Member Info for Gerry557

"I still don't understand where the 3.2B has gone" 84.375p x 3753m shares = 3.16Bn and for my next trick!

"Your alternate reality is outstanding!" Well I did ask you to provide more details to help you (and the readers) to understand it. Of course its all based on info from 19th Apr 17. You should have cash and shares equal to the value of the shares on this date. I admit that things like dividend tax might reduce this later especially if there is a lot over the £5k divi threshold and there is still a tad of a fraction of a share to come (unless it was divisible by an exact amount like mine!) Or are you in fact peddling "fake news" I can say that I did well out of the deal even if my shares were sold for me and I have to suffer the buyback. The devil is in the detail as they say

Monday starting off on the front foot but there are noisy events on Thursday, will that be two steps back?

" Profits would stay within society- state, not dished out as divi." From memory most state run things were loosing money and instead of putting profits into the state relied on ever increasing tax payer funding. Hence my concern that when funding is limited and it is one way r another, that real investment will just fall over time and we will end up back with rats and candles. I remember rubbish being collected every week now the bin men say they cant manage to pull a wheelie bin from the end of your garden because of H&S yet expect granny to move it. Is that an improvement? Are we getting that worse service cheaper? My bills show differently. Yes everyone has their preferred preference on how the government spends our money. If you have toddlers, Im sure preschool funding might be high on the list. Im not sure its the states responsibility to feed them though. Don't parents factor feeding their kids anymore. Should the NHS treat everyone who comes here or those that have paid in or for bad lifestyle choices? Was the NHS set up to carry me home via A&E every Saturday night 15 pints? Governments shouldn't be getting mortgages to build new schools and hospitals IMO that is why we group out taxes into one big pot. Now we are in a position were we are struggling to pay the interest of previous poor decisions of both sides when in fact we should be doing well. Actually its our fault for voting for short term gains rather than long term strength .......... just like shares. I wonder how well Debs would be now if it had not had £1Bn of debt added. I was ok with debt reduction here but concerned now it will be rising again. Lets hope it grows faster then the debt. Remember even after "Tory cuts and austerity" UK PLC is still broke........ but lets forget 2008. Maybe chief secretary to the Treasury, David Gauke can leave a "Still no money left" note.

"At the end of the day I have less shares and less money before it all started?" Well if you "overpay" for any share there is a chance you will be down at some point. Maybe you could provide some more detail to assist in finding out why you are down? "What an improvement by BOD. Thanks for nothing." Yes thanks for selling something for more than you bought it for and giving it back to me is several different ways. Of course so of that return will come in the future but lets not let that get in the way of a good grumble. As for the buybacks ..... I might grumble with you even if in theory they should be good longer term.

"Those who sold their shares before this nut job "special dividends" were much wiser." You had that option available to you, why didnt you take it? The SP is down approx 2% since the Special and its gone ex divi. Add in dealing fees and stamp duty and the missed divi not a great gain to be had. You forgetting that the markets have moved on since as well. Like with any share you hold you are always free to sell if you think its going to get cheaper at a later date. I know some who did sell and paid more to get back in, so not so wise after all. Others are waiting for the election outcome as they see JC being elected as being bad for this share or most shares generally. So I suppose the question is what to do with the nut job cash you have sitting in the bank. You are free even now to add the rest of your holding to the nut job cash in case the new PM is a nut job or follow the companies lead and buy more with the nut job cash left over. The third option is to squirrel away your nuts for harder times or for when the nut jobs end up slashing the SP one way or another and buy in cheap and become a wise old owl

Xfile, like I have said previously the gain depends on the buy price. you get 84.375p for every share you hold. So if you paid 84.375p (a while ago granted) your remaining stock holding would effectively cost you nowt. The chap that paid 168.75p also got 84.375p back but his avg cost is now 84.375p Just to keep things simple If you paid 1012p you too would get 84.375p and now your average is 927.625p Now the SP should drop by the ex divi amount, which when announced was about 1/12th. After all its just sold off a chunk of its business so is smaller. In theory they will have to cut the divi by a 12th too as earning will also be reduced. Are you still with me. EPS will also fall ... not great for the boards bonus I here you shout! Now some bright spark, who didnt like funny looking graphs said this 12th drop is making my nice looking charts funny so why not just get rid of a 12th of the shares and keep my graph the same. six of one or half a dozen of the other. It is the same value either way. Additionally EPS can grow and not knock the boards bonus! and we dont have to cut the divi either. Now of course the market moves on and prices all this in. Anyone buying in after the announcement is fully aware that from then on they are not buying a full share in NG. but 11/12th of share and will get their own cash back at a fixed rate of 84.375p some time later. The consolidation is cost neutral. The 4Bn is being returned to shareholders most via the 84.375p and the rest in buybacks, which have just started. Personally I would have preferred all Special divi as I think buybacks tend to get wasted. At least they didnt just do one big buyback!

