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Phy, GVC's Share Chat page here says that they are due to deliver a trading update on October 8th. That's four weekends into the new NFL season. Should give us some insight into their penetration into that new market, with a possibility of read-across to WMH and Flutter's efforts.

Sain, your note about Next's results led me to spend yesterday evening combing Lord Wolfson's report. (Yes. Yes. I know. I need to get out more, but my wife has gone visiting grandchildren and the dog's conversation is limited.)

Lord Wolfson has always had a very readable style and he's very upfront and frank. His chief executive's review is well worth a read by anyone with a passing interest in retailing and its' future. Of course, he's not unbiased & he's looking for rent reductions, but catching my eye were; Half of his store leases, 250 units, expire within the next 5 years. Half of his online sales are picked up from stores & 82% of online returns dropped off there. So he wants lots of shops for the online customers convenience. Just not at current rents, which are unjustified by the falling sales from the shops themselves. Face it, collection and drop-off centres don't really need to be on prime high-street sites.

Then he sets out a 15-year stress test for the company. What if; Retail like-for-like sales continue to decline at 10% pa, rents decline at 5% pa compound, and online sales continue to grow at 7.5% pa. He doesn't give forecast numbers and freely admits "the world is very unlikely to turn out exactly in line with our model." But he did the exercise to prove the company can withstand "a prolonged and severe downturn in retail sales." The conclusion being that online will not only save them, but keep them profitable and successful.

I've dusted off the steam-driven slide rule and applied those assumptions to produce some forecast numbers for 2024. The model predicts Next's retail sales of £1 billion pa. Online sales of £2.6 billion and rents at 77% of today's levels. So, by then, retail sales will be less than 30% of total turnover, compared to 50% today. I can't be the first person to be crunching numbers like this. Far better qualified quants with much greater data sets will be drawing their own conclusions and I wonder if this goes some way to explaining why smaller centres are being dumped "at Argentinian yields" and Aberdeen have put The Moor up for sale? Mind you, if they can get it off at less than 7.5% yield, I'll be very surprised. I wouldn't want to be buying on a 7.5% yield, when Lord Wolfson is effectively saying that it will likely fall to 6% by 2024.

Of course, it's extremely risky to apply one company's model to the entire retail market, but if those assumptions turn out to be anywhere near correct, then like-for-like retail will fall by 1/3rd. Online will jump by 40%, which, would take national online sales to between 25% & 30% of all retail sales and landlords are going to see their rent-rolls fall by at least 20%. Probably not a good time to be heavily invested in shops.

Sain, we're in danger of turning this into a old-f*rts reunion. I well remember the man and the day a West End colleague went to meet him at some airfield the MOD wanted rid of. My man couldn't find him at the guardhouse, then spotted a large set of wheels parked half-way down a runway, miles away. Tony caught up with the chauffeur-driven Roller. Ronnie got out the back, announced that he was desperate to relieve himself, walked all of about six feet into the middle of the runway, no attempt at any privacy, and simple fired away. Tony had no idea where to put himself. Ronnie pronounced himself satisfied and proceeded to declare the land as "effin' blankety-blank". Tony, who'd a very dry sense of humour, claimed to have replied, "So you'd like me to put in an offer at the asking price, sir?" Ronnie nearly bust a gut laughing.

Charles Mackenzie-Hill wasn't a lot better, but he did have more polish! I suppose they've all died of drink or old age by now? Thanks for the memories.

Zc & Sain,

Thank you for your comments. I have to say that I'm so glad to be retired. The idea of having to value retail today, especially in tertiary locations like Bangor, turns my already white hair a lighter shade of white!

Years ago I came across a Chinese saying, "May you live in interesting times" A colleague from Hong Kong, explained that it's actually a curse-cum-insult . Because the Chinese are very understated, it really means, "I hope someone comes down the street & turns your market stall upside down for you." Imho, the internet has done this to shopping & retailing. History suggests there will be casualties, survivors, & those few who will make a fortune. The model, in operation for 150+ years is broken. How it eventually rebuilds itself will, I think, depend on how much on-line shopping eventually takes of the total market. Will it stop at 20%, or go to 30%, or even 40%?

