shein are considering an IPO in London, after being rejected by the US. So they’ve come here with our rather more ‘lax’ approach to financial and corporate governance. What interested me was the massive valuation they were suggesting… £50bn. Turnover something like £25-£30bn, with £1.5bn profit. Interesting times