"How horrible would be for natio to get back family silver ( infrastructure, energy,) and improve NHS , education..?" The only trouble is when governments have to make priorities and then stop investing in interconnectors as no voters are saying we want more spent on interconnectors and take it from little johnny's school. Most governments waste lots of cash and or spend it unwisely. Just like they all want to cut back on austerity. What they really mean is that they want to continue spending money we haven't got. Mainly because were still paying off the interest from the last lots who errr did exactly the same. Both main parties are arguing over a billion or so extra for the NHS but seem to have forgotten that we are paying £36Bn in interest, it could be even more now, which would make a big dent in sorting out some of these issues. Trouble is no one in power ever wants to spend less and why should they when the next lot might come in and undo all the hard work for a few votes. As for Maggies time, I think bins were not being emptied and streets were full of rubbish, not to mention sitting round candles in the cold n dark before she got in. I think I would be voting for something different. On the brighter side we have gone ex divi so maybe I will have a shilling to put in the meter soon

in replying Dawson - They would have got away with it if it wasn't for those pesky kids! Market Manipulators only work one way I suspect .... against you. Still it done well generally over time, even without all those stores in Thailand. Just goes to show ladies, its not size that matters, its how you use it. Lets not get into an argument who has the biggest dividend!

I doubt being in or out of the 250 has much bearing on anything in reality unless you are a tracker fund. Do they buy n sell early if it looks like there will be movement or is it much more mechanical? Maybe we will see over the next few weeks. Yes it could recover Morrisons did and I would remove the with numbers bit from your Diane Abbot sentence. Ed Balls was my go to bad MP until he danced off. Amber Dudd was up there for a while and I missed her ITV showing so dont know if that would have reinforced my feelings. Then again MP's dont normally endear our hearts but we are quick to judge. Peter Tapsell or should that be Sir was not with it when I had some dealings with him many years ago but then again I dont expect much from them. Strangely dealing with Borris were very good and it makes me wonder how he would have done if not stabbed in the front? Secret holidays ......... sounds like spy school to me. Have you been buying dark glasses? Back to Debs, another off day although its following the market down on what was to be an up day. Still you could be on a beach without your luggage.

Just got a call from Talk about my service and checking everything is running ok. I suspect its really a sales call as they tried to interest me in other services, for a cost of course. The bit that got me was the bit on saving me from hacking by getting "supersafe" How did that work out for TALK I asked? Still they are taking it seriously now I'm told. Still got 18 months discount and a free move to look forward too. Hopefully the rest of you will be signing up for tv boxes, upgrades and security upgrades .... after all I still want my divi

Woody had GSK as one of his biggest holdings in several of his previous funds so it is news or is that noise when he says he has sold and bought LLOY's instead. Well it looks like the headline is not quite right and in fact he spread it around and LLOY was one of several swaps. "he isn't worth it!" - Hes done well for me in the past but now I'm doing the opposite, well different to him. I've kept my GSK but did add a couple of tranches of LLOY. I still dont know Woodys buy and sale averages but GSK has been out performing LLOY over the last few days. Still its not what the short term is doing but where we will be in the longer term. If I'm ahead of Woody then I suspect I will be doing OK

You are correct on the fact that the lower you bought the better the gain on the "deal" although to be fail it goes without saying for any share really. I have compared the end of month values and my holding is slightly ahead at the end of last month (May) compared to the previous month even with a lower number of shares. So the bonus will be the cash coming from my forced sale of shares (at a profit cos I bought before the announcement) So not so pointless but more of a hassle to get back those sold shares ... if I want too spend that cash. The buyback starts too so in theory should give you more gains although I'm skeptical on buybacks generally. Going forward the company is leaner and stronger so what is not too like. OK if you bought in to ****etbag you will end up just where you were but that is no loss as you still have the stronger leaner company and some dosh back to ****et bag somewhere else. So yes I have gained although not sure I want to reinvest just yet and if the election goes wrong having that cash might have been the best decision forced on me. In theory buying back should be more expensive anyway fighting the buyback and better company metrics. Maybe we need a bad outcome nest week to invest lower ........... hummm!