How to profit from this enormous change? Well, getting the goods into the buyer's hands is one way. I actually started off, as an agent, in Warehouses & Factories across the North back in 1970, and feel like I've come full circle, because today my three holdings are Segro & Tritax Big Box, plus some Land Securities, owned for decades. I held Shaftesbury & Great Portland, until early '18, then rolled into the two Big Shed developers. My thinking is simply that demand from Amazon & it's competitors is very strong. There seems no reason why the public will desert on-line & most importantly, development makes for enormous capital gains over time. BBox explained it's thinking thus, "We find a tenant for our sites. With construction finished & the tenant installed, their rent equates to a 7% cash yield on all costs, including land. The market, however, values that income today at 4.5%." This means if you invest £1,000 to produce £70 of rent, the investment market will pay £1,500 to buy the lease from you. A 50% instant gain. Now, if you're a Plc, there's no guarantee that the stock market will reflect 100% of the gain. Sometimes it discounts you, occasionally it prices you at a premium. But, and its a big but, the day the tenant moves in, you'll get a bonus of seven years rent (£500 divided by £70) added to your asset value. I love bonuses like that.

Meantime what happens to the likes of Bangor? I equate them to pubs. Who would have forecast 40 years ago that the boozer was dying? Licensed premises commanded a premium value over the other houses in the street. Not today - they're mostly worth less. Sure, there are localities where many customers live close by and can visit on foot(less), such as central London and Uni towns close to the students, but the car-cum-breathalyser problem has killed the market for a couple of pints before bedtime. I foresee much retail demolition & redevelopment over the next 20/30 years, probably as housing & parking.

Intu is living in interesting times. I wish them well, but I won't risk an inv

Hi Phy (please excuse the awful pun),

WMH will publish it's full year results to 31st December in early March Then in May you'll get a Trading Update. The half-year results to 30th June are published in August. Followed by a further update just before the year-end in mid-December.

So the next news we're expecting is an update in December, which will hopefully tell us that the company's first season, taking wagers on the NFL in the US, has been very profitable. Fingers crossed.

There's a whole bunch of us who've been having a civilised, polite, discussion here for almost a year about the outlook for UK shopping centres in general and INTU in particular. Our views range right across the spectrum from optimistic about the company's chances of a recovery and/or takeover to downright pessimistic about its' chances of continued existence.

Despite these differences we have remained unfailingly polite to each other.

You have now joined the discussion. Your language is regularly rude and disrespectful. Referring to one poster as a "plonker", simply because they disagree with you. You take exception to everyday terms used by people who express differing opinions. Reference to a 'stack of debt' merits your derision. Yet, it's just a form of words. This company owes some £4.5 billion to a consortium of creditors. There's a million ways of describing that amount of debt and it's not up to you to be mocking the phrases used here. Each of us has our own way of describing what is, by any normal, domestic, standards, an extraordinarily large amount of money.

Likewise, another poster refers to the current SP as 'option money'. Which price, compared to 12 months ago, it most definitely is. Yet you sneer about them, 'wanting to sound knowledgable'. There's lots of knowledgable investors on this website. Some more knowledgable than others, but we treat each other as equals and with respect.

I'm writing to you because your aggressively personal comments are really not wanted here. If you have something reasoned and intelligent to contribute, your opinions are most welcome and we will read them with respect, even if we totally disagree with your views on Intu's likely future. However, if being rude is your everyday way of approaching the world, then, I'd like to invite you to take your seeming lack of good manners and poor temper and vent them somewhere else.

I hope you will stay and contribute in a helpful, positive, interesting and polite way. If that's too much to ask, please just leave us in peace to await the outcome of Intu's problems. They fascinate us. Nothing like this problem has ever confronted retail investors, small and large, before and the outcome appears to be most uncertain. That's why our opinions are so different.

We enjoy keeping each other informed, like today's note that some publicly traded debt is now changing hands below par at 89p, so suggesting that some financiers are becoming worried and selling-out at a loss. I see tonight that their 5.56% 2027 Mortgage Debenture stock, which has traded at a premium of £112/£114 for over four years, has fallen from £105 on 2nd September to a small discount today, £95. These are all straws in the wind. Their eventual outcomes are totally unknown and it will doubtless be an exciting journey, even for us onlookers with little skin in the game. Do join us.

Probably because existing and potential holders believe the HKEX bid has zero chance of succeeding. The LSE is a fabulous investment. Now look at the so-called 'offer' - £63 worth of it is in HKEX paper. Toilet paper! Why would anyone want to swap ownership of a prime London asset for paper issued in Hong Kong, when there are weekly riots on the streets and Mr. Xi, the despot from next door is threatening to send in the Red Army?

That explains why the current quote is £72, compared to the 'bid' of £83.61p. England have more chance of winning the Ashes, than this turkey ever has of taking off.

I've recently opened a position at £1.51p. This company, plus Flutter & GVC , have been badly hit recently by the Machine Limit of £2, but their future growth hopes lie mainly in legalised gambling in the US. No-one really knows how big that market really is, or what it may grow to. The fact that illegal gambling, long dominated by organised crime, has generated most of the revenue makes any guesses highly speculative - the mafia don't publish their accounts.

However, the biggest gambling market in the US is generally agreed to be the NFL. The pre-season is over and the opening match is on Friday, Packers at the Bears, with 12 games on Sunday. All three plc's have high hopes for their US operations. Their year-ends are all 31st December, which coincides with Week 17, the end of the regular NFL season. The companies report in Feb and Mar, so there is likely to be a dearth of news until then, unless we get some pre-close trading updates around Christmas.

I doubt that any opportunistic bidder will materialise before there are some hard numbers to analyse. Nor that management could possibly recommend such a bid as US legalised gambling may turn out to be an Eldorado, or it may be a bust. Historically it's always been the bookies who drive around in Rolls-Royces, and despite recent setbacks, necessitating them culling their now-unprofitable shops in the UK, probably at considerable cost, I'm sure their Betting Shops estates should return to profitability in the near future.

My reasoning, which is regularly proved wrong, is that at least one of the big three will hit the bigtime in the USA within the next 3 to 5 years, which why I've taken some profits generated elsewhere and gone long in all three plc's. This perennial optimist believes that there's always money to be made out of sin and the US represents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. We shall see and the journey could well be fun and interesting. I suspect I'm not alone in this thinking. Willie Hill at £20 in 2022 would give me a big grin. Not being greedy, you understand!

You're very welcome and thanks for the update, Telfordboy & also to Autonomy1 for the consolidation details. Computershare should now send you their paperwork for autograph, which will involve you sending your old cert., in return for which CS will issue you with a new cert for your new share total.

My respectful suggestion is to park the new cert with your broker and then it won't go missing for another 15 years! Although that might be a great way to accidentally get rich, without jitters or nerves in the meantime, if the ladies keep working their wonders with this business and its share price.

Incidentally, does anyone know if we can expect a Pre-Close Trading Update before 30th September?

The website should tell you who the registrar is. That's the company that maintains the share register, notes the transfers and gets the dividends paid to the right people. I suggest you send the registrar a colour photocopy of your cert. They will ID it for you, because if they say it's OK, you can take it to a broker and cash out. If they say no, it's likely worthless.

Hi Hereshopin, Re yours of 12.30 Friday. Apologies for taking so long to reply, I went to the sunshine at York races for the past two days. The numbers I set out at 12.15; namely the amounts needed to get the Balance Sheet down to an appropriate debt-to-assets ratio of closer to 30% from a present close to 60%, plus the effect on that ratio of the Derby sale, were obtained firstly, from Intu's RSN of that sale, dated 9th July. In Para 4, the final sentence reads, "On a pro-forma basis, the transaction reduces debt to assets ratio by around one percent."

In Intu's Half Year Report, the Results Summary numbers at the beginning show, on Line 8, "Market Value of Properties" at 30th June of £8,357,500. The next line, #9, shows "Proforma Net external Debt" of £4,714,200. That debt, as a percentage of total assets is 56.4%. Which, in my book, is "close to 60%".

To have had a debt-to-assets ratio of 30%, on the 30th June gross assets of £8,357,500, would require a gross external debt level of no more than £2,507,100. The difference between that amount and the current debt of £4,714,200 is £2,207,100. Hence my comment that, imo, Intu needs a cash injection of around £2 billion pounds to rebuild it's balance sheet and get the ratio down close to 30%. The level at which most other large real estate companies operate.

I hasten to assure you that I would never knowingly post bad numbers on this, or any other website. A reputation for credibility is hard-won and very easily lost, the moment anyone strays off the straight and narrow. So the last thing I'd ever do is deliberately post erroneous numbers. The readers of LSE are hopefully far too bright to fall for such a dodgy poster, more than once, if at all.

I believe you're right, Zccax. This business has close to a 60% level. For as long as I can remember, all major commercial property investors have run with debt levels around 30%. Presumably because that's the average debt level that works best for them, across all bull and bear markets.

The Derby sale for £186 million reduced the debt by about 1.5%. The mooted Spanish sale at around £250 million will cut it another 2.0 to 2.5%. Frankly, this isn't going to greatly improve matters, if your target is to cut debt by 20%+ in the short term.

It looks as if Intu needs a cash injection of £2 billion minimum, to get the debt close to 40%. Punters would do well to remember that while Location, Location is the #1 rule in property investment, the second is Finance, Finance, Finance. If you have the wrong finance on the world's most beautiful property investment, it will still drag you down to ruin. It's like being boyfriend to the prettiest girl in St. Tropez this August, who is sadly & unfortunately riddled with several STD's. Nothing good will result from that for you.