Indus Towers, the Indian towers company in which Vodafone has a 42% interest, will be excluded from the perimeter of the Idea merger. Indus achieved local currency revenue growth of 6.2% and adjusted EBITDA growth of 0.3% for the year. Indus owned 122,730 towers as at 31 March 2017, with a tenancy ratio of 2.35x. Our share of Indus’ adjusted EBITDA for the year was €410 million and its contribution to Vodafone Group adjusted operating profit was €98 million. During the year the Group received €126 million in dividends from Indus Towers. Make you wonder?

Well its confirmed, she is out of the FTSE250 on the 19th. Just to add to the woes high street sales down 1.3 percent and like-for-like sales in the fashion sector fell 3.6 percent on the same month a year ago, making May the fourth month of the year to see no growth in sales in stores, BDO said on Friday. Good job Debs is moving on then and maybe SB needs to spend that money to stand still. Well only another week of political rantings and it will all be done and dusted and the markets and companies can adjust to the new landscape. I wouldn't worry about not having your postal vote as mine didn't have any good boxes to cross .... just a list of ones I dont want. Would the country run better on its own, I worked at a place that ran better when the boss was away. Latest poles show its getting close, send Diane Abbott on holiday for a week away from the media and JC could win this. Maybe I should sell up into cash and move abroad at least it would be sunny

Shippy glad your err..... ship shape again. I am holding off as I see it falling a bit more. Markets on a high as this hits lows so what will any pull back do? Ex divi should knock another penny off and its close to falling out of the FTSE 250 http://www.stockchallenge.co.uk/ftse.php Will the trackers sell too? So might be more to come .......... Maybe some divi might get reinvested after all. Queeny, nothing wrong with eating a tad more on your jollies so long as you burn off all that extra, no lifts and more free time for the gym n swim. Not much on my radar either, this maybe, markets up a lot recently too toppy? My PNN buy has already got me 5 years divi and I might have sold had I been around but its come back a tad. Still I generally sit on my hands so looks like I will be going with the default option for a bit longer. Just noticed its gone under 50 again so getting closer

$8Bn so where does that leave Voda? Cant from memory recall the income from the JV but should reduce debt and a bit for fighting fund or does this make Voda more streamlined ....... say for a sale or deal? Just musing out loud and probably got the wrong end of the stick. Still saying "Liberty" right now might push the SP a tad further.

Nice to see the divi up by over 4%. but concerned that they cant work out a way to add any extra over the 3 lower paid quarters, thereby sticking with the plan to even out payments throughout the year. Maybe I am missing something or there is a legal aspect but why dont they divide the extra by three and add that to the lower quarter payments. OK those that have held and earned the profit might want to sell now or after ex divi date to collected and run but we were warned of the plan well in advance. "Against a strong market backdrop, the portfolio’s performance was held back by its zero weighting in the mining sector and by the absence of holdings in HSBC and Royal Dutch Shell." - Glad I bought them on my own then, ok I didnt get any mining but we cant all be perfect! "The zero weighting in UK domestic banks was, however beneficial to portfolio performance." Wot no LLOY's? "The holdings in the tobacco sector again delivered a strongly positive contribution to performance" Now I'm conflicted, I wouldnt buy fags on principle but they do have good numbers. Lots in the top 10 too! Still this offers some diversity from my own stock picks and some that I would like but never seem to manage to pick the right time. 15th out of 22 IT's so not been the best but then things can change and hopefully the stuff he has been buying will come good. I was generally happy with my holding here before finding out about the other 14 better ones but I can complain over spilt milk. Roll on that bigger divi

at first glance look good, divi up as expected. Will check back later.

OK, if you dont understand it fine but dont knock those who try and explain. It was discussed on here pre today so you were warned. The gain was when they announced the deal. They had sold part of the business for a lot more than they paid for it. They could have spent it all on summat else but couldn't find anything that would be a sufficient return so chose to return the capital to you. Of course they could have reduced debt or not bothered selling in the first place. Now with a weaker part gone the company is now stronger and debt also reduce a tad so is leaner so should progress faster. You will have that surplus cash to buy more if you want or invest elsewhere for a better return as you so wish. The consolidation was just an exercise to keep the SP the same, this helps when looking over time rather than the SP falling by the divi amount. So where is the con? I suspect its those wanting something for nothing and finding that it had already been priced in post the deal announcement just like Vodafone was. Ask yourself how much the SP has changed since the announcement and then the clouds might clear.