Whittaker and his controlled company Peel own just over 50%. Assuming they could raise £2 billion to bail the properties out, why would they bail out the Intu minority shareholders too? Seems far more profitable for them to do a deal with with the banks and later take 100% of any profits from the refinancing, than to risk their £2 billion and have to share 50% of any profits with the small shareholders here. A bit cynical, I know, but I also think it's more realistic.

Chumba, I don't know whether you have any interest in technical analysis, but the chart would appear to support your bearish view. One of the most reliable signals is a 'Head & Shoulders' pattern. The 5-year chart shows a clear H&S, with the left shoulder starting in January '17 and the right shoulder completing in May this year, both at 280p. The head topped at 410p. The countback of 130p suggests that GLEN is going down to 150p in short order. We shall see what happens. Good Luck!

Jatw, you're spot on. These retirement village operators are right up there with the ground-rent racketeers and time-share-mafiosi. The business plan is to fee the occupants to death and afterwards too. Face it, a 15% sell-on fee, given that the average life expectancy of a new resident is three years, means that the operator get to trouser a second 100% sales receipt every 20 years. And that's in addition to the very profitable service, food and beverage charges in the meantime.

I'm surprised that purchaser's solicitors don't flag these rip-off charges to would-be buyers. Maybe the very elderly are beyond caring?

Don't worry about the maths, MehMehMeh. Your post nudged me to looking at the history of Marshall Wade's position. (Its a quiet afternoon.) It seems they sold 6 million last November at roughly £1.90 each and another 6 million in January at roughly £1.10.

So their paper profits are presently some £13 million and with only another £4.8 million maximum potential profit in the trade, they have to be looking at lightening up and cashing in.

MeHMehMeh, Thanks for posting this. With over 73 million shares shorted, my guess is that one of the big three decided at, 11.10 today, it was time to cash in some profits and close out part of their position.

Yes, Sain, the Red Book, more correctly titled, "RICS Valuation - Global Standards 2017", sets out mandatory rules, best practice guidance and lots of commentary for surveyors taking valuation instructions. It goes, without saying that, especially where public companies are concerned and the valuing firm is a major international operator, the client has zero input into the likely final figures. It's simply the valuer's opinion of what the property would sell for, on the valuation date, given the existence of a willing vendor and willing purchaser.

The fact that there's a chronic shortage of any substantial purchasers today suggests that valuers will be applying ever-larger discounts to 2018 valuations. Indeed, there's an article in today's Times telling how Shropshire Council bought three shopping centres, in Shrewsbury, less than 18 months ago for £51 million and has already taken their ratepayers for an 11 million pound bath. The council's 2019 accounts reveal this year's valuation is just £40 million.

This retail market is downright dangerous simply because tenants are fleeing in droves. Centre owners are experimenting with the introduction of residential flats, medical centres, budget hotels, cinemas, children play areas and even partial-demolition, but all of this will take time to introduce and, frankly, no-one really has the foggiest idea whether any of it will work, because it's never been tried before.

Yesterday Sunday Times mentions how John Whittaker once had loans of £400 million secured against his personal INTU shareholding, but he's had to pay that down to £35 million today. In the meantime, INTU's MD said last week that he's got a five-year programme to turn the company round. That he should be so lucky! I'd say he's got between six and twelve months to stop the blood-letting, otherwise it's curtains. There's too much writing on the wall for any optimism.

Zccax77, it's matter of public record that John Whittaker has finance outstanding on his personal shareholding of some 400 million shares, and that he he has, twice so far this year, had to 'refinance' that shareholding. As the shares have fallen steadily from 120 to 70p during that time, 'refinance' means he's had margin calls, obliging him to deposit scads of cash with the bankers, giving them the comfort of some breathing room between his loans and the holding's market value.

The shares have fallen another 20 pence from 70p to 50p today, suggesting that this breathing room has disappeared and resulted in a large margin call. 400 million times 20 pence is a lot of cash to have to produce on very short notice. Especially when that shareholding has suddenly stopped paying any dividends.

It's always the notes to the accounts that reveal the unvarnished truth; Go to the Income Statement, Para A, Net Rental Income and drop down to the last line, a single sentence paragraph:

"We anticipate full year net rental income to be down by a similar amount to that seen in the first half of 2019."

That's down another £17.9 million at 31st December, taking total NRI for the current half-year down to £187.3 million. Down almost 15% compared to the 31/12/18 number.

The next sting in the tail is found in the Balance Sheet, under Debt Measures, Debt Structure & Covenants. Another last line, reading;

"Our business depends on our ability to continue to access these sources of funding to refinance debt as it falls due."

A few more falls of £17.9 million every half-year will make that pretty difficult.

This news out today:

https://product.costar.com/home/news/shared/66467001?utm_source=costar&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=costar-national-newsletter&utm_content=p1

For sale with a 9% initial yield.